I’ve always had some basic rules in mind but never really spelled them out clearly, not that I am going to be any better at doing it now, but the more I use this stuff and the more I think about it the patterns get easier to spot and point out. So here’s basically what I keep in mind:

- Clothes should be easily replicable. That is, if I buy a shirt a like it, I should be able to buy 4-5 of the same one without much hassle. This eliminates one of a kind or super expensive items but that is fine because I’ve never been comfortable with those anyway. And being able to replace them anywhere is a huge plus to. Much of the stuff I’ve chosen is easy to find any number of places around the world which makes replacing a lost or damaged piece easy. This also allows me to get into a fairly simple “buy new, donate old” cycle every few months so nothing I have has been through too much of a ringer.

- Clothing should be mix-matchable. That is, everything should go with everything else. This allows very little thought when getting dressed or packing, I know I can’t go wrong. This is easiest achieved for me by choosing things that are solid black. The same could be true for any solid color I guess but black seems classic and goes with anything, and fits in in almost any situation. I vary a little bit in the shirt department, but that is fine because I’m never wearing two shirts at once so I don’t have to worry about something not matching if everything else is black. That said I personally tend to avoid any clothing with obvious branding on printing on it.

- Clothing should be good for travel. I travel a lot, so this is important to me, might not be to someone else. To me this means it’s not overly bulky and can be rolled up fairly compactly for packing, and that it’s easily washed in a hotel room so it should dry quickly. It should also be layerable and multipurpose, that is I should be able to create cold weather combo by layering warm weather items. Or something like that.

Those are really my big points. I have a few other but those are more personal things – no leather, etc, but that doesn’t totally relate here. Because I know you are wondering, here’s how that translates for me at this point..

- Pants. With minor exception I’ve been wearing Dickies work pants almost every day for the last 10 years at least. You can get them anywhere – in any corner of the world, they are relatively inexpensive (which means buying multiples is no problem) and work in a variety of social settings. When newer they are basically dress pants.

- Under Shirt. I’ve got about 20 American Apparel simple black T-Shirts scattered around the world and these serve me very well. Again, easy to find and replace, not very expensive but nice quality. The one drawback to these is that being cotton they don’t wick moisture very well which is only a problem in hotter climates (which I’ve been finding myself in a lot recently) and they take the longest to dry of anything I usually travel with. I’ve been thinking of trying out one of the ScotteVest T-Shirts to see how they work out in these situations.

- Underwear. I’ve raved about ExOfficio brand before and I stand by it. These are the best underwear ever, and you could easily travel for a long time having only 2 pair of these with you. I generally travel with 4-5 but really feel like that is overkill sometimes.

- Socks. I don’t have the die hard loyalty here, but I’ve been pretty happy with injinji toe socks for a while. They are comfortable and dry pretty quickly, but I’ve found they wear through pretty quickly as well.

- Shirt. I’ve got a stable of Ben Sherman plaid and solid color shirts I rotate through which works really well for me and is a style that I like. That said, the quality of their shirts seems to have dropped a bit in the last year or so and I’m keeping my eyes out for alternatives.

- Shoes. Adidas have been my standard goto for a while, but recently I’ve been loving my Terra Plana Vivo Barefoot shoes and might make the switch more fulltime.

Add a sweatshirt or jacket here and there depending on where I’m traveling to and what the trip will entail. As I said the beauty of a lot of this is it’s easily replicable so I can have duplicate wardrobes in many corners of the globe without much effort.

Fair warning, this is a rambling jumble of thoughts kind of post.

People keep sending me links to or excerpts from this NY Times story “But Will It Make You Happy?” And rightfully so, as it’s about how having (and buying) less stuff can make you happier, which if you have ever read my blog in the past you know is very relevant to my interests. Specifically the story starts off following a couple who were drowning in debt and had mountains of crap in their house, and in their life, and how they decided to pair down and get away from it, and how their families thought they were nuts, but how it worked and now everyone is jealous of their swanky minimalist lifestyle. Well not exactly that, but basically. And how spending money on stuff is a waste, but on experiences is golden. There are a few really good quotes in it worth noting, even if they are painfully obvious:

“One major finding is that spending money for an experience — concert tickets, French lessons, sushi-rolling classes, a hotel room in Monaco — produces longer-lasting satisfaction than spending money on plain old stuff.”

…

“A $20,000 increase in spending on leisure was roughly equivalent to the happiness boost one gets from marriage,” he said, adding that spending on leisure activities appeared to make people less lonely and increased their interactions with others.

…

Current research suggests that, unlike consumption of material goods, spending on leisure and services typically strengthens social bonds, which in turn helps amplify happiness. (Academics are already in broad agreement that there is a strong correlation between the quality of people’s relationships and their happiness; hence, anything that promotes stronger social bonds has a good chance of making us feel all warm and fuzzy.)

and

Another reason that scholars contend that experiences provide a bigger pop than things is that they can’t be absorbed in one gulp — it takes more time to adapt to them and engage with them than it does to put on a new leather jacket or turn on that shiny flat-screen TV.

