1a. This December we are travelling to Amsterdam, Belgium, Rotterdam, and London.

Hence… #AmBeRLo.

I proposed it to Mae and she said, “ikaw bahala”.

I took that as a “pwede na” rating.

(Post Update: After our trip Mae never used the #AmBeRLo… I guess she really meant, ‘bahala ka sa trip mo, wag mo ako isama’.)

2a. In this trip the VISA applications were tricky because we needed two Visas: one for Schengen (Holland/Netherlands and Belgium) and another one for UK.

2b. The sequence of applications made it comlicated because you could only apply for the UK Visa 3 months before your trip and the processing time took 8 weeks on average.

Meanwhile, even if you could apply for the Schengen Visa 6 months before, it required that you already had a Visa to the country you were exiting to after Schengen.

Basically we had just enough time to process everything. There was only 1 week room for any delay which was nervewracking.

This was the first time Brexit had a direct impact in my life.

2b. Mae confessed that she couldnt plan the itinerary as much because we still didnt have our Visas. As a result she spent many nights just browsing IG on all the places to eat. Thats why our final itinerary is 50% things to do or see, and 50% places to eat.

3. My and Mae’s UK Visa arrived early at the 5 week mark which was a welcome surprise. We were expecting the kids Visas to come soon.

By the 7th Week Julians Visa arrived. This made us know inquire to the status of Mika’s Visa.

Turns out there was a misprint in her Visa (fault of immigration) and there would be another week delay.

3b. Mae shared that her coworkers in the UK often greeted you with “You okay?”. It didnt mean anything seemed wrong, but it was just their version of ‘Kamusta’?

So while we were planning what to do with the delay, I said, “UK? Not u-kay”

3c. Mika was excited for the trip and she already understood that the Visa was our permission to go visit that country.

When she learned her Visa was not there yet she also started asking, “Why didnt they give my Visa yet?”

I was so tempted to say things like:

“Because you don’t clean up your room” or “Because they found out you make a lot of mess while eating”.

4a. Speaking of food, when I’m outside with Mika or Baby Ju and they eat messy snacks, I often use my hands to feed them.

Then if the sauce goes to my hand, whats the most convenient way of cleaning it? By licking it of course!

Then I pinch another bite using the same finger to feed them again.

We are all family anyway.

4b. On a weird tangent our printer of 7 years is already semi-automatic. You need to push the paper into it one by one so it can “grab” the paper to print.

So whats the fastest way to get just one piece of paper from a stack of it? By mostening your finger of course!

And whats the most convenient and accessible moistening tool we all have? Our tongues of course.

4c. Our Schengen and UK Visas turned out to be around 200+ pages.

It was all printed through our semi-automatic printer.

Every page was all printed by yours truly using the moist finger method.

We are applying as a family anyway.

5. In the end, we got everything on time.

The day before our flight Mae and I decided to eat out (coincidentally) in a place called “Holland” Village.

Before we have non-stop bread and cheeses, we wanted to eat an Asian meal. We ordered 2 sets of Nasi Lemak and to shared a bowl of Laksa.

We used separate cutleries in case anyone is wondering.