I have been
writing lists ever since I could write. I don’t think anyone ever taught me to
do it. It just made sense to me. I remember taking great delight in planning
all of our birthday parties when my sister and I were growing up. I would then
present Mum with “the lists” – who I wanted to invite, what games I wanted to
play and what food I wanted to eat. As I grew older, the number of lists
expanded to include things such as what we would need for the games and, as a
subset of that list, what we probably wouldn’t have on hand and would need to
go out and buy.
One of the
jobs I am working on at the moment is figuring out the best way to get myself
and my stuff to the Philippines. As this will be my fifth overseas move, I foolishly
thought it would be simple. I was wrong. For some reason, airlines think that
if you’re travelling to somewhere relatively close, you only need half as much
stuff as when you travel to the other side of the world. I fail to see their
logic. What appears to be a cheap flight may, in fact, become quite expensive
if you want to take more than one half-empty suitcase with you. Hours of
research into flights, excess baggage charges and shipping companies has left
my head spinning.
And so I have
found myself once again writing a list of lists. In order to figure out my best
option, I need to make the following lists:
1) What I will need/want to
set up a house in Manila
a. What I will buy when I get there
b. What I will take with me
i.
What I will take with me in my luggage
ii.
What I will ship in boxes
Hopefully then I will be able to decide whether or not it’s realistically possible to take only 20 kg with me on the plane and to fit everything else into a couple of boxes with limited capacities but no weight restrictions! It seems that every time I move, the airline baggage allowance is less than it was the previous time and I am forced to rethink my strategy!
