"I'm going to California..."

Listening: You take your number and you stand in line. And they watch to see how high you're gonna climb. Pat on the back 'n' better luck next time. It ain't nothin', no it ain't nothin' but a Heartbreak Town. What's my problem? "Tomorrow" can't come soon enough. I seem to remember when I was a kid, a game that I used to play called "I'm going to California..." What the game entails is that you sit around in a circle with a bunch of friends, and the first person would say, "I'm going to California. And I'm going to bring... [insert item here]." Then, the next person would say, "I'm going to California. And I'm going to bring [insert item here] and [person 1's item]." This would continue until the person could no longer recall in order the items of the other players. I know. It seems like kind of a weak game, but I think I played this in first grade, and sometimes, people brought giraffes with them to California. Anyhow, I was thinking about this game, for some strange reason, as I was walking to work. From there, my mind drifted to what I would bring with me when I finally end up leaving the country for the extended amount of time that I'm looking to leave for. What would I bring? What would you bring? Now, assuming that I only have one normal sized suitcase (that has to be checked), and one backpack, and assuming that I will automatically be carrying my passport, my visas, my wallet, the clothes on my back, the shoes on my feet, and my unlocked cell phone, this is what I would bring: 1. My computer & hard drive - I really don't know what I would do without my laptop. It's my way of keeping connected to people I don't get to see on a regular basis. It's my media storage. It's my jukebox. It's the way I can make sure that people know where I am and what I'm doing. 2. My knife kit - I mean, if I'm trying to live abroad, I'm going to have to find a job. I might as well have my tools to help me put my best foot forward. Hundreds of dollars of knives, spoons and tools, though it won't impress someone on the other side of the world, the can most definitely help me do what I know how to do. 3. My 3 pairs of Jeans - I own more than three pairs of jeans, but I have three pairs that fit me perfectly. They're good denim and they've been hemmed to the perfect length. I feel like I would have a hard time describing the right fit of a good pair of jeans to someone in Mandarin. 4. My Smartwool socks - Amazing socks like these are desperately hard to find out of the country, and again, I wouldn't know how to describe them in Mandarin. 5. A couple of books - I would at least bring Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. It's a book that I can read over and over without getting bored of it. I think that I would also bring Ernest Hemingway's, In Our Time or The Complete Short Stories. Hemingway was an expat for a good period of time, and he wrote extensively about his time abroad. Maybe it would inspire me to create a continuous narrative about my time away from the culture I grew up in. 6. My digital camera - How else am I going to record some of the debauchery I get into? 7. Hoot - My little owl traveling companion. 8. Some chef clothes - You can't depend on the idea that restaurants in other parts of the world provide linens for their workers. Come to think of it, that's all that I really think I need to bring with me aside from random clothing. Everything else, I could probably get wherever I end up. Anyhow, that's what I was thinking about for the better part of the day.