Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

May 1, 2007 · 3 minute read

Five days to go!

Some things are still up in the air. When we land in Rome on Sunday, we’ll be going into temporary accommodation until we can find somewhere to live. This means that when the movers come on Friday, they will be taking all of our stuff and putting it into storage until we give them a call and say “Yes, we are living at this address now, please bring all our worldly possessions to us.” And since we don’t know when we’ll actually have a place to live, this means that we might not see our stuff for anywhere between two weeks and six months.

So right now, I’m hoping for the best but preparing for the worst.

What does that mean? Well, it means that I’m reassessing everything I own and think “can I live without this for six months?” While everyday clothes are cheap and easy to replace, I have to think about all the possibilities. I should bring formal clothes, because there will inevitably be some function where I will be required to scrub up nice. So that’s a no-brainer.

But what about the other stuff? Movies and games? There’s no way I can live without those.

This is a tough decision. I’m totally addicted to my Xbox 360 now, and what better way to keep in touch with my nerdy Irish friends than by kerb-stomping them over Xbox Live? And what better way to maintain a sense of accomplishment than increasing my gamer score? But as much as I love the 360, it’s far too heavy and takes up far too much space for me to bring on my own. It will have to come with the movers.

I’ve decided to only take my PlayStation 2 with me. I’ve dumped the boxes for the games so that the actual disks are in a couple of CD wallets and I’m bringing my PlayStation 2 in my carry-on luggage. This means that I’ll at least have a couple of games to play when I get there (Final Fantasy XII, God of War 2).

We’re taking a Macbook, so we’ll have something to watch DVDs on. But what DVDs? I’ve got a CD wallet especially for movies, and now I have to decide what I should fill it with. This isn’t an easy task. I mean, how do I decide what movies to bring? How do I predict my tastes and moods for the next six months? I realise that there are people who could fit their entire DVD collection in one of these 72-disc wallets, but there’s a reason I have as many DVDs as I do - I’m a fussy, temperamental little shit.

And this leaves us with a little thought-experiment: if you were moving to a foreign country and you could only bring one DVD, one game, one book and one CD with you, what would you bring?