even vaguely to do with your health and well-being, and stash those spares in a place well-removed from your primary supply.
.....Thus, for example, I always bring along a full extra supply of the various medications my wife and I need, and yup, I give my wife the spare supply of pills (which, of course, unlike me, she has never lost or spilled), and I even bring an extra battery for my toothbrush, and an extra set of eyeglasses, which I once learned in a very hard lesson, may be indispensable.
.....You see, I once landed in Paris, totally exhausted after a sleepless overnight flight during which my restless 10-year-old son had spilled red wine on my white shirt, and broken my glasses, only to discover that our luggage had gone missing; and let me tell you, it’s not a task that I will ever want to relive - smelling of booze with my eyeglasses held together by white tape, trying to convince a completely unsympathetic Air Canada representative that I really am a doctor who needs his spare shirt ASAP: in fact, I cut my losses and left her before she got a chance to call airport security.
.....And never forget to bring along a good first-aid kit no matter where you go: the location in which my kit came in handiest was London, England, because after taking one look around the ER I managed to get to after suffering a gash on my walk (don't ask), I decided i could deal with my problem much better on my own (and I have the scar to confirm that judgment).
.....Finally, this observation: most of the time, we go to far-off places “on vacation”, that is, in large part, to relax, but we bring along our work, our laptops, our .....Blackberries (yup, ashamedly I admit I brought all three to laid-back Bali), but it’s really important to tell yourself ahead of time – and to keep repeating it regularly – that the reason you are in that foreign land is to get way from all that.
.....So the final piece of advice: leave the Blackberry and laptop at home.
.....After all, you can always do as I do and simply borrow your wife’s.
Dr. Art Hister can be heard on CKNW and other Corus Radio Network stations on House Calls on Saturdays at 10 AM, as well as seen on Global TV news on Saturday mornings at 9:20. |
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