Strange as it may seem to my gadget loving friends - Eddie and Steve, you know who you are - I have never owned an MP3 player, until a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure why, when I think about it, but there it is. So I decided to open the door and now I can't believe what I was missing. Now the proud possessor of a mint green iPod nano, I listen to it all the time and have to remember not to sing out loud and dance along when I'm in public places - or at work early in the morning. Then again, what the hell!
Chris is not an MP3 sort of a guy, but he has been seduced by the MacBook Air (http://www.apple.com/macbookair/) - Apple's latest laptop which is as thin as a New York socialite, and just possibly slightly lighter at under 1.5 kilos.
As it happens, I am writing this post listening to music on my PC - another revelation! Current favourite is Duffy. I had forgotten what a powerful influence music is on mood, and on memory. Listening to some songs brings back the moments that I associate with them so strongly that I feel as if I am right back there in the moment. I can't listen to Paul Simon singing "Diamonds on the soles of her shoes", Roberta Flack singing "The first time ever I saw your face" or Everything but the girl singing "Tougher than the rest" without being transported back in time. Magic.
Other favourites: anything from the dance scenes in Dirty Dancing, Peter Gabriel "The book of love", the Corries and the Proclaimers. You can take the girl out of Scotland...........................................
Why not share your favourites? All you have to do is leave a comment.
Mercifully, I took the iPod with me to Malacca last weekend. I say "mercifully" because the trip - all of 290 km - took almost 6 hours each way. Almost half the time was spent in the queue for border controls - out of Singapore and into Malaysia. So, was it worth it? Just about. Malacca is both a town and a state - one of the oldest in Malaysia. It was originally a sultanate (as some of the Malaysian states still are) and a very prosperous trading port. Malacca was ruled by the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries and many of the public buildings were built during this time. We stayed in a small hotel in the historic heart, close to Chinatown, which had been converted from an original Peranakan house. Regular readers may remember previous references to the Peranakan culture in the blog - Peranakans are the descendants of the very early Chinese immigrants to Malaysia. At the time, it was illegal for Chinese women to leave China which meant that male emigrants had to marry non-Chinese women and so Peranakans were born.
Another connection to a previous post (the one about mangoes) is Alfonso de Albuquerque, who was there in the early 16th century. Malacca seems to have spent much of its past being occupied by one European nation or another; we were a greedy lot in those days, weren't we?
This weekend we are resting up, catching up and - in my case - listening to music. Have a good one.
Chris is not an MP3 sort of a guy, but he has been seduced by the MacBook Air (http://www.apple.com/macbookair/) - Apple's latest laptop which is as thin as a New York socialite, and just possibly slightly lighter at under 1.5 kilos.
As it happens, I am writing this post listening to music on my PC - another revelation! Current favourite is Duffy. I had forgotten what a powerful influence music is on mood, and on memory. Listening to some songs brings back the moments that I associate with them so strongly that I feel as if I am right back there in the moment. I can't listen to Paul Simon singing "Diamonds on the soles of her shoes", Roberta Flack singing "The first time ever I saw your face" or Everything but the girl singing "Tougher than the rest" without being transported back in time. Magic.
Other favourites: anything from the dance scenes in Dirty Dancing, Peter Gabriel "The book of love", the Corries and the Proclaimers. You can take the girl out of Scotland...........................................
Why not share your favourites? All you have to do is leave a comment.
Mercifully, I took the iPod with me to Malacca last weekend. I say "mercifully" because the trip - all of 290 km - took almost 6 hours each way. Almost half the time was spent in the queue for border controls - out of Singapore and into Malaysia. So, was it worth it? Just about. Malacca is both a town and a state - one of the oldest in Malaysia. It was originally a sultanate (as some of the Malaysian states still are) and a very prosperous trading port. Malacca was ruled by the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries and many of the public buildings were built during this time. We stayed in a small hotel in the historic heart, close to Chinatown, which had been converted from an original Peranakan house. Regular readers may remember previous references to the Peranakan culture in the blog - Peranakans are the descendants of the very early Chinese immigrants to Malaysia. At the time, it was illegal for Chinese women to leave China which meant that male emigrants had to marry non-Chinese women and so Peranakans were born.
Another connection to a previous post (the one about mangoes) is Alfonso de Albuquerque, who was there in the early 16th century. Malacca seems to have spent much of its past being occupied by one European nation or another; we were a greedy lot in those days, weren't we?
This weekend we are resting up, catching up and - in my case - listening to music. Have a good one.
1 comment:
I stand condemned, outed as a gadget freak by Izzy, I was preparing a defence to this accusation and did a quick audit to produce an ipodlist of the Barn.The shameful truth is that Julie has a shuffle for the gym, Sophie, an ipod touch for movies, and wifi access, a nano permanently plugged into her car and a shuffle for the gym and the train (she's interning in "that there London"), ChaCha, who seems to be hardwired into the web has an ipod touch, she's watching Doctor Who on it as I type and she did have a nano, which seems to have gone missing. I have a shuffle for the gym, a nano in a Bose speaker set and a video ipod for music and movies on planes. It's scary that the video ipod which must be 18 months old, looks a bit clunky to me now and I'm thinking of upgrading it.
I just hope Mr Jobs appreciates our generous contribution to his pension plan. Incidentally I'm with Chris on the MacBook Air it's lovely, we're migrating all our business machines to Macs since my Damascene Macbook-pro conversion 2 years hence.
Happiness is Apple shaped.
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