Why Can't I Hear the Angels Sing? Part 1

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Let me tell you a story.

I was 14. I had rejected God. I danced, 7 classes a week. I played piano and flute and was beginning to feel the tug of the guitar. I had recently fallen in love with Dylan, Donovan and folk rock. I was starting to write. I had a tenuous relationship with my parents.

My dad loved the war time music still. Not so much the jazz that lives today, but Tommy Dorsey and other white pretenders. He told me if I learned to play Dorsey’s Boogie Woogie, he’d buy me an organ.

I was motivated. I bought the sheet music and I practiced for months. It wasn’t easy for me, all those walking octaves – I had small hands with short fingers, the bane of any instrumentalist. I didn’t understand swing. I had a teacher who understood it well but couldn’t explain, just played for me, endlessly, as if osmosis would be good enough for a 14-year-old whose taste ran in a rather different direction. But I was motivated, and I learned the thing.

Dad brought home a rent-to-buy Hammond L100 with a built in Leslie. Man, that thing was sweet! I played hours every day. I reworked all my piano pieces to suit the organ. I learned favourite songs by ear. I made up stuff. I improvised. I got my friends on the phone, and played for them.

Then we had the fire. I was home alone and on the phone, playing organ for a friend. I smelled smoke, hung up, and ran around the house looking for the source. Smoke by then was pouring from the crack beneath the basement door. I made sure all the doors and windows were closed, just like I’d been trained, and ran next door to call the fire department and then my parents, some half-hour away at friends’.

The fire turned out to be mostly smouldering beams from a faulty new light fixture, but the smoke damage was extensive. We got to live in a hotel for a month on the insurance company’s dime, a snazzy downtown hotel, where I would go down to the dining room and order up anything flambé.

When we returned home, the organ was gone. The Bay had forgotten to bill Dad the rental, and I guess he didn’t want to pay the back charges, especially for a smoke-smelly organ. I don’t really know; he never explained.

Funny how a thing like that can hurt like hell, forty years later.

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Apropos of nothing in particular

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Rick Steves is in Vancouver. We could catch the elevator with him, but he’s going down, and the auditorium is up. He’s eating a sandwich that smells of onions, and his face is clearly saying, “Please don’t get on the elevator with me.” So we don’t.

He’s taller than he looks on TV. A veritable giant. And his belly is bigger than the camera shows, he being in the full flush of middle age.

He sits cross-legged at the side of the stage while the KCTS9 Public Television director (or president or whatever high position she holds) offers a lengthy introduction. He rolls his neck, his prep (I presume) for his presentation. He’s in jeans and sports jacket, pretty much in line with the khakis and sports shirt of his TV shows. His hair is Ken-doll perfect, even though he has just self-tousled; it never changes: it doesn’t grow, and he doesn’t visit the barber. He is one of my heroes, alongside David Suzuki and Joni Mitchell and a couple of poets whose names don’t come to mind at the moment.

His talk is on the topic of his latest book, “Travel as a Political Act”. I am up for any heightening of the reasons for travel, so I’m all ears. He aims his comments at an American audience, and he apologises for that, well aware of the cultural differences between our two countries despite superficial similarities. He talks about the importance of broadening perspectives by travel, then bringing those new perspectives home. He compares European values with American values, European economy with American economy, Iranian fundamentalism with American fundamentalism, European drug laws with American drug laws. He is a master of not explicitly committing to opinion on what is better (though his opinion is clear), but stating over and over: ours is not the only way, and ours is not the better way—we need to consider alternatives. He complains about ethnocentrism and the policy of fear-mongering and the corporate motive that drives the American Way. He plugs public television at several junctures in his talk (public TV, of course, is paying his way here), calling it the thinking man’s alternative to the hysterical news coverage of commercial stations.

It was hard to go out on a Thursday night; we were tired beyond tired. But it’s a wonderful evening, gathered with a bunch of other aging PBS supporters cheering for liberal thinking. The talk is free, incidentally, but open only to donors.

This is apropos of nothing.

So.

