When it's time to go

What about a good share of resilience to start the sprint of preparation? No choice, when the clock does tic-tic, you need to move forward. And to accept that all will not go as planned. What a training!

First things first : passport. It's one thing to say that paying more will get you your passport one day before you take the plane. But if you have time, why not trying to save yourself from some stressful moments. Lots of occasions to be « last minute » are waiting around the corner anyway.

When I got my latest passport, everything seemed easy. Valid until 2015. Lots of empty pages... No! When you look at what you need to get some visas, you realize you often need one or two empty pages to be granted the right to visit a country.

Used the calculator. Fast! To find out, for example, that if all the custom officers were nice enough to use all the room available in a page to put their stamp, I should be okay. Probably! But there is always one who chooses to use a full empty page to put his stamp right in the middle.

So! No choice, needed a return trip to Montreal to make things easy. The form fully filled, ugly pictures of myself in my pocket, and the « old » passport... The « old » passport! Where is it? Disappeared? Sweating! Flash (McQueen)! Lost for a moment on the sidewalk downtown Montreal. Good start! As long as it doesn't happen downtown Tokyo...

While I was there, why not ask for a 48 pages passport, thicker of course, but at least it would keep me from trying to get a new one in the middle of Jordan or Cambodia. And there would be enough room in there to heal the blues of being back, if I need to. Skeptical, the passport agent, but everything seemed okay. Only need to wait now.

Next time : getting some vaccines. The only thing is that it is impossible to get an appointment between the doctor's voice mail that sends you back to the web site where the appointment form looks like it disappeared. Tic, tac!