I’m a big fan of top fives, and here are the five things that have made my expat life much easier:

1. A Good Home Media Center

My current tour has been a bit rough: we didn’t have internet for six months and the city doesn’t offer much in the way of entertainment (no movies, few restaurants, and no cultural anything). With our UAB taking 2 months and our HHE 5, boy was I glad that I had all of my movies on a hard drive. I used MacTheRipper and HandBrake to rip my DVDs to .mkv files (at about 1.5GB a piece) and threw those onto a Maxtor 1TeraByte Drive that came with me on the plane. I’ve just added a new Mac Mini to the mix that will serve those movies, my iTunes, and all of my photos and I bought an ElGato eyeTV so I can “Tivo” AFN shows. Best part is that you can bring it all with you in your carry on when you PCS – so you have lots of entertainment the moment you arrive at post.

2. Man’s best friend: A Hammer Drill

I’m convinced that the U.S. is the only country in the world where balloon-frame housing is the norm. Everywhere else, you’re looking at masonry, which makes it tough to hang things up. GSO has limited time and I like things done just so. Enter my plug-in Dewalt hammer drill. It’s plug-in and 110V, but it works fine with a GSO-supplied 2000W transformer. Grab some nice carbide bits and work gloves and you’re good to go.

3. A decent point-and-shoot camera

I like photography, and I’ve definitely drooled over some of the nicer DSLRs out there, but let’s face it – carrying around a big camera reduces the number of pictures you take of everyday situations. After a lot of research, I decided on a Panasonic Lumix. It’s small enough to fit in your pocket but still takes some great pictures and has a 10x optical zoom (with a nice Leica lens). The two negatives are that you can’t control the f-stop or the ISO. Other than that, we get some great photos – both in normal situations and in places like Giza or Leptis Magna. Bonus? The photos are super high resolution so you can take a picture of receipts and travel documents while you’re traveling so you don’t have to bring a scanner along. I’ve also taken pictures of maps so I could consult them by zooming in on the photo rather than pulling out a big sheet of paper.

4. Home brewing supplies

I’m currently posted to the Middle East with no alcohol on the local market and no commissary – meaning home brewing is necessary to stay sane. Frankly, if you’re in to variety, it probably pays to learn some home brewing for most posts (save some places in EUR). I’d recommend visiting Midwest Brewing Supplies for the basics (get a few EZ-bottles, a Better Bottle Carboy, and a wort cooler after decide you don’t mind brewing). I’ve gotten into it just to taste my favorite beers from back home. The book Beer Captured gives pretty good approximations of some of my favorite beers and is a good place to start.

5. GrandCentral, now Google Voice

A lot of people like Skype. As much as I love my computer, I like to move around when I’m on the phone. We’ve had good luck with Vonage, but I started getting in to GrandCentral a year or two ago. It’s useful: a permanent number that let’s me screen calls and redirect them to whatever number I have when I’m in the US – so it rings my cell phone or home phone (and office phone, if you like). Now that Google has taken over, voicemails get transcribed and emailed to you within minutes. So far, it doesn’t link to foreign numbers, but it’s been nice to put on calling cards and the like. You can send SMS messages from your computer, sync your phone book, and have custom voice messages for each caller. Using it with Vonage has been perfect and it looks to be getting better with the change in management.

What do you use that makes life easier?