Tonight I’m eating Purdy’s chocolates. Or, rather, tasting them. Most of them I don’t like. I’m of the “don’t eat calories you don’t absolutely adore” school, and I’m fussy about my chocolate. So I take a bite of something promising and if it’s full of some kind of fruity, too-sweet, creamy substance, I spit it out. I do not feel guilty about it. I have a pile, now, of a good half-dozen rejects. I’ve actually eaten two. I’m fed up with chocolate, and I return to my Minervois, an ever-smoother red wine from the southwest of France. Mmm Friday.

And this, too, is apropos of nothing.

Today was a Pro-D day. Professional Development. A requirement, as it should be. After twenty years of teaching, much of Pro-D seems a waste of time. Call me stuck in my ways or arrogantly presumptuous of my own creativity, I don’t care. Today, however, was stellar, as far as Pro-D days go. There were two one-to-two-hour workshops, a free lunch, and some meeting time.

The first workshop was given by an occupational therapist who works (on contract to the school board, I think) with a number of students in the school. She taught us about two types of exercise breaks for kids, one which engages the vestibular system and stimulates or energizes kids (and other humans) and another which engages the so-called proprioceptive system, and which help to calm and organize kids (and other humans), neurologically speaking. The vestibular system is located in the inner ear, those little hairs responsible for hearing and balance, and proprioception is about awareness of where parts of the body are in space, such as is tested by roadside cops when they ask you to touch your nose. We were led through a few exercises by the O.T., who was a thoroughly likeable presenter with good credentials. At the end we were asked to talk with our table-mates about how we might implement the exercises in our classrooms, while said O.T. circulated.

I asked her about the research that backed the information she conveyed. She admitted there wasn’t any, that there was a dearth of studies, that the evidence was pretty much anecdotal. I was not surprised, but I did appreciate her candor and that she was not offended by my question. Meanwhile, I have some googling to do—there must be SOMETHING, for god’s sake. Meanwhile, I am feeling smug about being a good skeptic.

Our team meeting was interesting, peppered with controversy. I love controversy, as long as it’s not personal, but others emerged from the meeting with adrenalin come-down, upset and wasted. Mine is the challenge to sort out a way to satisfy everyone. Not that that is possible.

The afternoon workshop was about a new and potentially extremely useful technological initiative in the district. Exciting.

I went shopping and bitching with Susan this evening. Can’t get enough of her. Now I’m blogging, apparently, while watching Discovery Channel, An Idiot Abroad.

And all this is apropos of nothing.



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The Skeptics' Guide to a Bit of Stuff

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November 28, 2010

Outside my north-facing window, a steel cloud hovers like one of those mega-sized alien spacecraft that show up at the end of sci-fi movies. It’s as big as the neighbourhood, but there’s a little light sneaking underneath, and the day is brighter than most in November. Clumps of rotten snow huddle on the lawn from last week’s unseasonable flurries. The beech trees are budding out, already preparing for spring.

Last weekend, in the snow, I went to a taping of the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, just up the way at UBC. I’ve been listening to these guys for at least two years now, my Sunday-morning-with-baguette breakfast treat. I don’t remember how I discovered the podcast, or why I turned to it, other than the intriguing name, but thus began the beginning of a change in my world view. I was always a skeptic, more or less, with the occasional wishful dipping into unscientific ideas, but now I require good solid double-blind-study, reproducible evidence, if I’m going to believe anything. 

Steven Novella is the main host of the SGU. He’s an academic neurologist (Yale) who writes or contributes to numerous medical and skeptical blogs, including NeuroLogica, edits a couple of scientific journals, presides over the New England Skeptical Society, and posts the hour-long SGU podcast weekly. He has two young daughters, as best I can figure, whose science education he has undertaken since he finds the school system lacking in that regard. I don’t think he sleeps.

Steve’s little brothers, Bob and Jay, are on the SGU panel. Bob is pretty quiet, but brings a special interest in physics and astronomy to the table. Jay, the youngest, hippest brother, is a satirist who quips throughout the show. Also on the panel are Evan Bernstein, who seems to be the techie in the group, and Rebecca Watson, who also heads the Skepchick magazine and podcast, but who wasn’t present in Vancouver. Participating in the Vancouver show was George Hrab, who hosts another podcast, Geologica, and writes and performs skeptical songs. I find him abrasive, and his singing voice grating, but skeptics love him.