“We buy a new house, we get accustomed to it,” says Professor Lyubomirsky, who studies what psychologists call “hedonic adaptation,” a phenomenon in which people quickly become used to changes, great or terrible, in order to maintain a stable level of happiness.

Over time, that means the buzz from a new purchase is pushed toward the emotional norm.

“We stop getting pleasure from it,” she says.

And then, of course, we buy new things.

Like I said these aren’t really new concepts for me or anyone who has spent time talking about these issues with me in the last few years, but it’s nice to see some big media backup of those ideas and it’s reenforcing to know there is some neurological science to back up the speculations I’ve been throwing around here so won-tonly.

One thing that was news to me, and I blame each and every one of you for not tipping me off to it sooner, was a passing mention of a website that encouraged people to live with only 100 personal things which inspired some of their early stuff purging. What? 100 Things? A website promoting this? How did I not know about this before? I did some searching and found the source over on Guy Named Dave and wouldn’t you know it’s over 2 years old? I’ve really been slacking to let this get past me. Anyway, I dug in and read the challenge, and honestly was a bit disappointed. Dave’s motives are in the right place, and his efforts have certainly worked out well, but it’s not *really* a 100 thing challenge as it was advertised. Sure the goal is to pair your belongings down to 100 things, but as Dave notes in his initial post he has a family, wife and kids, and so the challenge only applies to his stuff, not to theirs or the stuff they share. So he could kind of just give his wife everything he owned, and then be at 0 and not have to change his lifestyle at all. And some things he considered a set, all of his underwear counted as 1 item, etc. So yeah, it wasn’t quite as hardcore as I was hoping it would be.

Still, his list of 100 things that he decided were worth keeping is certainly a good starting point for a mental exercise. What 100 things would you keep, could you get it down that low? I posted that question on my tumblr and got a few replies of interest and support, and one that stood out from my good friend Michael, who said:

“The concept works toward preventing you from deep interests in things like cooking or cycling, etc. Perhaps a limit to buying 100 items/yr”

Now I don’t agree with that at all. First of all I don’t subscribe to the idea that you have to buy anything to learn or be interested in it. Thanks to things like NeighborGoods it’s much easier to borrow just about anything, and if you keep a diligent eye on craigslist or ebay you can find many things for free or next to nothing. Now obviously you aren’t going to find a $2000 bike on craigslist for free (unless it’s stolen or being given away by a pissed off ex-lover), but you can probably borrow one from a friend on NeighborGoods. And yes I know that is a stretch and to really dive into something you need your own that you can customize, but I think having to make sure you buy the right one instead of buying several can actually make that choice better. For instance at the beginning of this year I had 5 bikes. I’ve been selling them and moving towards having one that is better than all the others. That’s less stuff, which is good.

So I don’t think this idea prevents you from getting deep interests in things, rather it causes you to be a bit more focused. And certainly being deeply into several things all at once could be a bit harder, but that is really more of a problem of people who can afford it. I say that from experience, being a obsessive collector of both cool stuff and interesting info about said cool stuff, who also happened to grow up broke as hell. When I found something I was interested in it became all encompassing for me and it was hard to get me to talk or think about anything until I felt I’d satisfied that interest. In many ways I’m still like that. The thing is, when you have no money the option of putting the last obsession in a box in the closet and moving on to the next is impossible, and having two costly obsessions at once slows progress on both. So what I had to do was focus on one, learn what I could, buy the stuff I wanted, and then decide what if any of that I was going to keep when I got the taste of the next obsession. The cash from the sale of the last interest was the seed funds for the next one. That doesn’t mean I’m any less interested in the old stuff or think it’s any less cool, it’s just not center stage for me which means having money tied up in it seemed like a bad idea. For example at one point I had a record collection that was easily over 1000 albums, I probably have closer to 100 now. At one point I had a Japanese toy collection that was easily over 500 pieces, I maybe have 30 now. And yes, I know that 130 items right there blows the whole 100 personal items in a heartbeat, but that’s kind the path I’m trying to walk down. Slowly, but the intent is there.

But back to the point, maybe 100 is too tight which is why Dave had to make exceptions. Maybe 256 is more realistic. Or maybe 100 is realistic you just have to be seriously committed to it. I’m not sure, but I’m trying to make a list. If I could only keep 100 items what would those be, and what exceptions would I find myself making? I have a complete collection of Ark Diecast robots from the 70′s. They only made 8 of them. I have all 8. Are those 8 items, or is the collection one 1 item? I have a bike, that’s one item right, it’s not 2 wheels, 1 frame, 1 saddle, etc. Is a box of bike tools one item or is each tool an item? This is why it’s an interesting exercise. What would be on your list, and why?

