Five Things I Never Travel Without

In the first post, "Five Things I Wouldn't Be Without", I covered the five items you'll never find me separated from. Now, as promised, the five items I always have with me when I travel abroad.

I'm making the distinction here about travelling abroad, rather than just an overnighter to another town, because for a Brit the difference is pretty important. For us, travel to another country usually involves travelling light. Unless we're taking a car ferry or the EuroTunnel, we can't just throw half the house in the boot (or trunk, if you're American) and drive off. We're going by plane, train or boat, and either way we're going to be carrying our life in bags with us.

I'm a huge fan of one-bag travelling. A number of years ago, I stumbled across a wonderful site: onebag.com. [Apologies to anyone who was misdirected when I mistyped it as one-bag.com in a previous revision!] It's not a commercial site, but it's all about travelling anywhere by plane, with just a carry-on bag. Now, I'm also a big fan of Virgin Atlantic - but not their truly dumb 6kg carry-on maximum weight. That necessitates a few special items...

1. My CabinMax convertible backpack

The CabinMax range is excellent, lightweight cabin luggage, and my travel companion for several years now has been my Flight Approved Backpack. Its 44L capacity is as much as you're permitted on most carriers, but it weighs only 880g, or 1.95 lbs, which leaves you over 5kgs for contents even on stingy old Virgin Atlantic. The backpack shoulder straps have been sturdy enough to survive everything I've done to them, and I've been pretty brutal to them so far. It's inexpensive, strong, feather-light and comfortable, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

2. My AyeGear vest

I bought an AyeGear Vest last year, and it's been a wonder! I can fit my 13" Ultrabook in one inside pocket, several phones and gadgets in others, all sorts of odds, ends, batteries and cables all over the place, and thread a pair of mobile phone earpieces through the convenient loops provided...and nothing shows! Which is good, when I'm carrying several kilos extra on my body... Again, it's comfortable, versatile, doesn't look too shabby, and is wearable luggage. I could conceivably even pack a lightweight change of clothes in the big back pocket, and travel with nothing but what I'm wearing.

3. Noise-cancelling headphones

The constant rumble of long-distance air flight is a stressor, but not one that travellers recognise; well, not as much as the screaming kid two rows back, or the salesman soomeone poured into the next seat along, suffering from advanced logorrhoea. Terminal logorrhoea, if he doesn't shut up soon... Airline headsets are, let's face it, rubbish. They manage to combine a total lack of noise barrier with all the fidelity of a 1950s crystal radio earpiece. There's only one solution to the passenger peace problem, and that's active noise-cancelling headphones, preferably the over-ear type. Just remember to carry spare batteries. Due to an unfortunate tendency to chew through the cable when I'm concentrating, I can't recommend any one make. At least, until someone brings out a model with munch-proof wires...

4. Earplugs

As good as noise-cancelling headphones are, they aren't comfortable to sleep with...particularly once you're in your hotel room, and the next-door neighbours' come-all-ye keg party has moved on to the all-in orgy stage, with a full percussion section. You need peace. You need quiet. Actually, you need a Glock 17, but inexplicably the hotel doesn't list one on the room service menu. Apparently they're bad for business. Earplugs are the answer, and you need good ones. I love Flents Quiet Time plugs, and get a fresh supply whenever I'm in the States. I notice they've brought out a Super Sleep model that's shorter, so less likely to be knocked out in your sleep, and I may well pick up a whole load next time around.

5. Ziploc bags

No, really! I store power cords with phones, give data cables their own bags, use large ziplocs to store used undies, keep part-finished bags of Doritos fresh, put each currency in a separate ziploc - the uses are endless, and the bags are weightless...well, nearly enough. You can even put your nice Google Nexus tablet in a ziploc (two, nested, if you're feeling paranoid) and read Kindle books in the bathtub! Just make sure that you use the type that seal end-to-end if you want to do that: the ones with a "zip runner" aren't always waterproof enough. I travel with one roll of smallish bags, and one of really large ones. One word of warning: ziploc bags are slippery, so be careful when you open your luggage, or half its contents will slither around your feet!

Five Things I Wouldn't Be Without

This article on LinkedIn set me to thinking: which five items would I not travel without?

It's a great question. After a while, I realised my answer really depends on what's being asked. Things I'm never without, or articles I always carry when I travel away from home? So I'll answer both. In this article: which five things am I never without? (In the next: which five items I never travel without.)

1. My Android smartphone

OK, I admit it, I'm a geek. Well, you knew that from the title of the blog, so it's no surprise, right? But I'm a real tech geek too; always have been. So not only do I carry a smartphone (currently an HTC Desire Z, because I never want to be without a proper keyboard), but it's an Android phone - of course! - and I write new apps for it when I've a spare moment.

The thing is, it's the hub of my business life. The calendar syncs with Google (using a Gmail email address no-one knows but me), so that I can see my calendar whether I'm at a PC, on a tablet (my Google Nexus 7 is wonderful!), or just have my phone. I use Catch Notes to store my thoughts, information I need to capture, and other sundry bits and pieces that run my life. It's my first port of call for email - it has no problems juggling seven mailboxes! - and if I need to relax, the Kindle app's ready and waiting for me. I might switch to a different handset, but there'll always be an Android in my pocket.

