Getting ready for the off

Getting ready for the off, certainly, and getting ready for a short flurry of blogging activity to keep the extended family back home appraised of progress on my short trip to the other side of the Globe.

On this page, in the right-hand column, you'll note my recent Twitterings are displayed. Brief, and perhaps pithy, updates should appear there frequently, should anyone be worried about exactly how far I've got.

In around 18 hours I will be setting off down ever faithful M1 to Heathrow and the first leg of my trip. Before then it might be a good idea for me to do some packing, buy some essential travel toiletries and medicines, get some foreign currency, walk the dog, have some sleep and a hundred other things, many of which I should have done weeks ago. I need to write this now so I can be sure my technophobe audience can find these ramblings before I leave the UK, I've no desire to be dishing out PC support from a hotel room thousands of miles away.

Working (relatively) close to home in recent months has resulted in me carrying far too much stuff around with me. Regular flying was a good discipline in keeping my shoulder bag down to a reasonable weight. When I came to look at its contents at the beginning of the week I was nothing short of amazed just how much rubbish had accumulated in there (do I really need to carry 1.3TB of external disks?!?). Rationalising my travelling IT has been a bit of a mission but I think I have now only what I really need to reliably remain in touch.

Foreign currency has proved to be a bit of a sad story. While I was getting nearly 240 Yen/£ in early 2007, the best rate I can find for cash today is 145 Yen/£. I hope the price tags in Akihabara are similarly 40% less! Same story for NZDs, 2.81/£ in early 2007, 2.18/£ now. It looks like I'm going to have to choose the cheaper of the caviar whenever I get the opportunity.

Oh well, that's enough for now. Needless to say, I'm quite excited to see some more new places and some old friends. Fingers crossed I'll have some nice weather too.