I always wanted to be a rock star.

Not for the usual reasons including the endless supply of cash and groupies, but I suppose those wouldn’t be terrible perks. I mean, if I had to take the cash and the groupies I suppose I could go ahead and do that. The groupies at least, I wouldn’t want to disappoint them you know? That wouldn’t be a very nice thing to do so I guess I could go ahead and take the groupies. But now that I think of it if I was going to run with the whole endless supply of groupies, I should probably have some extra cash on hand for groupie related costs that might come up right? I’m sure groupies come with a whole sting of related costs that we non-rock stars never think about. Lets say you give out a few band t-shirts at the very least, those still have to be paid for by someone. And then there’s the settlements and abortions that no one wants to talk about, those aren’t cheap right? OK so just to be safe I should probably take the endless cash too, but really that is just to keep the groupies happy and I’d only be saying yes to the groupies to avoid getting the reputation of being a dick. If I was a rock star I’d definitely be the lover not the fighter kind. Well, maybe a little bit of a fighter, just for the reputation. A rock star has to have a reputation, thats where the legend will come from later on. So I’d be mostly a lover but a little bit of a fighter, just every once and a while, nothing excessive.

No, those aren’t the reasons I spent the majority of my youth dreaming of my unrealized rock star future. It was because rock stars can get away with writing anything. To be a good writer you have to give it everything you have. You have to spill all the gory details, sparing no pain or suffering. You have to lay your insides out for the world to judge and you can’t hold anything back. As a writer as soon as you start pulling punches you get boring and people know you are faking it and that is the end of it. The truly amazing writers leave no parts of their lives untouched and give everything they have to their stories. Bloody, sweaty, tearful. Goodness, badness, ugliness. Life, love, regret. If you want to be a writer that is worth a damn you have to open up and spill all of it. Think about the writers you enjoy reading and you’ll know just what I’m talking about. Writers are applauded for being frank and courageous by talking openly about their lives. No writer was ever celebrated for being coy and vague.

This is probably not unrelated to how much of a disaster many writers are on a personal level. Train wrecks. All of them. But that is what makes them interesting and compelling. Who wants to read a brutally honest story about what a perfect life someone has, free from any stress or confliction?

Fiction writers get off easy because they can blame anything on their characters. They can explore their deepest darkest secrets and call it an artistic experiment. This is good for readers because we end up with characters like Tyler Durden and Holden Caufield that we can all cheer on and blame our support on ‘enjoying a good story.’ Of course the best characters are just thinly veiled represntations of their authors and it’s not too hard, when you look at the rest of their lives, that much of Tyler’s rantings wouldn’t have been too out of place if Chuck had said them himself, and that if you talked to JG you could safely assume he thought you were a big phonie. This is great if you can write fiction. I can’t. I’ve tried and it’s freightening how bad I suck at it. I keep trying though and maybe someday I won’t suck so much but don’t hold your breath thinking you might read some of it someday. It’s pretty bad.

I’m much better at non-fiction, and at the autobiographical and self reflective non-fiction at that. The problem with this is as mentioned before, to be any good at that a writer needs to be brutally honest. Actually it’s not so much a problem, in fact it’s really the main draw to it for me. Writing has always been my own form of self therapy. And I say that as someone who has spent what is probably combined years worth of time in actual therapy. Talking about what I’m thinking and feeling and experiencing helps me understand what I’m thinking and feeling and experiencing. It’s almost like I can’t make heads of tails of it until I spell it out for myself. When I’ve done that in one of an endless string of psychologists offices it’s been helpful but I usually leave thinking it would have been more helpful, and less expensive, if I’d just written about it on my own. It’s amusing because I’m so cripplingly self conscious sometimes that I can’t walk down some metal roads verbally with people, but I can write about them and lay them out for the world to see without any hesitation. That was easy for me when I used to photocopy my writings and pass them out fanzine style, and it’s only easier now that I have a blog and the web as my distribution tools.

The hang up is I’m rarely thinking or feeling or experiencing anything on my own. Frequently there are other people involved in some way. And writing about anything that involved anyone else unintentionally drags them into it. I’ve always been aware of this and explicitly avoided speaking for anyone else in my writing. My writing is introspective, admittedly and to a fault sometimes, but it’s what keeps me sane. I’ve been pouring my heart out in text since as far back as I can remember and I know I’ll do it for the rest of my life, but I guess I just want to rack up as few casualties as I can along the way. Some people deserve to be casualties and while I’ve never intentionally outed anyone, if someone figured something out I probably wouldn’t jump to their defense. But that isn’t the thing that worries me, the thing that scares me are the unintentional casualties. Any experience you have with someone, chances are you have with many someones. At least in a general sense, so when writing about those things it’s too big a leap for more than one person to read it and sense a connection. But really, that’s a good thing right? If you read something and it evokes an emotional reaction of any kind then the writer has done their job well. This applies equally to people you know and people you don’t know. One of the things that reassures me about this is the comments and notes I get from people who I’ve never met in my life who say they relate to something I’ve written. I know I’m hitting a chord then. And so if people I don’t know are relating to things, you’re goddamn right people I do know will relate to them as well. And some will take it personally. And some will become unintentional casualties.

