Monday, October 16, 2006

Shop Till You...Smile!


Last weekend, my wife had a few of her friends over and needless to say, a house filled with women is really not a place for a guy like me to be. I had a couple of errands to run and took that opportunity to skip out to town.

While shopping at one of our gadget malls, I texted an old friend from school and coincidently, he was nearby. We met for a cup of tea to chat about the good ol' days as well as to talk about what we love most - gadgets. It was a pity he was rushing off to see his mom, who was not well, or we would have chatted till the cows came home. And just as he was leaving, I ran into a close relative of mine. Without going into details, the meeting saddened me a great deal even though I was glad to see him. Anyway, I wish him well even though the path he is on in life is very worrying.

I still had a lot of errands to run and one of which was to get a birthday gift for a former colleague / good friend. Shopping for him was tough. "What do you get for a man who has everything?", was the question of the day. On top of that, the chance meeting with my relative was weighing heavily on my mind. So, for a long while, I was roaming the malls aimlessly until I came across a small, thumb-drive looking device in the window. It was labelled "Sony" and that was enough to peak my curiousity. I walked in and was told that it was an MP3 player. I asked to see it. "No big deal. Apple has the iPod Shuffle so Sony is just a copy-cat", the smart-aleck voice in my head went - until it was demo'ed to me.

This little thing, no bigger than my thumb (disclaimer : I have a big thumb!) played MP3 and AAC files, stored data, had a built-in radio, a sports timer for running or cycling and even supported playlists. It had a OLED display which was crisp and showed you clearly what was playing or the radio station it was on. And if all this was not enough, a 3 minute charge on this baby allowed you to run it for a full 3 hours! My unwavering integrity was quickly relocating to a new camp. "Beat that, Apple!", went that voice in my head.

I suddenly found myself smiling at this little device. I knew that my friend would love it as much as I did. So, I got it - two of it, to be precise.

Well, it made me smile, didn't it?

2 comments:

Danah said...

"What do you get for a man who has everything?"

Nothing! And it only costs $6.28! Don't believe me? Check this out:

http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/nothing/index.html

:p

I'm sure your friend is going to love his present:D

The Premster said...

hi dandoon,

you've led me to an online store that i visit every other day!! :)

but strangely, i've never seen this. an excellent gift. i'll remember to get this for him for christmas!!

i hope he likes his present too.