I got a really cool gift the other week. My best friend, Dr. Romulo Babasa III, a great Filipino, got me an iPod Shuffle as part of what I would now be referring to as his Random Acts of Kindness Program. He said it was a “thank you” present for the wedding website I made for him, but that’s a lie because I already got paid in chips and cheese dips for that deal.
I would have to confess that I really do love the little gadget and actually did realize that I was partially in denial when I said that I didn’t need an mp3 player. I love how I can now instantly block off hearing stupid conversation from passengers inside the bus when I ride home. And on top of that, the iPod plays music too.
Honestly, on my own I would never have bought an mp3 player, mainly because apart from it being expensive, I already own an old disk man that I bought with my very first salary. But heck, let’s face it, these days walking around with a disk man is more or less the 80s equivalent of carrying around a large gray stereo cassette player on your shoulder with that song that goes “Won’t You Take Me to Funky Town” playing loudly in the background.
Actually, I think when everyone else started listening to music on CDs, I was still one of those people who still stacked cassette tape albums. My first CD player was actually my first computer that had a CD ROM drive. So when I finally got my own diskman, I loved how I could carry around my CDs and listen to them while in transit. I would bring my favorite albums with me in my bag, bring extra batteries, and just enjoy the ride. With mp3 players I know that sounds silly now, but back then to me it was like magic.
I suppose I am the kind of guy that would hold on to outdated gadgets mainly because they still serve the specific purpose I bought them for. It was part of the “if it ain’t broke, then use it” up bringing I had with my parents (a rule that unfortunately applied even to school pants. In my fifth grade, I had outgrown my old school pants so much that people think for the entire school year I was doing Michael Jackson impersonations).
My family just wasn’t into new technology. Back then, when I wanted to rent movies, it wasn’t an issue of whether the video shop had the title I wanted, it was more of whether they still had it in the format I needed. Sony wasn’t kidding when they named that unit “Super Betamax”. I think we had that thing until the shops totally rented everything in VHS or VCDs, and young video store clerks started saying, “What in god’s name is a betamax tape!?!”
That’s where my “if it still gets the job done, why not” attitude. In spite the teasing I get sometimes, I still take calls on my old and outdated mobile phone. I actually push it and toy with people when I sometimes pretend I take pictures with my Nokia 3315. I already own an old 2 mega pixel digital camera, and like how people dig the artsy fartsy pictures I took using it. So I don’t need a fusion of the two units in one. I know it can be fun sometimes, but personally, I think installing a camera on a phone is in the same category as an electric toothbrush or solar panels on a flashlight.
I’m not resisting technology, I mean, how could you when they force you to upgrade sometimes by discontinuing product support or compatibility. In fact, I am constantly being amazed at how things keep on getting smaller and better. But when it starts becoming a fad is when I start to snicker at how marketing has once again triumphed over the average consumer.
But this new toy I have, my 1 gigabyte iPod Shuffle, I love it to bits! Some people might think I sold out, but I don’t mind the fact that if you walk around malls, you can actually count how many people have earplugs on listening to their own iPods. I figured it’s still way better than its 80’s equivalent.
But then again that isn’t always the case.
The other day while I was ridding the bus home, I saw another dude who had his iPod on and was bobbing his head in beat to the rap music he was listening to. I know its rap because every once in a while, he would suddenly start rapping out lines in this horrible Visayan meets “The Hood” accent. There is something about Ebonics and Asians that just doesn’t sit right with me.
I know how some people can really get carried away when listening to their favorite music. And I know how listening to music via earphones has the tendency to trick the mind into thinking that everybody else around you is drowned in the same amount of decibels as you are. For instance, how many times have you seen idiots in record stores previewing CDs in headphones singing along loudly to albums?
But what fascinates me is that it doesn’t take a lot of brain power to override that, does it? Before you put the headphones on, you actually have a simple choice between quietly enjoying your music and looking like a totally annoying jackass in public.
Anyway, the dude in the bus continued to rap out loud that an irritated elderly passenger about a few seats away literally walked towards him and told him to put a sock into it. I couldn’t hear what the rapper dude’s response was from where I was sitting, but I could almost imagine it was something like, “Yo Pops! You’ve gotta talk louder y’all! I can’t hear you! I’ve gots my iPod on!”