Maybe I’m just being a huge pussy about this and assuming people will expect the worst.

And if you think I’m talking about you, well… that’s kind of the point isn’t it?

Of course now I’ve built this up so much as if I have some scandalous thing to write about and I’m fearing fall out. I don’t and I’m not. It’s just kind of a general musing about how musicians kind of get a free pass on this one. They can write about anything and people will assume they are drawing from experiences throughout their lives, or from their friends experiences, or just flat making shit up. With writers people assume the experience is immediately relevant in their lives. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. I know I’ve written about thinks with 20 year hindsight, and I’ve written about things that happened yesterday.

Though not recently because I haven’t been writing shit. This is my mental drain-o.

“If you want to be in the right place at the right time, be in lots of places all the time.”

Nina was specifically talking about how this idea got her film into places she never would have thought to put it in on purpose which ended up working out great for her, but I think this applies to traveling frequently and widely as well. I often tell people that one of the benefits of me being all over the place all the time is that I have a really good idea what is happening in many places at any given time and I’m more likely to be able to make connections that I wouldn’t if I was more locked into one location. People often thing of Serendipity and Luck, and of being in the right place at the right time as total chance. Total chance you hope to have because they can produce some amazing results, but when you think about it, it’s not that difficult to game the odds – by being in more places on a regular basis, you chance of one of those being the right place at the right time goes way up. Sure, if you look at the hard math and statistics you are still only in one place at any given time so nothing should change, but in reality often these connections and “right time” don’t require something specific down to the minute. Frequently I’m talking to people and am able to refer to someone I met or a project I saw a week or two earlier in another city, that I never would have come across had I not been there myself.

Certainly people can tell you what is happening of note in any city at any given time, but that is different than just being there and walking around and seeing what jumps out at you. Some artwork on a wall, some fashion trend, a new store opening up. Or going to a location or an event and seeing who you run into, and what they tell you they are up to. These are things that are often deemed too insignificant on their own to be relayed to anyone other than those there at that particular moment. And having more of those particular moments in your bag of tricks that you can reference at any given moment gives you more dots to potentially connect.

I like this idea and want to write more about it, if you have any thoughts on it I’d love to hear them.

This is Vincennes. It’s a suburb just outside of Paris where the family and I are going to be based for the next few months. It’s actually a lovely area with a beautiful park and a castle with a moat but no lava or dragons in the moat which is kind of a rip off if you ask me but whatever. Point is it really is a quaint and charming area. I took that photo all for effect.

I wanted to get in a travel diary update before I bounced out to the next place, while we are technically “based” here till the end of August I’m flying out at the end of this week for 2 weeks back in the US in various cities. Tara and Ripley will still be here though, and her mom is coming to visit them so they won’t be alone or bored, but you know, being alone and stuck in a lovely 3rd floor apartment overlooking a part in Paris.. worse things could happen.

My Travel Diary posts have not been as frequent as I expected them to be, however I unfortunately can’t say it’s because I’ve so caught up in writing the book. That is even more neglected. Well, neglected in the ‘failing to contribute new and valid content to’ meaning of the word, not neglected in the ‘staring at it every day without typing anything and thinking about it nonstop while doing things other than staring at it without typing’ kind of way. I’d blame writers block, but it’s really just me sucking. I need to stop, and I will, just so far I’ve been busier on this trip than I’d expected to be. I haven’t been completely unproductive in the authorial sense, and in fact wrote a piece for BoingBoing about an all too brief trip to Dublin that I took last week which should be live before too long (I’ll link to it when it is) and I have been making a lot of notes of things to spend more time on. I think there’s going to end up being more narrative bits in it. Originally I was thinking it would be more 2nd person philosophical rambling, but I’m thinking some more first hand stories will find their way in there.

OK, enough writing about writing.

I’m liking Paris much more this trip than I have in the past. I actually enjoyed my last trip here too, but this time feels much more comfortable. Staying in an apartment rather than a hotel (thanks Harold!) gives a much more homely feel, in a good way. And being in Vincennes rather than directly in Paris is nice. It’s a neighborhood, and when I say Bonjour to the lady at the corner market she seems to remember that yesterday I was there buying something else from her. That wouldn’t happen in the city where 500 other tourists have passed through the doors in between my visits. Of course I stick out a little bit because of the tattoos and all, but people don’t seem to mind and it’s really nice to be remembered. That’s kind of the obsession part of localism anyway isn’t it? Finding the place not only where you think you fit in, but a place that thinks you fit in. Being remembered by a corner market shop keeper is a pretty good fitting in marker I think. And it hasn’t hurt walking through some parts of town that feel a bit like Los Angeles, parts I definitely wouldn’t have seen if I was in a hotel off a main drag.

