Technology

When I first went travelling "technology" meant a film camera and a watch! The
rest of my bag, apart from clothes, was filled with a diary, letter pad and envelopes, books, travel guides and maps. All essential to a trip then and now. The difference now is the format these all take (including the clothes!). The list of technology this time reads something like the contents of your local electronics shop:

• Camera (digital of course), additional lens and accessories.
• Tripod (and I took one of these on my original trip too).
• Laptop
• Extra drives for the laptop
• USB keys
• Tablet
• eBook reader
• Smartphone
• Portable emergency charger
• Various cables and power plugs to support the above
• And a watch!

And Vicki carries a similar assortment too ...

All of these allow us to to do the same as the original non-digital variety: record what we see and do, communicate to those at home, find out about where we are and where to go, and to be entertained. In total these are slightly heavier than the non-digital variety, hugely more expensive and less reliable, but provide more options in this connected world we live in.

For me the key uses of all this hardware is to record what I see and pursue my hobby of photography in a stimulating environment; to keep in touch with family and friends; and to have access to all sorts of information. This list might be a bit excessive for most. Actually, it is a bit excessive for me too!

Won't we just spend our time guarding the bags and never venturing out? Is it just going to be a burden: after all, de-cluttering our lives was one of the aims of taking off. Any technologist will always want to justify her/himself, and in our case we'll claim that by spending most of our time based at fixed accommodation we can just leave our possessions in the relative security of where we will live.

What's the point of all this stuff then? Well, the camera equipment is obvious, but a laptop? There are internet cafes after all. For us it is about processing the images we take (that's our hobby!), having a copy of our images and videos to show people (if they are at all interested), and having our own devices when online. Gotta keep this blog up to date somehow! Remember, we are mostly living at other people's places. The tablet is just a smaller version if we are out and about. I wouldn't have bought one specially but I happened to have one already. It might get ditched along the way. And the eBook reader beats books hands-down when travelling. Batteries last forever, hundreds of books can be carried easily. Perhaps the watch is both the most convenient and redundant device at once. Everything else has a clock on it these days ... How well will all this turn out? That will unfold over the next 6 months or so.

A bit more about the technology we chose ...

Mostly we are just taking what we already owned but we did buy a few things specifically for travelling.

The Cameras

We both owned large digital SLRs and lenses and tripods and accessories. They would have taken up a large portion of our weight allowance by themselves! And as we've found, unless you're specifically going out on a photography trip they tend to stay at home. So we traded them in for mirrorless cameras: they take almost as good an image as an SLR, have all the advanced functionality required, and are the size of a compact camera. We happened to choose the Olympus OM-D E-M5 for its performance and the range of lenses available. But there are plenty of other similar options.

The Laptops

While Vicki has a perfectly serviceable laptop to take, albeit a bit heavy, I had the opportunity to choose my perfect machine as hauling my desktop around wasn't an option. So out it goes and in comes an ultrabook - basically the size of a netbook without any of the compromises. Small, light (only 1.3kg) and powerful. There are plenty that would be suitable bur I happened to choose an ASUS Zenbook UX31a because it was fast (i7 CPU, 256GB SSD) and has a brilliant 1920 HD matte screen, i.e. the definition found on an HD telly squeezed into a 13.3" screen. Why do these things take priority? For me low weight means I can chuck it (very gently) into a daypack when heading out for a walk that might involve finding a wi-fi spot. Top performance specs means that it will be fun to use for many years - a slower one will need updating much sooner so is false economy (in my humble opinion!). And that screen for photography ... glorious. We are taking plenty of portable hard drives with us to keep multiple backups of our data just in case. And we use various online services just in case it all disappears one day. But more about the software side in another post ...

Smartphones

Not so fussy here, just three requirements. One with dual-SIM capablity so we can have our new "permanent" UK number and a local SIM for wherever we happen to be living, e.g. Italy. GPS and maps is likely to be very useful too. And one of us (not me) apparently needs Angry Birds ... We happen to use Android phones as we are both tied into the Google cosmos.

The wonders of Skype

For those of you familiar with the wonders of Skype this entry is likely to induce a yawn - yeah, you know all this stuff, already!  Just humour me and have a giggle at my expense - I can handle it :-) - or skip to the next post.

I've used Skype for several years - just a free account and mainly so I could talk to my parents and sister (all in Nelson), and over the last three years to talk to Nigel's sister (Gail) and her husband (Janos) in the UK.  I've just recently set up the 'answer phone' service, for free, so if someone calls while I'm offline or unable to take the call, they can leave a message.

A week ago we met Marina from Santa Brigida, in Umbria, but at her home in Florence where she has faster broadband, and last night we spoke to Tim who was chatting from his iPad, waiting for his children in a cafe in Pedaso, on the Adriatic coast to the east of Florence.  That will be me soon!!

