Packing is a delicate balance.
Nov. 30th, 2007 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigo_rose99Livingdeb said recently that she used everything she packed and wished that she had packed more of certain things. In my early packing experiences, I tended to pack some things every trip that I did not actually use. And like Livingdeb, I wished I had brought more of... well, everything. These days it is a balance.
On one hand, I have the limited space of a single carry-on and a briefcase. No purse. Going out, if I try to check any luggage, there is an excellent chance that it will be lost. If I arrive with just my briefcase, I can teach the first day of class... but I will not have enough clean clothes to look professional. I will have (from painful experience) a single pair of clean socks and underwear.
On the other hand, there are the many things I want to bring. After the things I must bring (work clothes, a computer, cables, a coat), then I doing the balancing. I realize that men often have an unfair advantage here. Culturally, women are... Well, we are required to actually wear different outfits to work every day. Visibly different. Men can pick a single color and wear that color all over, every day. Black, for instance. And no one even thinks it odd. Heck, they could pack two shirts and two pairs of pants (in case they spill something) and simply have the hotel do laundry every other day! *jealousy, jealousy*
Anyway. Decisions to make...
Which is more necessary: travel clock / temp gauge or travel keyboard for my PDA? I went with the clock / temp gauge. It will wake me up in the morning, and keep me timely during class.
Which is more necessary: travel slippers or chocolate covered coffee beans? Clearly the coffee beans.
Which is more necessary: Another food bar, or a container of Airborne? Airborne. Though that food bar could have been lunch.
Which is more necessary: A plastic ziploc of epsum salts or a shirt to wear on the plane trip back? The shirt. I found a place to buy the salts there. Expensive, what with the Euro to dollar, but still.
Which is more necessary: A blowup u-shaped pillow for the plane trip or another paperback book? The pillow, obviously, but where did I put it?!? Stupid pillow goes on walkabout just when I need it...
I'm trying out a new set of earplugs / headphones this trip. Previously, they were always making me turn off the noise canceling on my headphones. "If it has a battery..." What if there was no noise canceling?! What if I could just put them in my ears and blessedly block out all of those other people?! I'm trying it out. I will let you know how the sanity thing goes.
On one hand, I have the limited space of a single carry-on and a briefcase. No purse. Going out, if I try to check any luggage, there is an excellent chance that it will be lost. If I arrive with just my briefcase, I can teach the first day of class... but I will not have enough clean clothes to look professional. I will have (from painful experience) a single pair of clean socks and underwear.
On the other hand, there are the many things I want to bring. After the things I must bring (work clothes, a computer, cables, a coat), then I doing the balancing. I realize that men often have an unfair advantage here. Culturally, women are... Well, we are required to actually wear different outfits to work every day. Visibly different. Men can pick a single color and wear that color all over, every day. Black, for instance. And no one even thinks it odd. Heck, they could pack two shirts and two pairs of pants (in case they spill something) and simply have the hotel do laundry every other day! *jealousy, jealousy*
Anyway. Decisions to make...
Which is more necessary: travel clock / temp gauge or travel keyboard for my PDA? I went with the clock / temp gauge. It will wake me up in the morning, and keep me timely during class.
Which is more necessary: travel slippers or chocolate covered coffee beans? Clearly the coffee beans.
Which is more necessary: Another food bar, or a container of Airborne? Airborne. Though that food bar could have been lunch.
Which is more necessary: A plastic ziploc of epsum salts or a shirt to wear on the plane trip back? The shirt. I found a place to buy the salts there. Expensive, what with the Euro to dollar, but still.
Which is more necessary: A blowup u-shaped pillow for the plane trip or another paperback book? The pillow, obviously, but where did I put it?!? Stupid pillow goes on walkabout just when I need it...
I'm trying out a new set of earplugs / headphones this trip. Previously, they were always making me turn off the noise canceling on my headphones. "If it has a battery..." What if there was no noise canceling?! What if I could just put them in my ears and blessedly block out all of those other people?! I'm trying it out. I will let you know how the sanity thing goes.
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no subject
Date: 2007-12-02 04:49 pm (UTC)what kind of earphones do you have? i love my etymotic er6i noise isolators... but i'm always curious what works for other people, too.
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Date: 2007-12-02 07:40 pm (UTC)My new headphones, trying out this trip are Shure e2c. No battery, and on this trip no one even asked me to take them out of my ears. I'm not sure how much they are better than the Sony ones... I guess I could do a side-by-side test (not that I'm willing to carry them both on a plane trip). However, I will say that I was impressed with the fact that when I plugged the Shure ones into my laptop, I actually had to turn the laptop sound DOWN. First time ever. And I was on a plane! That pretty much blew my mind. But I'm still trying to keep an open mind.