The format of the podcast begins with the news of the week, gathered from various scientific and media sources, often continues with a guest interview and listener questions, then includes a “Who’s that Noisy?”, in which the audience is asked to guess the content of a short audio clip, and a “Science or Fiction” segment where (usually) Steven sets up three scenarios and the panel members discuss and decide which of the three is the fiction. Somewhere in the show is a “This Day in History” bit, and a quote-of-the-week. The taping at UBC pretty much followed the regular format, with the Science or Fiction segment presenting research that all came out of UBC, which was fun. (Plus, I got it right, along with my seat neighbour and a very few other audience members, voting by applause, while all the panel members got it wrong!)

There is not a lot of point in recapping the entire show, as it will be put out  on iTunes or the SGU website as soon as the gang is back home, I presume. But to give a taste of what these guys are about, if any of my four readers don’t know, one of the news items presented was about Oprah’s presentation of John of God. (There was a sizable snigger at the mention of Oprah, goddess of The Secret, the anti-vaccine movement, miracles, angels, and many other indefensible and often destructive flavour-of-the-day notions. Jay jumped up and cried, “Who loves Oprah?” Response: one guy cheered in irony.)

John of God is a Brazilian psychic surgeon. We’ve all heard of the Philippino psychic surgeons, I presume, and their debunking several years ago when “tumours” removed from clients proved to be chicken guts. John of God is different in that he appears to actually make an incision. Without sterile technique. Ack.

A skeptic doesn’t automatically deny the possibility that extraordinary claims are true, but rather asks questions and waits for answers produced by scientific (blinded, reproducible) study. As Steven Novella said in the program, John of God, with his extraordinary claims, will likely be exposed as a fraud, then Oprah will have him on the show and yell at him. We can’t say for certain yet that he is a fraud, as our only evidence is that every case of similar claims in the past has been proven to be so. The irony is that it is by Oprah’s publicity that researchers will be moved to investigate John of God. 

Anyhow, Oprah says, “You be the judge,” then presents a documentary video. I’ll give you two videos and pose some questions, then you be the judge, how’s that?


Oprah:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9If9vSHQVQ

Skeptic James Randi:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxMGxz6-oTs



Does John of God allow scientific analysis of the pieces of flesh he supposedly removes from his clients? What are the long-term health effects of his services, if clients substitute his treatment for conventional medical treatment? What is the evidence that people do not get infections in the incisions he makes; does the reporter do any followup with the clients? Why were we not shown Dr Jeffrey Rediger’s response to the question posed at 3:37 on the video? How do we know that the people in the Oprah video are not shills for John of God? The reporter says he went to John of God looking for proof of the existence of god, and that he found it; is this not confirmation bias?

As a skeptic, I do not accept anecdotes as evidence for anything. People are notoriously poor observers and memory is remarkably faulty. People who say that “alternatives” to conventional medicine are not studied–because “big pharma” would lose money, or some other such conspiracy theory–are not actually looking at the literature.

If you like this stuff, I recommend the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, the James Randi Educational Foundation, Brian Dunning, and Science-Based Medicine, just for starters. A search for skeptics and skepticism (“with a ‘k’”, as they say) will bring up many blogs, websites and podcasts. In the end, weigh it all up, and judge for yourself.

“When you are studying any matter never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficial social effects if it were believed. Look only and solely at what are the facts.”

    .                                                                              ~ Bertrand Russell



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Pilot’s Log

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“Nothing but sea seen” - F/L E.J. Mullins, August 5, 1942



My dad was twenty-one when he made that jaunty entry in the first of many Air-Sea-Rescue missions flown with 280 Squadron out of Detling, near Maidstone, Kent, England. The entries grew more terse. “Nothing”, “Empty”, “Nil”.

I have no idea how he felt at the time, about all these “nil” rescues, because he never talked about them. When I read his entries in his meticulously recorded pilot’s log, I feel hopeless.

