Following my needlessly thorough budgeting blog, I thought I'd offer a further tedious and intrusive glimpse into my life with an exhaustive list of everything I'm currently carrying in the two bags I travel the world with and the pockets of the shorts I'm wearing right now.
People have asked me a couple of times about what I carry when I'm travelling, or seem bewildered by the compact size of my luggage. But I still think I have too many socks. So here's my dubious advice about packing for the long haul, which you can feel free to ignore (I am best though).
Inventory
Laptop bag
Main compartment
Dell Inspiron Mini Laptop (alright, smart-arse, so I'm using it at the moment)
Laptop charger/plug
Travel adaptor
Samsung ES65 digital camera
Camera cable
Water-tight (supposedly) camera case
Care MP3 player (ah yes, that well known brand)
MP3 player cable
Headphones
Inflatable travel pillow
Specsavers glasses case: contains spare glasses and USB sticks x5 (containing stuff to watch, listen to and document backups)
Book: 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
Book: Gods of the Earth by Ho Thean Fook (I know - so close to 'Ho Li Fook,' yet so far)
Book: The Sunday Times Cryptic Crosswords Book 14 (mostly completed, but not by me. I've only got five so far, and to be honest I'm not confident about 19 down)
Smaller compartment
7-Eleven notebook (half-full of notes, crudely scrawled maps and ramblings)
Bag of several probably-important documents
Blue pen
Spare headphones
Front compartment
Passport (please don't steal it)
Bank card (when it's not required in my wallet)
Specsavers glasses case: contains sunglasses
Glasses cloth
Small padlock + keys
Clothes bag
Note: Does not include clothes I'm currently wearing
(T-shirt, shorts, boxers, sandals, glasses, merkin)
Main compartment
T-shirts x9
Shorts x3 pairs
Boxers x4 pairs
Socks x8 pairs (I know, too many - but they don't take up much space)
Jeans x2 pairs
Shirts x2
Coat x1
Trainers x1 pair
Front compartment
Emergency toilet roll
Philips HQ130 electric razor
AA batteries x2
Scissors
Soap
Toothbrush
Toothpaste
Condom x1 (how did that get in there?)
Plaster x1
Wallet
I don't know what those words mean. I bought this mostly out of pity from a struggling art student in Kaohsiung. Still, I like the colour
RM136.15
Room key (#51)
Student card (fake)
Condoms x2 (someone has unrealistic expectations!)
Passport photocopy
Paper for writing stuff on x2
Small pen to write stuff with
You need very little
John Crichton got by okay without his worldly possessions. Though he did get to have colourful Muppet alien sex sometimes, which probably eased the boredom
These two bags not only account for everything I'm travelling with, but also represent everything of consequence that I own in the world. Don't look impressed, I had to sell most of what I owned for food when I graduated into unemployment.
But when no money and a maxed overdraft meant I had to sell all the pointless DVDs, books and other items I'd accumulated, I learned that you need very little. Especially as one laptop filled with an ever-changing selection of illegal downloads can take care of pretty much all my entertainment needs.
I don't like the burden of things tying me down to physical locations, and favour ruthless efficiency over mawkish sentimentality every time. I'm a bit like the Borg in that respect. And in a few others.
I do keep a few annoyingly rare and collectable objects at my family's home in England (mostly Lee and Herring stuff), along with books I wrote as a child that for some reason aren't available from all good bookshops (yet). These will doubtless just take up valuable loft space until we all die. I don't need them or really care about them, it just seemed a shame to bin them, give them away or sell them with the rest of the crap.
What I'm saying is, if a tragic blaze engulfed my family's home and destroyed my few remaining possessions, I wouldn't be sad. Well, apart from the deaths of my few remaining family members and the burden of having to fly back for their funerals, obviously. The selfish, burning bastards.
