Trade #1: Staff shirt for memory card

It was my last day at camp, and no one else was around who might want my shirt. No one even wears the same size shirt as me. This could make things difficult. But luckily, the ever faithful Emma was talking up the trading up business. She'd already traded her shirt (with me, for my worm farm; hence why I was then able to trade her shirt instead of mine) and was probably trying to get rid of the worm farm (which, if you are not careful, spills liquids during vehicle transit). I overheard her discussing the matter with Chris, one of the kitchen staff. I leapt into the conversation and demanded, probably far too over-excitedly, to know whether he was interested in trading up and what did he have to offer. I think our enthusiasm for the mission was contagious because he ran off to his room to find something. Either that or he was looking for an escape. But he returned and brought back a headlamp and a memory card. He said he didn't know what was on the card, but his tone and facial expression led me to believe that the contents may be somewhat sketchy. I decided to take the risk and went for the card. My first trade! What a success. Not only did I manage to get rid of a potentially difficult to trade item, I got something much smaller and easier to carry around for future trading. AND the extra bonus of some mystery content. What more could you want?

Where it all began

Somewhere, somehow, in some conversation, Emma and I decided that we needed to Trade Up. Inspired by the guy who started with a paperclip and ended up with a house, we wanted to see where trading up could take us.

What is Trading Up? You start with an item. You trade it for something of higher value. You trade that for something better. You trade that for something even better. And so on. See what you end up with, what kind of people you meet along the way. It is not a journey for the faint of heart.

We started out with our Great Aussie Bush Camp staff shirts, and so far we have each made one trade, mysteriously using the exact same shirt. Whoever receives this shirt in a trade becomes automatically obligated to start Trading Up. By being the recipient of The Shirt That Started It All, you accept the terms and conditions that actually have yet to be formalized, but pretty much it means you've joined a club of crazy people trying to trade stuff for better stuff.

This blog will be a record of our trading up mission, and hopefully somehow I'll become an excellent writer in the meantime and be as awesome as Danny Wallace. If you've never heard of him, then you have some reading to do. Get off your ass and go find a copy of Yes Man. And Join Me. Yes, right now. Go!

You can follow Emma's progress at Trading Up... A Healthy Hobby.

The cool thing about doing cool stuff like trading cool stuff (or not so cool stuff for cooler stuff) (and couch surfing) (is it grammatically correct to have multiple sets of brackets adjacent to one another?) (I doubt it) is that you come across interesting things and meet interesting people. Like James Nash. What a legend. But when I found the guy who turned his paperclip into a house, I also found Who are these guys? which is random but entertaining.

So there you go. You never know what kind of random encounters might enrich your life. Maybe you could win and lose 25 thousand pounds in the same day. Maybe you'll have somewhere to put your head for the night so you don't have to sleep in the car, again.

The possibilities are endless. Say yes. Trade up.

And I'm serious about Danny Wallace. Go read his books.