Taiwan Here I Come!

Well, I’m all packed and ready to head off to Taiwan.  I’ve learned a few things from last year’s trip that has allowed me to cart along significantly less stuff which should allow me more room to smuggle more “Free Stuff” home.  Huge trade shows like COMPUTEX are a feeding frenzy of free stuff.  In fact, I had so much stuff last year, I had to borrow an extra suitcase from Carl to haul it all home and I didn’t even take it all with me.

Equipment 

For starters, I cut down my camera gear to a compact Panasonic FX-9 which is really handy for heading off to parties with and my DSLR body.  Instead of haulling zooms around, I’m going to be taking just my Nikon 35mm f/2.0 Prime and my Sigma 10-20mm Wide Angle. I can remember only a couple times where I took my zoom out of the bag, and I didn’t even use those shots in any of the articles.  So the big lenses are out this year and the compact lenses are in.

Of course I’ll have my ASUS A8Ja Laptop with me so I can keep blogging on the road. I’m contemplating picking up a compact notebook with crazy battery life while I’m overseas, but I think a new phone will be the order of the day.  My Nokia 6670 is starting to get long in the tooth so if anyone has any great suggestions on a new phone, let me know. I’d definitely love one with better contact management features.

Clothing

Last year, I wanted to portray a professional image as it was my first time to COMPUTEX and I’ve never met any of my overseas contacts in person.  Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I’m ditching the suit, the dress pants and the dress shirts, and doing strictly comfortable light khaki’s and shorts with lots of short sleeve T’s.  It’s currently the hottest time of year in Taipei, and humid as hell again.  When I walked out of the airport last year, I literally almost choked.  I’ve cut my load in half. Score!  Underwear and socks I can always flip inside out…just kidding

So it looks like I’m ready to roll!  I just have to pick John and Sarah up on the way to the airport.  If we can’t find WiFi at the airport, it looks like my next post will be in Taiwan.