Be­cause I am go­ing to be trav­el­ing for three week­s, I was think­ing to­day about pack­ing. Last year, I spent five weeks on the road, and I packed a cab­in-­size suit­case, plus a mes­sen­ger bag. Did­n't feel like I had for­got­ten any­thing, so I guess I did­n't.

That was spring and this will be late fal­l, so I will add a sweater and a bet­ter jack­et.

So, it seems the amount of things I need to take with me on a trip does­n't cor­re­late with the du­ra­tion of the trip be­yond a cer­tain point. It seems that all the ma­te­ri­al as­sets I need to live fit in a small­ish suit­case (plus a bag). I moved to Buenos Aires twelve years ago with a suit­case, a TV and a cat.

So, ig­nor­ing de­tails such as fam­i­ly and sen­ti­men­tal val­ue (which, for me, ma­te­ri­al things have none), sup­pose ev­ery­thing I own burned down in a fire. How much mon­ey would I need to miss noth­ing I lost?

As­sum­ing I am moved in­to a bare ap­part­ment with the usu­al things in it (no fur­ni­ture, but has a stove and a fridge), here's my list:

Clothes

7 t-shirt­s, 3 pants, 2 short­er pants, 2 pairs of sneak­er­s, 2 sweater­s, a coat, mis­c. About $400 or so?

Computer

I am con­sid­er­ing up­grad­ing the one I have for a $800 one, so sure­ly no more than that.

Phone

I have a $90 phone, but let's re­place my kin­dle too, so a nicer one: $250

Furniture

A table, a few chairs, a ma­tress (I had to re­place my bed re­cent­ly, ma­tress in the floor for a week was sur­pris­ing­ly nice!). Per­haps $500?

Random

Cut­lery, dish­es, a pot, a fry­ing pan, tow­el­s, bed­sheet­s, cof­fee mug, toi­letry item­s, blan­ket, ex­ten­sion cord­s, etc. $1000?

Noth­ing else comes to mind, so, it seems I need a bit over $2000, let's say $2500 to be on the safe side. It's in­ter­est­ing to imag­ine I could move to, say, Cos­ta Ri­ca, by just hav­ing a job there, $2500 in my pock­et and no bag­gage.

I got my first Kin­dle a year ago. I quick­ly re­placed it with my cur­rent and sec­ond kindle, a Kin­dle Touch.

So, how well has it worked? Pret­ty damn well. I am a fair­ly heavy user, I think, and the Kin­dle has trav­eled quite a bit, in bags, suit­cas­es and car­go pock­et­s. The on­ly care I take is to use a leather cov­er when out­side the house.

I have read, ac­cord­ing to goodread­s.­com, some­what over 17000 pages in this year, in 61 book­s. That' a lot of pages. And if you look at the gad­get now, it still looks brand new. No scratch­es, ev­ery­thing op­er­ates cor­rect­ly, even the bat­tery still holds the charge fine even if it's down to about two weeks per charge in­stead of al­most three.

I still miss the old­er kindle's page-­turn­ing but­ton­s. Us­ing a touch­screen to turn pages is id­i­ot­ic. but hey, it work­s, and I can still do it one-hand­ed (yay for huge-­hand boy here!)

The on­ly things I don't quite like are the same ones as when I bought it.

• The page has too lit­­tle con­­trast when not ide­al­­ly light­ed.

• You can't read in the dark.

Since the new pa­per­white fix­es both of those, I am get­ting one. I have al­ready sold this one, and the dif­fer­ence is not a lot, so it's a very cheap up­grade.

Quite hap­py about Ama­zon's abil­i­ty to not suck at giv­ing me goods in ex­change for mon­ey, too! It's rare that I want a book and it's not out there in Kin­dle for­mat (still wait­ing for Evan Dara's Easy Chain!)

So, no un­ex­pect­ed is­sues, has brought a lot of fun, was cheap­... that's the def­i­ni­tion of gad­get par­adise to me.

