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

Working Trips....... Travelling on vacations and travelling for work are two totally different things, at least for me.  When on vacations, my mood was always relaxed and I was always eager for new adventures, to see new things and so on and so forth. Travelling for work is a different ball game altogether. There were always the "mission" tasks to take care of. The constant worries that the upcoming business meetings may not result in the achievement of the set KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and whatnot. I personally do not enjoy work trips compared to my vacation trips. But, a trip is still a trip after all. And when travelling to a new city for the first time, there will always be the new experiences, the new sights, new people to meet and new culture to experience. Thus, I always try to make the most of my business trips. Because I often travel with my clients, it is thus not polite to extend my business trips to enjoy an extra couple of days of persona...

Packing Travel Essentials....... What are travel essentials? Well, this typically differs from person to person. It also differs depending on the type of trips one is embarking on.  The travel essentials which I usually pack for my trips are light-weight items that add conveniences during my stays abroad. Whether its for a beach vacation, a short country-side or nature park trek, sight-seeing tours, shopping trips or a self-drive holiday, the list provides me with the bare necessities to enhance my travel experiences. While most of the items in the list can be easily purchased during my travels, it is usually more convenient and economical to pack and bring them along then to buy them on arrival at a new city. For example, they may not be sold in singular or small quantities or you may not be able to find the right size even if you can find the same items in the shops. Here is my top packing list: 1. Plastic Cutleries -  I usually pack a set of pl...

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...

I missed writing and publishing my regular Travel Bits series for the month of May 2016 by exactly one week. But rather than miss it completely, I decided it is better to be late than never. And so, I went about penning and publishing this blog post on a Sunday afternoon to make up for it. :-) The last month had been an extremely busy one for me on the work front. However, just as I had an unexpected trip in April 2016 to Thiruvananthapuram (a.k.a. Trivandrum), I had another unexpected trip in May 2016. This was a last minute and hastily arranged work trip to Orlando in Florida of the United States to attend an industry conference. Dome of the Orlando International Airport (IATA: MCO, ICAO: KMCO) as viewed from within the airport's passengers sitting area near the Duty Free shops, Orlando, Florida, United States (2016) As usual with all my overseas trips regardless of whether these are for work or personal vacations, there are tons and tons of work to clear before, d...