It suits me.
There is an address. I can direct my readers to the blog, or simply give them the link. No sign-in is necessary. No persistent friend requests. Sure the odd stranger might stumble upon it, he is welcome to browse or burrow. Blogs allow for extended prose. There are also accents and wallpapers, a little like scrapbooking.
So no more little spiral notebooks where I cobbled together my thoughts.
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| Yes, this IS my travel journal from 1984! |
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| Nifty cover for a travel diary, eh? |
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| My notebook |
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| Another travel diary because one would not have been enough! |
Nor mini diaries where I listed the captions of photos taken on my Konica automatic camera. Good-bye travel diaries bought off the shelf and packed with mundane details of purchases and prices of bus and train tickets.
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| This was when the English pound was about three Singapore dollars! |
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| So much to see, do and so many people to say "hello" to! |
No more theatre ticket stubs and chopstick sleeves for the plastic folder that held my memories. Now these private thoughts have taken on a public face. Friends and relatives can share in our travels and experiences. They don't have to listen to our travel tales or look at our photo albums. They get a slice of life as it was lived from the blog.
The blog supports texts, pictures and videos...in that order. Ultimately, I prefer the word over picture and moving picture. That would be the greatest draw.
Armed with a Macbook, an internet connection and hundreds of photos taken on the iPhone 5S (64GB!), the blog would be the canvas on which I could share our story.
Wikipedia is indispensable. From sash windows to croquet to the Masterworks Festival, I had the facts at my fingertips. Desktop publishing is quite a wonderland. I felt like Alice, the Madhatter and the Cheshire Cat rolled into one. If the memory failed or the detail escaped me, google answered my query.
Three months have passed since the trip and I need to get to the keyboard and write...again...before the stories disappear into the recesses of my memory.
Alas, the crafting takes time.
In England, jetlag, limited connectivity and figuring my way around my hardware and software was the order of the day. In Toronto, the stretches of morning, afternoon and evening meant I could sift through the hundreds (and later thousands) of photos, select and categorise them according to day or place, decide on my entry's theme or slant, stop for a game or two of chess, compose and then add photos. On the two week road trip eastward to Saint. John, New Brunswick, south to Niagara Falls and then westward back to Toronto meant limited connectivity, sightseeing, visiting, watching mindless television programming, and having long chats meant that the blog stood still. Toronto turned out to be my publishing centre.
Now, I will attempt to publish from Singapore...
You are also welcome to my two other blogs my first blog meant for my students in 2007
or biographies of my KRSS Class of 2008
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