traveling and a brand new checklist

I frequently visit family in China, and this  year there's no difference. I will lose access to Youtube, blogger, twitter, facebook essentially all my social network. In exchange I get a glimpse of the unusual life of netizens in China. To be honest, it does not bother me in the short term. Internet has enabled much collaboration and information access between China and the rest of the world. It's truly an enabler despite that many may argue about its shortfalls and imperfection.

WeChat, QQ Tencent, Ren Ren, Sina Weibo... these are the technologies that get Chinese to chatter and share their thoughts.

For me, it really does not make a difference. I am mostly a visitor any where. it's like traveling to any other country, a visitor is there to observe absorb, and may be not in one day wishing to change all the technical landscape.

This time though, as I am packing the usual, I choose to have an unusual checklist:

1. jQuery codes
2. Handlebars
3. Underscore
4. jQuery books in ebook or Kindle format for easy traveling
5. JavaScript books, ebook and kindle
6. Ruby OOP books, ebook and kindle
7. Rails installer
8. Git enabled, and all dependency enabled computer

Yes, I am getting my local machine ready with source codes, books, and libraries so that i can continue to develop on my local no matter where I travel. I still bring my laptop and many gifts for relatives. But for the first time, my laptop has endless possibilities despite slower and more limited internet.