But the wonders of Skype go further, once you start plugging in a bit of money, and for our situation we think it will be money well spent.  We're going to set up a local number for our Skype account so anyone in Christchurch (and maybe the whole of the South Island - we haven't figured that one out yet) will be able to call the number as if it were a local call and they'll be transferred to us at Skype.  If we're not 'at home' they'll be able to leave a message for us.  With a monthly calling account on Skype we'll be able to call any land-line or mobile phone in the world at low rates, as long as we have an internet connection.  I do hope European cafes have free wireless.  Of course we can still contact anyone with a Skype account for free.

When I last travelled to the other side of the world (in 1985!) I posted hand-written letters and postcards to friends and family in New Zealand, and some were lucky to receive two letters in the ten weeks I was away!  As we've experienced with Gail and Janos, we see more of them now than we did when they lived in Dunedin. It's so much easier to stay connected.  Wonderful!

How to leave ...

You would think it was relatively easy to start travelling: agree where and when to go, resign your job (or take extended leave), book the tickets, redirect the mail, do something with the house and your possessions ... ahhh, now I see why this mightn't be so easy after all! And then there is the little issue of how to fund your life until you start earning again.

So, how did we do it?

Step 1 - Where and when to go?

Italy. There, that was easy. Some may want to see as much as possible in the time available, but Vicki and I had both travelled that way before and this was an opportunity to immerse ourselves somewhere with plenty of history, culture, scenery and wine. So for us it was Italy. And a bit of Greece. The When was a bit harder. Heading into a northern summer was obvious, but the right time for us was when the kids were self-sufficient. Emotionally this was the hardest part - leaving family when you're on an open-ended trip that could stretch out for years.

Step 2 - Getting rid of stuff

As you can only take what you can carry, what do you do with the rest of your possessions? Do you own (and want to keep) your house? Do you intend to come back? In our case No and No. So for us it was just a matter of terminating our rental, putting the few key and sentimental possessions into long-term storage, and selling everything else. Hard work as it turns out but quite refreshing to de-clutter your lives. Once you get over the fact that your beloved possessions are worth next to nothing second-hand!

Step 3 – Funding the new lifestyle

Owning a house does give the option of renting it out, getting an income to keep you going, perhaps locking up part of your garage as storage for your valuables and furnishing the house with the rest. As we don’t own a home we did the next best thing – we bought one! Sounds counter-productive but we found a house split into two flats in a nearby city (Dunedin) that was relatively cheap. It is ugly, probably will never appreciate, but the return is very good – and that is what counts. And as it is in two flats we still get an income if only one is occupied. Of course we have a local management agent as we will have better things to do with our time! The key is to try and live on your income while away so you’re not always dipping into your savings. We’ll see how that works out!!

The story so far ......

The kids are all grown up, so the grown ups are flying the coop!

A month ago we bought one-way tickets to London!

But I've got ahead of myself.  This all really started about three years ago, with this article http://matadornetwork.com/change/10-volunteer-opportunities-for-free-travel/
I can't remember how or why I found it, but it, or the idea of it, was somehow involved in my five weeks as a volunteer hut warden on Stewart Island (New Zealand) in the summer of 2011.  For several hours [often hard] work a day, I was provided with a roof, bed, food and travel around the island.  But that amazing trip is another story.

With that experience in mind, Nigel and I started talking about travelling, and with a limited budget but a desire to see and do as much as possible, we decided to investigate the options for helping people in return for accommodation, transport and/or food.  We signed up with a couple of house-sitting sites - www.trustedhousesitters.com and www.mindmyhouse.com, but didn't have much success until we joined www.helpx.net.

We leave New Zealand on June 4th 2013 and arrive in London June 5th, where we'll stay with Nigel's sister and her husband, who are living and working on a large property near Reading.

In July we're house-sitting, garden-watering and pool-soaking on an olive farm near Taggia, Italy.

We'll probably return to the UK for August, partially because Nigel wants me to see England during the summer, but also because Italy is busy, expensive and hot in August - and most helpx hosts do not want help or do not have room for help in August.

In latter half of September we're helping at an olive farm in Sabina, Italy.

For October we move a couple of hours further north to Florence and Santa Brigida where we'll help with the olive harvest.

In November and December we're off to Greece, to a small resort in Koroni on the Peloponese peninsula, where we'll also help with the olive harvest and with preparing the villas for the next summer season.

So, that's a little taste of how we got to where we are now.  We'll tell you more in further posts!

A little bit of history

It seems appropriate to start this blog with this little group of people.  From left to right we have Izzie and Georgia Kerby (Nigel's twin daughters), me (Vicki Slade), Nigel Kerby and Andrew Eman (my son).  The photo was taken on October 12th, 2012 on the occasion of the wedding of Nigel and Vicki.  We had been together for nearly twelve years, so the 'kids' had pretty much grown up with each other, as we had all lived together (with the kids half-time with their other parents) since 2005.    


Andrew's 22 and has been doing his own thing for four years now - not that that has stopped him moving 'home' a few times - but he's currently training to be an electrician.
Georgia (like Izzie, surprise, surprise) turns 19 in two months and is in her second year of university in Dunedin and is in a flat this year.  She's all self-reliant too.
Izzie's working this year, after spending last year at uni in Christchurch, and is saving hard so she can travel to Europe next year.