Except LA doesn’t have as many man purses.

What I haven’t gotten use to is the super long days. It’s fully daylight out until 10pm and dusk for another hour after that. The deceiving part is places still close around 8pm and on several occasions I’ve though about running to the store before it gets too late only to realize it’s already 9:30pm and everything is already locked up for the night. This messes up my schedule even more because I’m used to working many hours into the evening, which if my body doesn’t think evening begins until almost midnight makes for some really late nights and it’s hasn’t been infrequent to wake up realizing it’s already noon. That said, this isn’t a horrible thing for many reasons, not the least of which is the afore mentioned next leg of this trip to NYC that begins in a few days. This staying up super late and sleeping in super late is actually pretty much on normal hours for New York, so I won’t really have any adjusting when I get there.

It’s taken me almost 3 hours to write this little bit since I keep getting distracted by e-mails and twitter and whatever else so I’m going to just cut it off and will hopefully have more success another time..

We are currently back in Los Angeles for a few day pit stop between the Singapore and Paris legs of this trip. The main reason for this stop over was so Ripley could see his doctor for his 4 month check up. Dude turns 4 months old today and is apparently healthy as sin and in the 95% sizewise or something like that. Point is he’s doing good so no worries. The secondary reason for the trip was to swap luggage – drop off some of the ‘super duper hot weather gear’ we brought to Singapore and pick up some of the ‘it gets a little colder at night’ gear we might need for Paris. But since this trip also include jaunts out to Dublin, New York*, Denver*, Las Vegas*, Toronto, Montreal and Costa Rica (*for me at least) it takes a little bit more thinking ahead of time. I’ve had a bunch of random thoughts and observations flying through my head but non seemed worthy of their own post so I thought maybe I just collect them into a big cornucopia of randomness in one shot. Like to hear it here it goes.

• This is the first time I’ve been to Los Angeles since moving here in 2001 that I didn’t have a place that was mine to “come home to” so to speak. We’re staying with friends, and I suspect that for the rest of my life I could always visit LA and stay with friends but doing so makes it feel like I’m visiting. And the feeling of visiting the place you think of as home is weird. To me anyway. I’ve talked about trying to figure out what home even is before, but for me it’s been Los Angeles. Not a specific place, just the city. Though without a specific place in it that is just mine, well it’s weird that’s all I can really say.
• Sort of continuing on that same thought, this is short term and I know it. Even though some people jumped to conclusions I never planned to move out of LA, and this trip is still just a trip. When the trip is over, the final leg of the flights will end at LAX – but it was stupid to keep paying rent while we were going to be out of town for most of the year. So when we get back we’ll find a new place. Originally where that place would be was up for discussion. I wanted east side, Tara wanted Venice. We decided we’d have to weigh out pros and cons and compromise, but every time we talk about it there seems to be less compromise and more “we’re just moving to Venice.” I won’t lie, I dreaded the thought of moving west, but Venice surprised me and there are many things about it that I really like, but I also know Silver Lake still feels very much like my neighborhood and I miss it. I don’t really have a point to this other than that I’ll probably have a Venice address again before the end of the year.
• Stuff I brought to Singapore and never once used: hooded sweatshirt, Jeans, beard clippers, cycling cap. Stuff I brought but used very very rarely: long sleeve dress shirts, long sleeve zip up t-shirt thingy. Stuff I brought multiples of that I probably could have brought a few less of: socks, underwear, cameras, headphones. Stuff I brought and used all the time and could have used more of: short sleeve Ben Sherman shirts. Stuff I brought and used but probably won’t take on the next leg: Clever Coffee Maker, baseball hat, big ass suitcase. Stuff I didn’t take on the last leg but will probably take on this next one: Hario V60. Stuff I didn’t have but wished I did: a Bike.
• Speaking of the clever coffee maker vs the Hario v60. The CCM has it’s charms for sure, but I just could never get it dialed in just right. I was messing with grind size, messing with brew time, remessing with both of those and I just never felt like I had it right. With the V60 I’ve never felt like I had it wrong. It’s also smaller, so I’ll be swapping that out this time around. Bringing the V60 does present a little problem in that for it to really shine you need to use a slow drip kettle, like this one. I have one here in LA, but it’s really not good for traveling because it’s big and the spout is delicate and long… I just know that something is going to happen to it while it’s in my suitcase. I looked all over and there isn’t a more travel friendly version out there. There really should be. you’d think somewhere in my network of friends would be some industrial designer who could whip something up for me. Yeah, me too.

