i'm fortunate

I know I am... because how many people in Singapore have had the chance to travel like I had where I made my first overseas trip at 3 years old, took my first flight at 4 and have been travelling practically every year since.

Those who know me, will know why I have this opportunity to travel so often.. and its not because my family is extremely well off.

Thought about blogging this when I was going through my old photos and thought I should do up a list of my travels since 1983, so that I will never forget where I have left my footprints, even 20 years from now. And here it is.... take a deep breath! =)

1983 Penang
1984 Hawaii
1985 Los Angeles
1986 Perth
1987 South Korea / Taipei
1990 Queensland
1991 Los Angeles / Las Vegas
1992 New Zealand
1993 Switzerland
1994 Jakarta / Yogjakarta
1995 London / New York / Florida / Ontario, Canada
1997 Los Angeles / Las Vegas
1998 Egypt
1999 Melbourne
2000 Spain / Hong Kong
2001 Bangkok / Taipei
2002 Shanghai / Hangzhou / Suzhou
2003 Bangkok / Taipei
2004 Melbourne / Bangkok
2005 Taipei / JB / KL
2006 Hong Kong
Erm.. yup, quite a number of repeated locations.. and I wished why we didn't choose other places to go when we had the opportunity to (especially LA where I had an overkill of disneyland far too many times =P)

We used to take lots of photos, bring back lots of flyers and brochures, postcards, stickers and what-nots... just so that we could do up our photo album. It was almost like a tradition that we had, so as to chronicle our travels. It was done by my dad when I was younger.. and I simply helped to cut out words and pictures for him to decorate the album. But over time, I took over (also because I thought I did a better job than him ahhaha).

After each holiday, we'll return, rush to develop our photos. I remember that I would always be excited about collecting them so that I could start working on the photo album. Armed with a pair of scissors, a little screwdriver (to pick out photos that have been pasted crooked or incorrectly), a thick empty album, the stack of brochures/postcards, and a pleasant memory... I would sit for hours just trying to sort out photos and do a sort of pictorial guide to whoever would view the album in future. The result would always be satisfying.. and even days after doing the album, I would still be eager to flip back and look at the work I had done. It also became the best thing to show to relatives and friends who visited our home =). Come to my place and I'll be glad to show it to you.

We have more than 10 super thick albums already.. but somehow, the tradition stopped when we started using digital cameras instead. They say technology makes people lazy.. and this is probably the best example of it. Or probably, I got older and didn't feel as though creating memories in this manner was necessary any longer. The albums stopped multiplying, but my harddisk keeps growing. Its not the same though... no nice words of the locations and sites we visited, no interesting and relevant explanations of the things we saw.. and worse, no more exact dates of when we visited a place.

If I ever have a child, I think.. I would start this tradition once again. Because nothing beats taking out albums of childhood memories, happy or unhappy ones, travelling around the world with your family.. chronicled in colour, in detail and with effort to preserve the moments.

Not hard to guess where this is right? ;)