May 6, 2007
What would you save?
- Alive Not Dead archive
After watching Finishing the Game at the Los Angeles VC Asian Am Film Festival and talking to some filmmakers, I drove back to San Francisco to do my final preparation to return to Hong Kong on late Sunday night. Before my drive to LA, I loaded the trunk of my car with four small legal boxes full of personal items… stuff that I wanted to put into storage at my Dad’s place which I could eventually retrieve whenever (who knows when?) I return to live in the United States. I’m selling or giving EVERYTHING else away. Yup… that means I needed to consolidate ALL of my previous belongings into four small boxes.
It was pretty painful, but I guess refreshing to get rid of everything else. Kind of forces you to think about all of the money and time you waste on material belongings – those nice pieces of furniture and clothes really mean nothing – i didn’t save nearly ANYTHING of those. I even threw away those old t-shirts and baseball caps that I’ve kept since middle school – a Depeche Mode t-shirt from the Violator tour in 1989, the first jacket I ever bought with my own money in 1990, my pledge trainer t-shirt from APhiO back in college… Nostalgic stuff…
I also had to let go of nearly ALL of my DVDs, books, and CDs/cassette tapes. Threw away my original copies of music and movies which I previously couldn’t live without… I figure all media is digital anyways now… Being a movie guy (see Rotten Tomatoes), I felt compelled to save the following DVDs – not necessary the BEST movies, but movies which console me when times are tough:
- My most precious DVD item: The complete collection of Studio Ghibli works
- Yi Yi
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless MInd
- Swingers
- Moulin Rouge
- The Graduate
And, of course, I saved all of those letters and photos that I’ve accumulated over the years – nearly everything from high school and college and very little from after that – has EVERYTHING moved online with email and digital photos?
What would you save?