• I’ve been failing on my writing goals, but also failing on my reading goals. This is likely because I “worked” a lot more in Singapore than I was expecting to. Lots of meetings. There are fewer people in Paris that I’ll need to meet with every day so I hope to make up for the slacking of the last month.
• Some friends were telling me the story of how some delivery guys moved the wrong thing in their house the other day and accidentally broke about $10,000 worth of crystal that they’d had for some 20+ years. It was heartbreaking for the obvious reasons, but times had changed and that isn’t the kind of thing they’d spend money on these days and really only had for sentimental reasons. Now that it was forcefully removed from their lives, they both sad to see it go but had no intention of trying to replace it. This is interesting and fits right into what I’ve talked about in regards to stuff and how it ends up owning you. As long as we have it we fight for it and defend it and keep it with us all both physically and mentally, and that is hard to get away from and the thought of opting out of that is very difficult (would you just give away everything you had or could you find reasons to keep this or that?) yet when their feelings didn’t play into it, when they had no choice, when it was just gone, it was kind of a relief to them. I know people who have had their houses broken into and felt the same thing -stuff that was taken, that they never would have given away, they didn’t want to replace after the fact. I’ve felt the same thing, things I lost when my first marriage ended, that I didn’t think I could live without, once I realized I could, I didn’t want to replace them.

  This all makes me think about the stuff I still have and that I’ve been clinging on to. If it was gone tomorrow how much of it would I feel the need to replace? That is really hard to say objectively and abstractly, but honestly if every single book I have was just gone tomorrow I’d be really bummed, but I probably wouldn’t replace a single one of them. Same goes for DVDs. There are some CDs I have that I actually worked on that I think I’d have to get copies of again for my own archives, but not really because I ever listen to them in that format anymore. What about clothes? In talking about that previous discussion another friend was talking about travel and luggage, and how lost luggage means lost clothing, and even if the airlines pay to replace what is lost, they are replacing “2 t-shirts and a pair of pants” not “that t-shirt that I bought in Japan and when I saw that band play and is cut just right” or “those jeans I’ve had for 10 years and that fit me just perfectly and I love like a stepchild.” Part of my whole ‘uniform’ thoughts on clothing means I don’t have those attachments – yes I do have a box of t-shirts that were given to me at some point and mean something to me, but I never wear them. The clothes I wear are more utilitarian and replicateable. I can buy Dickies pants anywhere. Short sleeve plaid shirts are classic and ubiquitous. So while I would of course need to replace lost clothing because I don’t think walking around naked forever is a good idea, I don’t think I’d miss those “specific” articles.

• I didn’t really trim my beard the whole time I was in Singapore and it’s getting a bit scary. I kind of hate it, but at the same time am hesitant to chop it off because I’ve got a whole month put into it so far. It’s actually itchy and annoying and I don’t really like what I look like with it. What the hell is my problem?

Clearly I’ve diverged into just rambling and since it’s almost 2am now I’m calling it a night. Will keep chewing on the above thoughts, we’ll see where they lead.

For me, this started a few years ago when some friends and I started sketching up the idea of Multibasing, specifically this part about hardware. The Multibasing think tank, as it were, was talking about what items we’d need to replicate in each of the locations. What are those things that everyone has but has little use for, that we’d be better off with just one that we all had access to. Do 6 people who are somewhat sharing a living space all need to own the same book? Like most of the Multibasing plans this never ended up happening, but it led to a lot of very thought provoking discussions among our group and bits and pieces of the overall idea have been realized in different ways.

One of the people who helped me shape those ideas was Micki Krimmel. She had the idea that it was pointless for her to go buy something when her friends had that same thing sitting unused at their house. Take a ladder for example – In most cases 99% of it’s life will be spent sitting in a closet or garage waiting for someone to use it. I actually owned a ladder when I lived in Gainesville, I bought it because I needed to get something out of a tree. I used it once, then moved it around for 3 years from apartment to apartment but never used it again, finally I gave it away. During that time I know many friends who had a need for a ladder and went and bought their own, only for it to suffer the same fate. Micki noted that if we’d all known who had a ladder and who needed one, we probably have just borrowed it instead of each person buying a new one.

This is a genius idea because of it’s simplicity, OF COURSE borrowing is better. It saves money, which can then be spent on things that are actually needed. It reduces the demand for an item, which means fewer of them will be sitting around unused at peoples houses, which means fewer of them will eventually get thrown out and end up in landfills. It makes things more useful, which means things that are designed to serve a purpose actually get used for that purpose. It reduces excess, there simply doesn’t need to be 10 copies of an item when one single item can be shared by 10 people just as effectively.