2. My memory stick

Not just any memory stick, either: a 64GB USB3 stick. I don't carry stuff that's business-critical (at least not unencrypted), but it has my music collection, a bunch of PC and Linux software I use regularly, and a whole load of other data I need to hand. The cloud's all very well - and Adeptium Consulting, my consultancy is proudly an Amazon Web Services partner - but it takes forever to download tens of gigabytes, ten forevers to upload that much, and it's clearly not feasible to do that on a mobile phone connection, or someone's home broadband with a usage limit. The internet infrastructure simply hasn't caught up with Big Data volumes, or even Moderately-Sized Data volumes, so for the time being, sneakernet (these days with a USB stick rather than a floppy disk) still reigns. I'm thinking of getting an encrypted stick, possibly the iStorage DataShur, but I'd like it to be USB3 capable.

3. My glasses tool

About seven years ago, I came to the painful realisation that I needed reading glasses. I now have more pairs than I can count, yet never seem to have a pair to hand. So I suppose that one of my items ought to be my prescription glasses - let's face it, I'd be stumped without them - but that's a bit mundane and obvious. Also, they're now so much part of me now that forgetting them would be like leaving an arm behind.

However, there's one item that's pretty much unavoidable, once you're carrying glasses, and that's a glasses tool. I like rimless specs - I'm not all that vain, but it's one of my indulgences - and they always seem to need tightening up. So on my keyring there's my glasses tool. The centre part of the body unscrews to show a tiny cross-head screwdriver at one end, an equally diddy flat-blade at the other, and there's a nut spinner at the far end of the tool. I've been surprised how many other things I've fixed with it, too...

4. A pen

As you'll have gathered by now, I write. As a left-handed writer, I prefer to use a keyboard, because writer's cramp - pushing a pen, not pulling - is a swine, and even I can't read my writing a month later, unless I've written in B L O C K C A P S. However, I never quite got out of the habit of making sure I've always got at least one pen with me, and preferably several. If nothing else, it means I can do the Sudoku puzzles in the Metro and Evening Standard papers when I travel through London!

5. My pocket meds pack

Unfortunately, I'm a migraine sufferer. For anyone who doesn't know: migraine is not a headache. Headache is just one of many migraine symptoms, and sometimes not the worst. But I'm a businessman and a techie, and I need a working head for both of these. So I carry a little blue pocket meds pack. Inside it you'll find a couple of doses of rizatriptan - a medication that can abort a migraine if taken quickly enough, or considerably reduce its severity if not so early - ibuprofen, and paracetamol (acetaminophen, for USAns) or co-codamol (paracetamol + codeine).

Other migraine sufferers might be interested to know about some preventative therapy I'm using these days: Berocca (or its Tesco equivalent), magnesium, zinc, co-enzyme Q10 and large amounts (100-400mg daily) of riboflavin, also known as vitamin B2. The whole lot together seem to boost the efficiency of neural cell mitochondria, and this can help a lot of sufferers of classic-type migraine. The riboflavin dose may seem excessive, but it's a recommendation from UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the body that advises the UK Government on medicines and therapies.

In the next episode...

...Five Things I Never Travel Without!

Why Gov.UK funding goes to the big boys [JTSOS, May 2011]

[This came up in a discussion on Facebook in a friend's Wall, when it was pointed out that a large proportion of research and business development grant cash goes to big business. Originally posted on my Just This Side Of Sane blog on 2011/05/08.]

I'm not surprised that small enterprise doesn't apply for (or doesn't get granted) funding through these routes.

Firstly, the fund-matching criteria require an appropriate amount of liquid cash, whose expenditure must be carefully accounted for. Yes, there's the option of match-finding "in kind" through staff salaries etc. (where rules permit), but even that has bear traps. One friend who applied for such funding, and used his own (unpaid) labour as the funds match, discovered to his horror that he had to pay income tax and NI on the amounts he _hadn't_ paid himself in order to trigger release on the major tranche.

Secondly, the compliance régime can mean a lot of paperwork and effort. Fine when you've plenty of experience of what the funding body requires (as large concerns do); arduous and frustrating when you don't - and it ties up limited staff availability. And if an SMB hires someone experienced to help apply for and manage the funding*, the amount of funding that actually makes it to the project itself can make the game of raising it barely worth the candle. Big business doesn't have these problems. A large enough enterprise can retain someone permanent and experienced to deal with funding, streamline the process and the funding stream, and use its plentiful staffing to cover the funding matches.

It would be soooo nice if there was genuine Governmental effort to boost entrepreneurs and new enterprise, rather than lip-service, half-hearted follow-through, and an erratic drip feed of funding that's first in the list to be cut when times are tight. The only thing that'll pull the UK out of economic doldrums is SMB enterprise. Our present Government, and those that preceded it, talks the talk - and walks away.

(* Absolutely not trying to tread on anyone's toes, BTW. It's probably better to hire a funding consultant than not get any at all.)