Every year, on the day before the Remembrance Day holiday, I take Dad’s log book, his photos, and his medals into school. My students cluster around. They think it’s all pretty cool.

A friend of mine posted on facebook the other day, a photo of his grandfather taken at Pearl Harbour just before the Japanese attack. Some of us are here by the skin of our teeth, or our fathers’ teeth.

My ideas of my father’s service time were fuzzy, when I was growing up. I knew he was stationed in Britain, then in Ceylon. I knew he had a silk aviator’s scarf that was a gift from an English girl whose family he had helped. He had a butterfly collection from Ceylon. Mom, in reference to the butterflies, talked about “his boy” who collected them, and there was disdain in her voice, but when I asked about the boy, neither Mom nor Dad would answer.

A few years ago I searched for my dad online, and I found him. I had forgotten about his pilot’s log, but I had had the good sense to keep it, at least, and I dug it out of one of very few boxes I have left that represent my parents. There were dates of missions online. They matched Dad’s log. The record keeping is impressive.

My favourite part of Dad’s log book is the transit flight in June 1943 from England to join 160 Squadron (R.A.F.) in Ceylon. He accomplished it in eight legs, a total of forty-nine hours and forty-five minutes. That’s hard to imagine, at today’s speeds. He flew a Liberator (Americans would call it the B24) from England to Gibralter, then to Libya, then Cairo, then to Habbaniya, Iraq, then Karachi, India, then Madras, then to Colombo, Ceylon.

Three days after he arrived in Colombo, Dad reports a fighter affiliation in which his aircraft lost a wing tip. The following week, he was flying reconnaisance over Nicobar, an island in the Bay of Bengal that had been occupied by the Japanese since March, 1942. These guys did not get much reprieve.

Robert Quirk maintains the website at http://rquirk.com/ where I found my dad’s name. I emailed Robert, and sent him some photos which he then posted there. He in turn sent me some photos of Liberator “J” FL 926. Dad flew that plane six days before it “failed to return”. By the skin of my teeth, am I here.

My dad’s photos: http://rquirk.com/160files/mullins/mulphoto.html

E.J. Mullins is 2nd from right, back row.
It's worth clicking and enlarging, to admire their knees, if nothing else.

The History Channel is great tonight, but it’s all about Normandy. There are no books about the troops in Ceylon, nor movies. Sometimes I feel like the only one in the world who even knows about that part of the war, save for Robert Quirk and the few survivors of 160 Squadron. The old boys meet once a year, still, and one small dream of mine is to be able to attend. I guess I’d better do it soon.

Anyhow. I’ve written about this before, but each year it comes to the forefront of my mind. “Lest we forget” becomes more imperative as we lose the people that fought the “great” war. I remember thinking, when I was a teenager, that it was about time for another major war; there had been twenty years between the world wars, and now it was twenty years on. (There was the Viet Nam war, which figured hugely in our culture, but Canadians were not involved.) We are the first generation in several to know life without war. Our children—they have no clue how lucky we are.

I have a love-hate relationship with Remembrance Day. It makes me remember, and it makes me remember.



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Upgrading some old posts

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I'm couch-ridden at the moment, with a back in spasm. A good time to add some photos and links to the summer posts. Check out our first day in Paris, with photos previously unpublished.

Link:  Perfect First Day in Paris


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Travel, the Nitty-Gritty: Part II: Health

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Here it is, the long-promised (if not awaited— no, I would not assume anyone was on tender-hooks about this) piece on travel and health.


Travel Medical Insurance

If you are old or old-ish, which I am, you would probably be wise to have overseas health-care coverage. Check your extended health policy carefully. A few years ago, we paid for an add-on travel insurance policy with Blue Cross, only to discover later that we’d been covered all along, on our regular policy. You can’t count on BC Med (you BC residents—and I would imagine it’s the same in other provinces) to cover out-of-province expenses. Even with travel medical insurance, expect a hassle if you should need to use it; you may need to pay up front and collect from your insurer later. This said, I am no expert on these things; I just feel more comfortable travelling with insurance.

If you are young (and I refrain from quips about the definition of young—and dependence—here), you will probably travel without insurance and just call on Mommy and Daddy to bail you out if anything happens. (Oops, I think I just quipped.)

