The power of suction


While I was buying varnish for my stool on the weekend, I also bought two plastic bags.

I’m sure, reader, that you are reaching for the smelling salts, so overcome by the excitement of this tale that it’s a struggle not to faint on the spot. But still, your overbeating heart – things are going to only get more amazing.

More amazing than plastic bags, you say, sceptically. But yes indeed – these were two enormous plastic bags, with ziploc seals on one end, and one way valves on the other. I stuffed as many of my clothes into each bag as would fit, closed the seal, and then tried to roll the bags up.

They bulged like cheap balloons and I thought there would be an embarrassing episode where they exploded and woke the kids before I could flee Singapore, but after a short pause there was a whooshing noise as the air left through the valve, and instead of a plastic bag full of clothes, I had a plastic bag full of clothes and no air. This had a reassuring solidity, like a sartorial cosh, and was also about half the size of what I’d started packing.

Thrilled, I stuffed the two plastic bags into the enormous backpack my wife gave me for our anniversary last year, and went to the airport.

I now have a way to compact the clothes that I’m carrying with me on trips. There are still two flaws: expunging the air doesn’t do much for the weight of the clothes (I guess that mix of 20% oxygen, 70% nitrogen and a bunch of other stuff doesn’t weight much) so my backpack is still excruciatingly heavy after you add laptop, charging cables, noise cancelling headphones, paperback novel, etc etc … and rolling and compressing the clothes in a vacuum doesn’t exactly save on wrinkles.

But since the hotel I’m staying in keeps a close guard on its stock of irons, rather than leaving them in the bedrooms for guests to profligately iron things, and because at past midnight local time I hardly want to go down to the front desk to request clothes-flattening devices, I have wrinkly clothes. But I also have a sweater to wear over the top of my shirt. The collar isn’t too bent, so ta-da! I think I have a more efficient way to travel.

Today I got up about 6am and worked or took taxis to meetings or took taxis away from meetings until now, so that was a 16 hour day. I have nothing else to say about it, other than I want to sleep. And to think last year, I was capable of exercising in my hotel room…buying varnish for my stool on the weekend


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