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Published: November 3rd 2010
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drinking practice
getting in some practice at The Elephant and Wheelbarrow So, less than 2 weeks left now.
We’re more than ready to go. Internet cancelled (incidentally, can I just mention that Exetel - our ISP - was very very good to deal with. Streets ahead of Telstra and the like), power cancelled, insurance cancelled, random bits of food in the freezer and cupboard eaten, last of the home brew given away or consumed. In fact, we’ve both pretty much left in our heads. The next couple of weeks are going to be tough.
We’ve now taken all of our stuff up to the block, so we’re sleeping on the floor on the swag in the loungeroom, watching old episodes of the West Wing. It’s like a sleepover. There was also some weed killing (groundsel bush) we had to deal with at the block, so we spent a bit of time sorting that out. Fun, lots of fun.
We’re now down to working out exactly what we’re going to pack for 10 months on the road. Among that stuff is a few gadgets. Does that make us flashpackers? Don’t know, don’t care. So this is a post about gear, and we’ll revisit in a few months to let you
Gabba
hard at work - team building (Sri Lanka won) know how the stuff is going.
Steripen - This is a gadget which purifies drinking water by disrupting the DNA of microbes with UV light. Does it work? Well, apparently. Won’t know for sure until we try drinking a bit of tap water. (BTW, $80 on eBay as opposed to $149 in the shops here in Brisbane). If we die, it didn’t work.
Why not just buy bottled water? We did a bit of research, and I did a spreadsheet. The cheapest average cost for bottled water worldwide (per litre) is in India, about 30c (AUD). The Steripen, factoring in batteries and replacing the lamp, works out to be about 8c a litre. Price wise, it’s a goer. And there’re the other considerations - environmental and socio-economic.
One thing that has always bothered me is the sale of bottled water. It is the shining example of the perverse outcomes that can result when you rely on unfettered market forces to satisfy basic human needs. Access to cheap, clean water is a basic human right, not an opportunity for profit. In developing countries bottled water fills a gap left by government failure to provide safe, reliable drinking water.
ute packed
The last of our stuff However, it also channels funds from the pockets of those who can least afford it straight to the coffers of global soft drink manufacturers. Along the way it chokes the joint with mountains of plastic. In addition, the availability of bottled water fosters mistrust in the quality of the tap water, when in many cases it is the exact same water, or even safer - many processing plants use masses of chlorine and other chemicals to treat the water.
As for the Steripen, fair enough for middle class Aussies who can afford the initial outlay, you might say, but there are many ways to treat water that are cheaper and easier than that. Bottled water is one of the biggest cons ever perpetrated - the $100 billion spent on bottled water each year is 7 times the amount invested in providing drinking water in developing regions.
Nokia 5800XM - About a year ago I was in the market for a new phone. I figured I might as well get one that had some sort of GPS in it and the ability to play tunes. I looked at the iPhone, but it was far too expensive, too big
focused on the way to the shed with stuff
I call this "hulk arm" (thanks to weird lens effects) and too restrictive with it’s ‘apps’ system. I could put a version of the Garmin software on the Nokia for nothing, and it has a better GPS chip than the iPhone. Also, it’s a lot smaller, the battery can be replaced, has expandable memory, and was a quarter of the price. Just after I bought it Nokia made all their maps available for free - every map they have worldwide - which was a massive stroke of luck. And I can put other free maps on it with the Garmin software. The camera’s not bad, either.
Why a GPS? - Really, you don’t need one, but there’s no denying it will be handy, and it was in the phone anyway. One line of argument goes that a GPS will cause you to miss out on the good stuff by taking you straight there. I completely disagree with that - the GPS gives you the confidence to take a random dirt road just to check out what’s up it, ignore the cries of “please turn around” from the woman in the machine, and then let her guide you out (maybe) when you get lost. And you don’t have to use
it. It’s a nice-to-have.
Sony Alpha 100 + Tamron 11-18mm lens - I’ve had this camera for a few years now, so it’s a bit old, but still a great camera. The lens is newer and cost more than the camera, but that’s the way it goes with these things. Those of you into photos will probably think I’m a little nuts taking only an ultra-wide angle lens with the DSLR, but I have found that, more often than not, when using a lens I have it at its widest. I have another two lenses - an 18-70mm and a 75-300mm - but I’ve decided not to take them. I’ve only ever really used the long zoom when at the Moto GP to take action shots, and I always used the standard lens at its widest anyway.
In any event, Klaire has a Samsung point and shoot which takes a decent shot too.
Acer Aspire One 532h - Being a spreadsheet nerd I did quite a bit of research on different netbook options before coming to the obvious conclusion - they’re basically all the same. So we bought the cheapest one we could find. I’ve been
The Dam
With live groundsel towards the back using it for a while at home and it works pretty well. It had some issues at first; running slow with Windows XP, and Skype continually crashed when using it, so I installed the Ubuntu Netbook remix. Works a treat now. Starts up in less than a minute, snappy performance. We still have Windows as an option, mainly so we can use Photoshop when we want to. We have an old version (CS2) but it does the job. We’re also taking a 500gb portable external drive that we’ve had for quite a while. It’s got a few series of the West Wing, a good new show called Treme (writers of the Wire, set in New Orleans just following Katrina), some random movies. We probably won’t have much time to watch them, but after seeing The Pacifier 3 times over, dubbed into Spanish, on buses in Chile we figured we’d take a back up. Sometime you just want to chill and watch the box, you know. We’ll delete them as we go to make room for photos.
Amazon Kindle - This is Klaire’s. It wasn’t bought for the trip, in fact, save for the Steripen, none of our gadgets
The Dam after
half dead groundsel (on the right). were. Anyway, it’s pretty good. Chock full of books now, and all of them free and weightless. Two week battery life, easy to read screen. The page turning button makes this excellent irritating noise when it is clicked beside you in bed, just to let you know she’s reading. Awesome.
That’s pretty much it for the gadgety-type stuff. Klaire’s also got her little mp3 player, there’s a couple those headlamps (mine was $2.95 on eBay - Bargiana!), a battery recharger.
Tip - most Nokia phones don’t charge through the USB port (yeah, WTF?) so you can’t get rid of your charger that easily. However, you can buy an aftermarket USB charger for them from Nokia for $50 odd. Or, given it’s basically a bit of wire, get a Chinese copy of the USB charger on eBay for $4 😊 Try it for as many gadgets as you can, then you only have to carry the computer adapter around - everything else can charge via the USB ports.
Anyway, back to packing, chao for now.
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Sarah
non-member comment
Yay!
I'm sad you're leaving, but am looking forward to reading your blog!! x