‘Nuff. Insurance is boring.



Digestion

Now we’re getting interesting….

Expect some, ur, digestive disturbances when you travel. Is it the sitting on a plane for the better part of a day that clogs you up, or the dehydrating atmosphere, or the pre-fab food they serve you? Who knows, but clogged you will likely be, for a day or two. Not a big deal, really. Not nearly so big a deal as when things go in the other direction.

Diarrhea! It hits suddenly, and it has no respect for your circumstances. And your circumstances are that you may not have easy access to toilets. Or the toilets you have access to, say, on a train, may be shared with other diarrhetic travellers. Need I say more?

Thank science for Immodium. It works. Quickly. One dose, for me, usually does the trick. I’m not talking about diarrhea caused by an infection such as giardia, which might not respond to a drug like Immodium, but for the every-day brand of traveller’s diarrhea brought on by—who knows?—a change in diet, different water, the dirty carrots at the juice vendor, Immodium is fantastic. Don’t leave home without it. It’s available at pharmacies in Europe, when your supply runs out. I carry a six-pouch with me ALWAYS, in my purse or day pack.



Feet, the Shoes

Walking is the name of the game when you’re travelling. You walk everywhere, if you want to see anything. There are buses, cabs, and subways in cities, but you’ll miss half the city if that’s how you get around. Outside of cities, the only way to explore is by walking. So plan to walk.

I discovered rocker soles a year ago, in Las Vegas, in the form of Skechers Shape-ups They were a new thing then, and I hadn’t seen them in Canada, but was interested in their claims that walking in them tones up the legs and posterior. I asked the salesperson what I could expect from them, and she told me I would get relief from lower back pain (which I’ve suffered from since my second pregnancy). I asked when, and she said right away. It was true! I tried a pair, and I had no pain. None! Instantly! I bought them, and have worn little else since. When I wear “regular” shoes, back pain; with these, none, no matter how long I’m on my feet. I don’t really buy the claim that they help you tone up, but I suppose since I can walk longer and faster on these things, the toning happens anyway.

For my travelling summer, I needed sandals with the same sole, and found them at a local specialist shoe store (Foot Solutions on Broadway near Macdonald, for anyone interested). Several companies are now making shoes with the rocker sole, so there is plenty of choice. The look is not great—clunky, with that fat sole—but that takes a distant second place to comfort, in my mind. One day in Paris, I decided to wear my daintier suede Tivas (still a “comfort shoe”), to look better with my dress, and I regretted the decision within half an hour. Not good, on a six-hour walking day.






Feet, the Skin

A side effect of hours of walking every day, for me, was the development of callouses on my feet. I’ve never really had a problem with callouses (though I know some people do), so I didn’t pay much attention. Several weeks into the trip, I noticed the ball of my right foot feeling a little tender, and found that a sizable callous had kind of folded over on itself. I sought out a pharmacy for something to shave down the callous. I could only find a pumice stone, which was better than nothing, and I began a regime of soaking and pumicing the callous. Once in Paris, however, a small fissure opened. Ouch! I soaked and softened it, and put on antibiotic cream and a bandaid and got serious about finding a callous-shaver, which I finally did. Because I caught it early, the fissure healed quickly. Two months later, however, I still have a crevice in the spot, and am probably vulnerable to a recurrence; essentially, I managed to ruin that part of my foot. I have added the shaver, which is a specialised razor-thingy with an actual razor blade in it, to my list of must-takes. And I will not ignore my feet any more.

Feet. The key to happy travelling. Huh.

Blogging and soaking in Paris

Weight Control and Fitness

Most women I know, myself included, gain weight when we travel. Our usual combination of tricks for weight control—keeping junk food out of the house, eating at home rather than out, sticking to simple, healthy food, eating to satisfy actual hunger—is not an option, and the food, oh the food, begs to be tried. Screams to be tried! You have to have Paris’s best ice cream! Several times! Baguettes, cheese, foie gras! Rosé wine for lunch! To travel is to eat.

