Trevin Chow

I’ve traveled quite a bit the last few years and a whack of that travel has been for work which has forced me on trips where I’m going to several countries each for few days at a time.  Traveling on such tight schedules, you find yourself paying attention to overall weight of your bags. Nothing sucks more than haulin’ ass through the airport with overweight luggage.

Here are my top 5 things I never travel without that has helped me cut the overall clutter in my bags, while making my travel far easier:

Apple Airport Express

Everyone knows about this handy little device for the home, but few people remember to bring it with them when they travel.

First, when you’re traveling in hotels only hard-wired internet connections, you can use the Airport Express to bridge the ethernet to wifi. Presto! you’re no longer chained to that insanely small desk and can sit on your bed with your laptop.

Second, the USB port on it can be used to charge every single one of my devices that uses a USB cable to charge. This includes my iPhone 3GS, Samsung NV24HD camera and even my X-Mini II speaker.  This allows me to leave most, if not all, extraneous power plugs at home and only lug along my Airport and necessary cables.

X-Mini II Capsule Speaker

I heard about this amazing little device originally from a co-worker who was rigging up this crazy portable A/V system with his Zune and a mini projector.  At that time, he only had the original version which was much smaller.

At first glance, this thing looks like a flimsy POS, but when you hear the sound it outputs, you’ll be amazed.  It’s come in extremely handy when I’ve wanted to watch movies in my hotel room on my laptop (my Thinkpad T60’s speakers absolutely suck), or even just listen to music off my iPhone.  You truly have to listen to this in person to believe it – the sound is amazing for it’s size.

You have 2 options for connecting it – either through the 3.5mm cable protrudes from the bottom (and neatly tucks away when not being used) or through the cable that connects via mini-USB. That USB cable splits into a standard USB plug to connect a USB power source for recharging it’s batteries, and also another 3.5mm jack. So if you’re using it with your laptop, you can charge it and connect it to your headphone jack very easily.  As I mentioned earlier, it can also be charged through the Airport Express’ USB connection.

Belkin Mini Surge Protector with dual USB Charger

I recently added this to my arsenal as I found that too often I either (a) needed more than 1 USB device charged at once, and (b) simply needed more power plugs. The Belkin Mini Surge Protector totally fits the bill and has a permanent place in my laptop bag (which is also my airplane carry-on).

It can also easily be used when you travel internationally by letting you get 3 outlets but only using a single travel plug adapter.

ATP Multislot Promax USB2.0 UDMA Card Reader (AF-CRMBK-MV1)

Since I never travel without my laptop, I never had to worry about running out of space on my CF or SD cards.  Since my laptop also has Lightroom installed on it, I can offload pictures every so often and even triage them to discard the obvious duds, and even start tagging and organizing them. When I get back home, I export the catalog from my laptop and import to my main PC. For longer trips, this strategy has saved me so much time in finishing my photos off.

At times where I’ve had lots of spare CF/SD cards, I still offload my photos for safekeeping so there is a duplicate copy.

Other 4 other more minor things I usually always bring:

• Spare iPhone USB Cable (because nothing sucks more than to lose or break your only one)
• 3 Prong to 2 prong adapter
• Retractable ethernet cable
• 3.5mm stereo splitter cable

I’m currently in Europe for the shortest international trip I’ve ever taken. I’m cruising through 4 countries in 6 days meeting with the Microsoft subsidiary in each country.  Dealing with the time zone changes while diving straightaway into work was tougher than I anticipated, and to make matters worse, I’m pulling double duty working remotely with my team in Redmond in the late evenings.

My sleep patterns are totally erratic with me being able to sleep some nights a full 8 hours, and other nights I’m waking up at 3am and unable to fall back asleep.

Even more disappointing, I haven’t been able to take more than a dozen photos while I’ve been here.  The weather was gorgeous in Madrid, which I saw through the office windows.  Arrived in Paris yesterday morning and the weather was complete crap with non-stop rain. Ugh.

I have a few blog posts currently in progress related to technology but are all on hold until I get back.  I leave for Amsterdam tomorrow on a 6am flight and return to Seattle on Friday.

Last year I wanted to start the popular Flickr “365″ project which is essentially taking a photo of yourself every day for an entire year. There have been some absolutely fantastic photos taken by friends in their own 365 projects which I found very inspiring. Some of my favorites includes:

My motivation was to push me to take more photos and to encourage my creative juices to flow. However, after being so busy with work and other non-photography related things, there is no way I’d be able to do this for an entire year and still get the quality photographs I’d want to capture.

Instead, I’m starting the alternate project, called 52 weeks which is essentially the same thing except you post a photo once a week. I officially started 52 Weeks last week, with a photo I took while in Beijing.

Here is Week 1 of 52 weeks:

You’ll be able to track all my photos for this 52 weeks project with the 52weeks tag on Flickr.

P.S. – I fully reserve the right to ditch 52 weeks in favor of 365 at any point this year

Captured this just outside the Forbidden City. Nothing like training communist patriotism at such a young age

Photo taken near Elephant’s Head Point in Mahabelashwar, India. We spent 5 days here over Christmas with my Craig’s family enjoying the beautiful sights, pervasive pollution and pig hunting. Yes, pig hunting.