TANKS Travel Tales - a travelogue.......

Explore your neighbourhood...... Travel in your own backward In a time when travel beyond national borders are difficult to plan and execute, traveling in our own backyard through exploring our immediate neighbourhood seems to be the new norm. At the very least, we get to know our own neighbourhood better, contribute to the local economy and at the same time, still get to "travel". Linkway between different wings of the museum, National Gallery, Singapore (2016) Traveling refreshes our mind and break the boredom of everyday work life. Anything that is not part of our normal and daily routine thus qualify as a new experience to refresh our minds. Go for a stroll in that nearby neighbourhood park. Spend an hour or two during the weekends to hike in the small hills, forest or meadows near your home. And you will be surprised how refreshing that experience can be for both body and mind. Of course, safe distancing and social responsibilities still apply. View

Year-end Travel Rush....... We are again approaching the time of the year when the school holidays have begun and parents as well as those without kids are all in a rush to clear their annual vacation leave days before the end of the calendar year. For most folks, this annual end-of-year rush means planning for and going on an overseas holiday with family or friends at short notice. And while we all know about this year-end rush since the beginning of the year, our often hectic and busy lives often meant that we ended up in November and early December without having planned or booked anything with regards to that long desired year-end vacation break. Well, you are not alone. But as this time of the year arrives, the cost of air tickets and hotels are also rapidly advancing upwards, the basic law of supply and demand dictating the direction of the prices. And if you really do missed out on having that overseas holiday squeezed in because of budget or time constraints, t

Review of my travels in 2016... 2016 has been an extremely busy year for me. It also marks a year when many of my planned trips could not proceed as scheduled due to a hectic work schedule. However, there are also a great many unplanned trips which happened during the year. Trips which I have to cancel in 2016 include visits to Osaka (Japan), Barcelona (Spain), San Francisco (California, United States) and Auckland (New Zealand) as well as my annual personal retreat to Bali (Indonesia). Unforeseen projects that crop up along the way as the year progressed lead to these cancellations which I will eventually undertake at a more appropriate time in the foreseeable future. Trips which were not planned but happened in 2016 include visits to Thiruvananthapuram (India) to attend a friend's wedding and to Orlando (Florida, United States) to attend a software conference with my customers. The visit to Thiruvananthapuram and Orlando were my first ever visits to India and the Unite