Thursday, June 21

travelling together, albert-style

I only know Albert's side of the story, so I can't offer a balanced view. Albert says the reason he and the cellmate can never fly anywhere on the same plane or even the same day, is because of their divergent strategies for planning and packing.

For the cellmate, the best way to spend the weeks before travel is:

(1) Go out every night with a different friend. By the time you get on the plane, you feel exhausted but completely connected to everyone in your life. Actually, written down like that it looks quite sensible really! A downside is that you end up doing your packing at the last minute, and forget half of what you need.

(2) Decide shortly before the trip that you need to redecorate and refurnish the whole house. Call in a designer, and make a load of impulsive and expensive decisions at a time when you're both already overstressed at work and at home.

Albert himself prefers the normal travel preparation strategies:

(1) Start packing a month beforehand.

(2) Cut off from other people, spend the last few weeks working on lists and elaborate systems. By the time you get on the plane, you feel completely alone and completely in control of everything. Actually, written down like that it doesn't look quite normal after all.

6 comments:

  1. I think this is an interesting example of being at one extreme or the other.

    Have you two every traveled together? Or have you always adopted this cheerless separateness?

    Most folks over pack anyway, so forgetting things isn't really so bad. With few exceptions most of what is forgotten is easily replaced or done without.

    I tend to throw everything I think I'll need at the suit case and then the day before remove half of it and I'm still usually over packed.

    I think cutting yourself off from people is never a good choice.

    I expect if you could combine the two strategies you could find a balance.

    But I prefer not to travel alone. So I do all the planning and packing and just bring my husband with at the time.

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  2. Albert? Civilisation is full of shops!! Once you get out of yon desert, you won't believe it! Shops with things in them everywhere. Take just a change of clothes and a tooth brush and flash the nazi goldcard at anything else you like once you have escaped that place. Hope this helps. Hotboy

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  3. Nanners. We both enjoy travelling alone. We keep in touch via online scrabble. Eventually we meet up in a hotel room somewhere and swap stories.

    Hotters, shopping your way out of trouble is all very well for superannuated leisured types like your good self.

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  4. Online or any kind of Scrabble makes me want to murder people. But I went to school when they taught phonics instead of spelling.

    If it works for you and everyone is happy then it doesn't matter your difference in style.

    It sounds a bit like the dishes rule at my house.

    I hate the way my husband does dishes and he isn't keen on the way I do them. So the rule is that if you aren't happy with how the other one is doing something, you can either take over and do it yourself or leave and let it happen. Saves a lot of argument over things that aren't important.

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  5. I say!

    I know Exactly how you feel. Any safari trips we go on are well planned as far as I am concerned.

    Here, for example, I have a departure list for our recent trip to the Elephant Marsh:

    Item 13 - Final bowel movements MM III 7.37am to 7.45am; Mrs M 7.46am to 7.54am.

    Item 18 - Final security #1s.

    Item 19 - Final instructions to Doviko.

    Item 20 - Depart 9.00am on the dot.

    Unfortunately, the only lists Mrs M makes are written after departure, and are of all the things she's forgotten to take with her.

    MM III

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  6. Nanners, Albert took over 100% of the dishwashing here for that very reason, but now the cellmate complains that she's "not allowed" to wash dishes in her own house. When yoy're Albert you can't win!

    Mingers. Most charitable of Mrs M to always go second. One assumes a first aider is standing by at all times.

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