The problem is organizing who already has what, and what is available to be loaned out. Last year Micki launched Neighborgoods.net to deal with that problem specifically. It’s a quick and easy tool to list what you have that you are willing to share with your friends, and see what your friends have that you can use. Have a power drill sitting in your closet unused? List it on Neighborgoods and next week your friend might borrow it from you rather than buying their own, which would just end up unused in their own closet. Need a backpack for a trip? Check Neighborgoods and see if any of your friends have an extra one you can borrow rather than going out and buying one you only have a short need for. Because in most cases if you are going to borrow something from a friend, they probably need to live near you, the launch of this service was limited to Southern California. We were the lucky ones.

Since then she and the Neighborgoods team have been constantly tweaking, fixing, and upgrading the site. Talking to the users and finding out what works and what doesn’t and making it easier to use and offering better options. Want to share something only with a small subset of your connections? No problem. Want to make a group for new parents to pass around baby stuff that gets outgrown while it still has plenty of use left? Done. Have something you aren’t using, and probably won’t use that you just want to give away or maybe even sell? Got that covered too. Of course you could do all of these things before in various different ways, but they were all time consuming and daunting Do you really want to call 25 friends to see who has an umbrella you can borrow for your weekend trip to Portland? It’s easier just to go to the store and buy one for yourself. But Neighborgoods makes it easier to borrow instead.

Neighborgoods has been refined and perfected over the last year, and now it’s available nationwide.

I’m not just being exaggeratory here, I firmly believe that Neighborgoods will change the world. This is a world changing service. The best products/services/ideas are the ones that make your life easier – they shave you time, they save you money, they save you hassle. Neighborgoods does those all of those things while at the same time reducing the amount of waste we will generate that will end up in landfills. It saves you from buying things you don’t need, and lets the things you already have be put to better use.

But it also allows us to be social within our neighborhoods again. There was a time when people actually walked next door to borrow a cup of sugar from their neighbors. Nowadays most people don’t even know what their neighbors names are. Neighborgoods allows you to share your stuff with only your friends, and/or also with people who live near you. Our society is increasingly told not to talk to strangers -but everyone is a stranger until you have a reason to meet them. Neighborgoods makes it OK to be friends with the people who live near you again. It’s not just good for your wallet, for your storage problems, for the environment, it’s actually good for society as a whole. I whole heartedly believe this, and I’m so excited for and proud of what they are doing and I can’t wait to see where it goes from here. People launch sites and products every day, but few of them have the ability to impact your life for the better as much as Neighborgoods does. If you live in SoCal you probably already know this. If you live somewhere else in the US, this just changed your life and you don’t even know it yet – go sign up now.

(or watch this video, then sign up)

Watch This Intro Video! from sparky rose on Vimeo.

It actually makes a tangible difference in the overall health of our communities.

Which of these problems people have often comes from their approach – are they trying to make something cool or are they trying to make a business. Not that there is anything wrong with either of those approaches, and in fact both should be on your mind, but one without the other will lead to one of the above problems, and one of those problems is definitely better to have than the other. People often confuse this with the “build it and they will come” idea which isn’t really reliable because some people think “it” can be anything, but really “it” needs to be something awesome for that to work. Most people aren’t awesome product factories so there are other aspects that need to be considered.

“Would I want to use thing?” is a fantastic question to ask yourself. I asked an entrepreneur that the other day about the product they were pitching me on and it stopped him cold, he thought about it, and then told me he wasn’t really the person he was building it for and it would be much more helpful to a different kind of person. I don’t need to tell you anything else about that other than that and you should know it’s likely going to fail because the guy isn’t invested in his own product. He’s not trying to solve a problem he is having, he’s trying to solve a problem he thinks someone else is having. Really it’s a solution without a problem. And while it might have positive numbers in all the right places in the business plan, if no one ever uses it.. ? Well, you get the idea.

I think in a lot of situations people have this idea of getting everything perfect before they launch so drilled into their heads that they lose sight of the original idea. At some point they thought of this product and thought it might be fun or useful or cool for people, or might make their own lives easier and decided to get it built. But along the way they got more focused on the finances and exactly how much they will make from each user and by the end what they’ve built isn’t fun or useful or cool and doesn’t make anyones life easier. It doesn’t matter if you will make $100 from every user every month if only 1 out of ever 10,000 people to your site signs up, and you only get 10 people to your site a day. See the problem?

Conversely if you make something cool, something that people find useful and that makes their lives easier, they will use it and they will tell their friends to use it. Having thousands upon thousands of people going to your site or using your product is great even if you don’t know how to capitalize from that, because that allows you room to figure it out. Doing tests on an existing audience is easy, not so much the other way around.

It’s because of this I’ve been telling people to stop worrying about perfection, get their produce out there and see if people find it useful, if they don’t, what changes can be made to make it useful? Tweak, tweak, tweak until it makes sense to the users – then figure out where the cash is. If it doesn’t make sense to the users, well, time for a new idea.