Part of my problem, if I can call it that, is that because eating interrupts the activities of the day as much as being part of them, when John needs to eat, I eat too. If I didn’t, we’d have to stop again in an hour. This means I’m eating before I’m actually hungry, and eating more often than I need to.

Exercise is the other side of weight control, of course, and in that travelling is stellar. There is not a whole lot of sitting around on a trip. We could feel our fitness levels increasing on this trip; in the beginning, climbing the stairs to Ezra and Katharina’s apartment was strenuous, while several weeks later, we could trot up the escarpments to Cathar strongholds.

So. Stepping on the scales when I got home might have been traumatic, but . . . I’d gained about a pound (.6 kilo, Ezra). Wahooo! A pound is nothing; my weight has a 3-pound day-to-day variation anyhow. I lost that extra pound in a week. Whew.

I credit the walking, mainly. I also credit picnicking for at least one meal of the day, rather than eating in a restaurant. Also, I got quite tired of French food (!), and was tending to eat fewer “viandes” and more salads by the end. And remember the salad meals in Berlin! It all added up to a healthy trip without an appreciable weight gain.

But traveller beware: it’s easy to “let go”, and paying later is always painful, long after that fine Isle St Louis glace is forgotten.



When I was young, sometime back in the neolithic era, I didn’t think at all about health concerns, and certainly didn’t prepare for eventualities. I once spent a few days squatting over a hand-dug hole on a Mexican beach, after enjoying carrot juice in a local market. I never got sore feet. I couldn’t gain weight to save my life, I was so active in my regular life. Now that I’m old-ish (or old, depending on your perspective), I carry drugs and appliances to keep me going. I can live with that, and I can travel!


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Travel, the Nitty-Gritty: Part I: Packing

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note: all photos were taken as I unpacked



I think I pretty much have it down. I went to Europe for 5½ weeks with a carry-on wheeled suitcase, a small day pack, and a tiny purse. I would not have had to check my baggage, but opted to do it since there were stop-overs in three airports, both ways, and I didn’t want to be lugging it around when the airlines could be taking care of it.

A note to the skeptical: you can travel light, and in fact you must. You need to be able to walk with all your baggage between hotels, train stations, car rentals, airports. You need to be able to carry your own luggage upstairs for as many as six storeys. If you can’t, you might find yourself unpacking on the ground floor and carrying your stuff upstairs in sections, six storeys per trip. Elevators are scarce, unless, of course, you pay a few limbs for your hotel rooms. You also need to be able to get your bags on and off trains, in one go, in a narrow space with several high steps, a crowd at your back, and three minutes till the train leaves. You need to be able to negotiate the ups and downs of city subways. Next time, I’d like to go lighter still, if I can figure out a way.



The bags, fully loaded (the cup is placed for scale):





Main Bag


Less than half of my main bag is taken up by clothes. I’ve come ro realize that the variety I feel I need at home is unnecessary while travelling, since no one sees me more than once, generally. My credo is “one to wear, one to wash”—therefore, two pants, two teeshirts, etc. A week’s worth of underwear so as not to be hand-washing too often. Beyong the basics, it’s hard to plan. We arrived in Berlin in a heatwave (36° C.), and all I wanted to wear was little cotton dresses, so I bought a couple of little cotton dresses. I bought a couple more in the south of France. I couldn’t have predicted that, and it easily could have been sweaters that I needed. As it was, I used everything I packed (at least several times) except a pair of yoga pants I took for cool evenings at “home”.

Winter clothes take up more room, of course, but an option would be to wear the bulkier items, rather than pack them.

What takes up the rest of the space in my baggage confounds even me: books, cosmetics, electronics. It all seems ridiculous, and much of it didn’t even exist when I was first travelling.

The main trick to packing well: compartments. I have packing cubes, three of which are designed to fit snugly in my carry-on if I were to use them all for clothes, which I don’t. I roll my clothes into two rolls and fit them into the largest packing cube (and wrinkles are minimal!). One of the two smaller cubes I use for underwear, sleepwear, scarves, and the other I use for miscellaneous necessities like a laundry line, blow dryer, mini umbrella, etc. Outside the packing cubes I have a well-designed, multi-pocketed toiletries bag (mine is from Rick Steves), books (travel guides and pleasure-reading), and two pairs of sandals. (Yes, two. One pair has “rocker” soles, in which I can walk for hours without lower back pain, and another in which I cannot, but which look better with a dress.)