I have been watch­ing Galac­ti­ca (the new­er one) on and off for a few month­s. And there is one small thing that drives me nuts ev­ery time I see it. It throws me off the sto­ry, and com­plete­ly breaks the world-build­ing that's go­ing on.

Oc­tog­o­nal pa­per.

Why? Be­cause pa­per is square for func­tion­al and man­u­fac­tur­ing rea­son­s. You take a spool of pa­per, you cut it, you end up with rec­tan­gu­lar pieces.

Are you man­u­fac­tur­ing linen pa­per? Then you need to build frames to do it, and mak­ing oc­tog­o­nal frames is much hard­er.

To make oc­tog­o­nal pa­per sheets you need to cut ev­ery one of them from square sheet­s. That is stupid.

Oh, it gets worse. In the BSG uni­verse, they have oc­tog­o­nal *trac­tor pa­per*.

What sort of id­iot came up with that? How can that even work!

So, a fun se­ries but ev­ery time I see a piece of pa­per I want to scream.

El viernes que viene me voy a París. Me lle­vo a mi mu­jer, a mi nene, y a mi vie­ja. Me lle­vo a mi mu­jer porque nun­ca tu­vi­mos lu­na de miel, en­tonces cualquier ex­cusa es bue­na, me lle­vo a mi nene porque tardé mu­cho, y me lle­vo a mi vie­ja porque se lo de­bo.

Mi mamá tiene 78 años y cuan­do es­tu­di­a­ba, pupi­la, en un cole­gio de mon­jas, es­tu­di­a­ba francés. Y cuan­do es­tudiás francés semipresa, las lec­ciones so­bre París, el li­bro con fo­tos de la torre Eif­fel... se me hace que deben haber si­do ma­te­ri­al de los sueños de esa pi­ba de quince. Yo sé que mi vie­ja sueña con este vi­a­je hace más de sesen­ta años.

Tam­bién lo soña­ba mi viejo que siem­pre con­ta­ba de cuan­do tenía que es­cribir una redac­ción (en francés ob­vi­a­mente) so­bre el puer­to de Le Havre y co­mo no la había he­cho la in­ven­tó al vuelo, hi­zo co­mo que la leía y le pusieron un diez igual, en su se­cun­dario en Re­sisten­ci­a, pero mi viejo se en­fer­mó y se murió.

En­tonces aho­ra que puedo, porque con la tar­je­ta la saco en muchas cuo­tas, y ten­go un de­s­cuen­to, y el pasaje mío lo pa­ga un clien­te, y Tato pa­ga la mi­tad, y alquilar un de­par­ta­men­to al­lá sale lo mis­mo que en Mar del Pla­ta (o lo mis­mo que una carpa en La Per­la), y ten­go un ahor­ri­to, hace un tiem­po le di­je a mi vie­ja que sacara el pas­aporte, que se venía con­mi­go.

Y que no, que es­toy grande, que qué me vas a ll­e­var, para qué, qué voy a hac­er al­lá, pero el ojo bueno se le ilu­minaba, porque mi vie­ja por aden­tro es to­davía esa alum­na pupi­la del cole­gio en San­ta Fe, que tenia que es­tu­di­ar en si­len­cio sus lec­ciones de francés, so­bre esa tier­ra le­jana, exóti­ca de gente con boina.

Y la pla­ta no com­pra la fe­li­ci­dad, pero es­ta plata, jus­to es­ta plata, me de­ja dar­le de re­ga­lo del día de la madre un vi­a­je con el que sueña hace mi vi­da y me­di­a, ir a Mont­martre, sen­tarnos en al­gu­na parte, pedir dos cafés, mor­farnos dos crois­sants, dar­le un be­so a mi Tato, abrazar a mi mu­jer, a mi vieji­ta, salu­dar a mi viejo, y sé que se me va a pi­antar un la­grimón, si se me es­tá pi­antan­do aho­ra, mien­tras es­cri­bo, có­mo no se me va a pi­antar al­lá.

Y me la lle­vo para al­lá. Y va­mos a ser fe­lices.