Travel Bits: February 2017

Publishing and posting online while travelling; the art of keeping in-touch

I am late on this article for my regular Travel Bits series by almost 3 weeks! Reason being I was travelling for business from mid-Feb and only returned home yesterday. The hectic work schedules during the trip as well as the long flight times and exhausting layovers at airports while on transit simply sap most of whatever energy that was left in me.

Thus, despite promises to myself to be regular in publishing my articles while being away, I somehow didn't manage to adhere to that self-imposed rule. ;-)

Instead, what I usually do is just to post a couple of pictures of the interesting or inspiring encounters I had while travelling. These "moments' were captured in time and space by my trusty phone companion and are one of the little ways to stay in touch with my readers whenever I am on the road. Usually, these "moments" photos are accompanied by some short write-ups on how and when the photos were taken, their significance to me or my random thoughts and feelings at the time of the encounters. Besides this blog, these photos were also published on my social media accounts including Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook. The short write-ups will more often than not, be absent on the corresponding social media posts due to general content restrictions. For example, Twitter allows only a fixed number of characters per tweet. So, for my posts on Twitter, I usually dispense with the write-ups, posting instead just the photo and the URL link to the same post on my blog.

Why do I usually abstain from regular articles when I travel? The main reason is laziness! ;-P The second reason is inspiration. I do not believe in writing for the sake of writing. I believe in writing when I feel the inner inspiration to pen my experiences, my thoughts and my interpretations of events I encounter or places I visit. This explains my usual lack of full length articles whenever I travel. 

However, I still believe in keeping touch with my readers during my travels and I will always make efforts to post interesting experiences that come my way while on the road. Again, these posts are not for the simple sake of posting but are intended to share with my readers my joys, awes, wonders, disgusts and whatever thoughts and feelings that I encounter; good or bad. In short, I invite my readers to live that travel moment with me!

I hope all of you enjoy reading the articles and photographs I have been publishing. Any comments for improvements are certainly welcome. Just drop your comments in this blog and I promise to keep in  touch with you on your views and recommendations.

My upcoming trip to Japan from end-March to mid-April is partly a vacation. Hopefully, my laziness will take a back seat and I will shake off the procrastination and be able to share more photo moments on this blog as well as on my social media accounts. My visit to Japan will coincide with the annual Cherry Blossom season. Stay tune for photos of sakura (cherry blossoms) as all of us head into the month of March and the season of Spring.

But before my Japan trip and the sakura photographs, here are a few of the many pictures I took while on my recent business trips to Germany and Israel.

The view from the balcony of my hotel room in Tel Aviv. Old Jaffa Town is clearly viewable in this photo towards the top half of the picture. Tel Aviv, Israel (2017)

A sumptuous but regular spread during breakfast every morning kept me ready for the work to come with each working day of the week. Dan Panorama Hotel, Tel Aviv, Israel (2017)

A view of Frankfurt Airport in the early morning before 6am as my Lufthansa flight from Singapore touched down on a very cold morning in Frankfurt on 18 February 2017. Frankfurt International Airport, Frankfurt, Germany (2017)