The main bag, opened:




The clothes cube, plus sandals:




The clothes, unrolled:





Small cube, unloaded (the other small cube is just underwear, sleep wear, and a mesh laundry bag):





Secondary bag (which acts as a day pack once away):

My little day pack holds more books, the laptop, a really tiny down-filled travel pillow (which I use for between my knees at night, the only way I can sleep comfortably), a hoodie, and an emergency cosmetic kit in case my luggage gets held up—which happened a few years ago, resulting in my having to buy hair products I didn’t really want, a toothbrush I didn’t really want, etc., to tide me over. The little pack also holds cameras and other electronics I either can’t fit in the big bag or don’t want to entrust to baggage handlers. Security has a field day with my small bag—at one airport I forgot to empty out all the electronics. Oh boy.


The secondary bag, exploded (the laptop isn't shown, but it fits):





Again, compartments. I have a nylon bag for all my electronics cords, and within that, ziplocks labelled for each type: camera cords, battery-charging cords, computer cords, GPS and cord, and of course a couple of adapter plugs. I didn’t, for once, end up with a tangled mess to sort several times a day. (Note: you probably won’t need a voltage converter, as most (all?) electronics are made to work with a range of voltage. Check your devices’ labels.)


Cords!:





Purse

This is the first time I've actually carried a little shoulder bag, and it worked out well, more convenient (and slightly more elegant?) than always having a backpack. I still carry my essential documents and larger sums of money in a money belt.


The contents of purse and money belt, as carried in Paris:






Cosmetics

My skin turns into an angry adolescent if I don’t take particular care of it, so I do take a few products—no soap-and-water for this face. I once bought an “airline kit” of small jars and bottles, and I use those exclusively for my lotions and potions. To figure out how much to take of, say, hair conditioner, I literally squirted a day-sized blob into a bottle, 38 times for 38 days. The system worked; I neither ran out nor had more than a few days’ worth left over of anything. I’ll no longer need to count, as I now know the bottle size to take for a trip of a month or so, and the bottles are so small, it wouldn’t be worth going smaller still for shorter trips.


The toiletries bag, exploded:




I use solid shampoo, available at Lush, which is wonderful—high lather and glorious scent—a single disk of which lasts at least a month for two of us. For the rest, I divided my little bottles into 3 small ziplocks (have I said anything about compartments?), one for day, one for night, one for make-up (which I hardly used). The ziplocks held only a few items each, and just made it easier to manage the little bottles.

I have always found it a nuisance, when moving from place to place, to set out shower supplies and put them away on a daily basis, so I developed a system that works like a charm. I have a small wire-mesh basket (I’ve tried plastic, but water sits in the bottom. This one I got at London drugs—I think it’s meant for organizing kitchen drawers.) containing the following: solid shampoo (on a tiny soap-saver, because the shampoo dissolves quickly if it stands in water), conditioner, comb, soap, razor, face-wash (two kinds, for my fussy skin). I wrap the whole works in a quick-dry towel (made for wrapping wet hair, I think) and pack it as-is. Upon arrival, I unwrap it, stick the whole basket in the shower, and I’m ready to go. Packing up is just as easy. The towel is good for emergencies, too, in places where towels are not exactly abundant.



A close-up of the contents of the cosmetic bag and the mesh basket:





Going lighter still

I think the iPad (or similar device) might be the new answer to packing light. Theoretically, it will replace books, guidebooks, maps, laptop, and phone. (I don’t take a phone travelling, but some people do.) Unfortunately, it became available just a couple of weeks before I left on this trip, and when I checked it out, some books I wanted (Lonely Planet, Rick Steves) were not available for the device. Next time, I hope.

I’m sure I have bored many a reader (all three of you!) with this entry, but it’s here for my own reference, really. Packing isn’t hard, but the planning of what and how to pack is. This will serve to remind me, and, with luck, may be helpful to others.



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