The first 30 days of this journey find us in Singapore once again. I’ve been here several times over the last year though Tara hasn’t been here since the first “guided tour” trip that brought us here last September. Because of that I’ve seen a bit more of the real Singapore and she’s had nothing but that “one office building to the next” viewpoint to go on, I was hoping to change that a bit with this trip. Because of the work I’m doing with Neoteny Labs and HackerspaceSG I expect to spend some time here every few months at least so it can only help to have a better grasp of the territory.

I originally thought Chinatown was going to be culture filled bastion away from the overly clean and sterile majority of the country, but having spent a bit of time there I don’t find it to be that different from any other Chinatown in any other city. Maybe a few more temples and street vendors, but for the most part it’s not too new. What I do find new, and admittedly this could just be because of my lack of experience with these cultures, but I really enjoy the Arab Street area. The hackerspace is located just off Arab St and we’re hoping to get the offices for Neoteny Labs there too.

People told me the food there would be the draw but really that’s just a small piece of it, because shockingly there isn’t a ton of veggie options there. There is an all vegan spot called Living Greens but as you might guess from the name it’s a little more on the hippie tip, but it’s good for sure. There is a lot of middle eastern food around, but nothing that really jumps out to me as amazing. My friend Bassel from Syria says not only is it not stand out, it’s not even good enough to be considered a reasonable attempt. But it’s a quieter area with a lot of shops selling colorful fabrics and cafes with tables spilling out onto the sidewalk where people hang out eating and drinking coffee (or what is called kopi here, which is really the furthest thing from coffee) all day which makes it pretty comfortable. And it gets better at night when the sun goes down and the breeze picks up and the smell of hookas is in the air. There is also a mosque there which broadcasts the call to prayer a few times a day which just adds to the atmosphere and even though I’m not religious at all makes it feel pretty welcoming. This is also the area of town where the graffiti artists have opened up street wear shops so it has that going for it as well. Of all the streets in the area, Arab St is actually the largest and most traffic filled which makes it the least cool to hang out on.Brassorah St and Haji Lane are much better, Haji especially which is basically a walking street that is barely wide enough for one car to drive down, and at night it’s so full of people hanging out on pillows and folding chairs it’s definitely foot traffic only.

Anyway, that is Arab St. There are people dressed in traditional middle eastern robes with big beards hanging out next to Singaporian hipsters and hackers. I love it.

Where I have been finding good food is Little India, which probably isn’t surprising at all. There are tons of South Indian and “pure vegetarian” spots which have more than enough to fill my belly. I’ve been eating tons of idly recently thanks to this. And a gang of dosas. One of the first nights in town Tara and I walked through Little India with Ripley to meet some friends for dinner at a little half gallery, half cafe, half community center called Post Museum (where I had an awesome soy, almond, date smoothie thingy) and she said it was definitely the closest thing to India she’d ever seen outside of India, but noted that even in that it was a lot cleaner. And in Singaporian standards it’s not really that clean. It’s definitely packed with character and there are people hanging out on the corners and curbs and parks at all hours but given that it is Singapore you can walk down dark alleys with not much concern. And it’s one of the few places in central city you can see cats and dogs walking around which I think is kind of a good thing.

I’ve been spending a lot of time working and bouncing between meetings in assorted university and governmental buildings but we did get a chance to break from the norm and head about 10 minutes away by taxi to the Bukit Timah nature reserve the other day and saw monkeys all over the place. It’s easy to forget sometimes, when traveling from one air conditioned mall filled with Rolex and Timberland shops to another airconditioned mall filled with Adidas and Starbucks shops via their air conditioned underground tunnel, that we are kind of in a jungle right on the equator. Going out to the nature reserve was a good reminder of that, and while we didn’t really go hiking or anything like that, having monkeys all over the place – around you, above you – is the kind of thing that you could never experience in North America. You don’t always realize those things until they smack you in the face, almost literally.

I brought my biggest suitcase with me on this trip, a large size zero halliburton which I previously used to transport artwork in. I thought it was indestructible. I was wrong. All three of the big metal clasps that keep it closed were ripped the hell off somewhere between LA and here which means I won’t be returning with it and need to find a replacement. I’m thinking of getting something one size smaller both to make it easier to travel with as well as to help restrict the things I bring with me. It’s been two weeks and there are a few things I brought that I haven’t touched and obviously didn’t need to bring, as well as a few things sitting in LA that I wish I had. We checked out some of the luggage shops in the larger malls and they are really pricey, which I don’t mind because I need something that can withstand a lot of use, but we’re going to check out this other place called Mustafa as well which I’ve been told can have all kinds of hidden deals. Either way I’ll likely be picking up a new suitcase in the next week or two so I’ll let you know what I decide on when I get it.

The sun is starting to go down which is my que to get mobile and head out for some kind of adventure so I’m going to wrap this up here. Let me know if you like these kind of diary posts, I kind of enjoy putting it all down on paper but I’m not sure if it’s interesting to anyone besides me.