Counting down
It’s now 3 weeks until our departure date and we’re really counting down the days now. Brodie got his voluntary redundancy and finished up work last Friday. I spent a lot of the weekend studying in an effort to get a certification exam out of the way before we leave. That was successfully completed yesterday and soon it’ll be time to focus solely on getting everything ready for the trip.
It turns out that there are lot of categories of backpacker. From what I’ve read online, we are most definitely what they call ‘flashpackers’. As a side effect of all the gadgets, it’s taking quite some time to get together all the media I want to bring with me. What are we bringing to ensure we travel in style (or at least with plenty to entertain us?)
The items I’ll be cramming into my carry-on luggage are:
Item 1 – Netbook. I have a Toshiba NB200 which is steadily getting loaded up with everything I might possibly want while away from home.
Item 2 – A second hand PSP. No, not for the games. For watching tv and movies. Anything to help pass the agony of a long haul flight. I’ve been gathering together tv series I haven’t got around to watching yet (or in the case of Lost, I want to rewatch before seeing season 5 just before the final season starts). I use WinAVI MP4 to take the massive avi files and cut them down to more manageable mp4 files that will still display reasonably well on the PSP or netbook.
Item 3 – My trusty Sony ERreader. I have a stack of books I want to read. I read quite fast so the ereader is a necessity if I want to be able to haul around enough reading material to last 3 months.
Item 4 – What bag would be complete these days without some kind of mp3 player? Mine is an itouch I picked up in Japan last year. It easily holds as much music as I’ll need. As it happens I also have a shuffle for exercise only. This will also hold some audio yoga classes just in case I’m inspired to do a lot of exercising while we’re away.
Item 5 – A camera, obviously. My Fujifilm E900 is still going strong, practically taking some photos for me. It’ll be getting a lot of use over the next few months.