Busorama Part Deux

You might have heard about my love-hate relationships with buses before on these pages. The aluminium clad cans which are our own means of (occasionally) rapid transport.

First, a warning. This post is rated PG-You’reNeverOldEnoughForThisShit.

This scene repeats itself in countless buses on countless routes. Someone gets on a bus, finds a seat, and sits down. So far so good. But if the seat happens to be an aisle seat, that is, not the window seat, you are most probably in for a ride full of so much writhing and cringing it could be mistaken for a screening of Twilight at Cannes.

When I was little, my dad told me that I would face many injustices in life. Like the fact that women got us kicked out of Eden, yet get free pass into the best clubs. I mean, come on God! Really?

He also said “Son, by far the worst thing you will experience will be The Aisle Seat… the aisle seat… aisle seat… seat ….seat… seat… sea…” and walked slowly backwards before turning and running up the stairs.

But nothing he could have said has prepared me for this… this travesty that is the aisle seat of a crowded bus!

You must be wondering by now what I’m going on about. You must be wondering why you read this blog at all. You must be wondering if I’ve completely lost my legos. Is that the right toy? Non sequiturs aside, this post is about those times when some rabid beast of a man positions himself right next to your seat and… Does what can best be described as a war dance on your shoulder. I shudder at merely typing it! You know, when you’re sitting in a crowded bus, and sooner or later some male positions himself right next to you?

There are normal people, and then there are people who do this. They will slowly nudge themselves forward till they make contact with your shoulder. Then when you move away, squashing the person in the seat next to you, they’ll come closer. It is a complete mystery why this happens. I mean, if I were standing, I sure as hell wouldn’t be doing the Privates Salsa on some strangers’ shoulder.

The best way to get rid of these vermin, I’ve discovered, is a multi-stage process. First you stare them in the eye. Stare, not look. You convey a message of “Get your crotch away from my shoulder you vile creature, or face the wrath of my balled up fists of fury on your weakest point!”. If he doesn’t respond to this, gently nudge them with your elbow. No, not there. Creep.

If they still fail to react, then you are left with the firm push from your elbow. That’s usually enough even for the likes of Steven Hawking so stand straight.

There have been scattered reports of women doing this kind of thing for quite different reasons *cough*theWhackster*cough*, but that is best not discussed, lest I suddenly see the sky above my current position blackened by the hail of heeled shoes arching their way towards me.

@Halikazeez being assaulted by a female

A Buffer of Humour!

Someone told me a few days ago, that I had a layer of humour, or lightheartedness between me and the world. It was the first I’d heard of it, and it struck me as something I would expect to be told if I was forty and driving a station wagon. It sounded like something I would be told in a circumstance such as if my forty-year old self’s kid had just kicked him and he just laughed it off as an eight year old’s angst.

As it were, I was told this just last Thursday, if I remember correctly, and I was still only twenty, the last time I checked. It confounded me. So naturally I just went along with it and agreed wholeheartedly. When I got home that night, I got to thinking about this water-bed of fluff that I had between me, my mind, and the real world. I realized it didn’t exist. It was a myth. Like women who can’t cook.

What it is, is just my way of coping with life. I don’t put up a barrier reef between myself and the tides of problems, pain, anger, idiots and sheer complications that wash up on the coasts of my senses. Sometimes you just have to ignore it. I’ve got a story to tell today, if you’ll indulge me.

Imagine you’re an island. If that saying about no man being an island is a thorn in your side, imagine you’re a woman first, then imagine you’re an island. A small island, smaller than the country we live in, located somewhere in the middle of the ocean, replete with sandy beaches and palm trees. Now imagine life as a great big storm brewing out at sea. Swirling, tearing through the air making sea creatures exclaim in surprise for miles and miles. You can imagine their cries of “Goodness me, that could put a dent in our plans for camping out this weekend” if you please. But you’d better not, since that would distract you a bit from the big picture. The big, gray, spinning mass of clouds that make up your big picture.

Now, you’re an island. Most storms wouldn’t matter much to you. You’ll survive. A few trees torn up, and a couple of television serial actors lost, but nothing you can’t grow back or work into the storyline. Eventually the storm subsides and life goes back to being the calm, rolling mass of water in front of you. Little ebbs and flows this way and that along your coasts, leaving your lips all salty and dry. The storm, having raised hell and then having smashed it down on the ground again, has left only scattered bits of debris around for you to pick at and inspect. The strips of seaweed torn up from the ocean bed and thrown at your feet are occasionally interrupted by bits of a ship, or pieces of wood. Sometimes you find a coconut.

Life doesn’t give you lemons, it gives you coconuts. Lots of coconuts. All the little odds and ends you find on the beach are covered in sand, your sand. They’re you flavoured now. All the things life throws at you are changed the moment you perceive them shooting towards you. You coat them in a nice even layer of yourself. Making it oh so easy to just pick it up, look at it, and if it’s not of any interest, throw it away. If you see something shining in the distance, a little piece of ship that washed up on your shores, some little bit of someone else’s life that you find interesting, pick it up. Take a nice long look at it and think about it. Lick it. Gnaw on it for a bit, testing your teeth on it like when you were a kid. Take it in and do something with it. Maybe write a post about it.

Everything else, the corroded bits of hull, the swollen bodies of sailors staring at you with their legs buried in your sand, the birds picking at them one by one, every single detail that comes across as not something to worry an island over, just let it be. The water will eventually come over and drag it all away again. Feel every rusted slab of metal tear at your shores, every bit of wood getting stuck on the roots of trees at the edges of your sands and hear all the little noises they all make. Then just make a note of it and keep looking along the beach till you find something interesting to gnaw on.

If islands gnaw on things, that is. Selectivity is the key here, and an island that chooses right is an island which gets called out for having a buffer of humour between it and the sea. Choosing what matters is not difficult. Living isn’t difficult. Being an island isn’t difficult. Just be aware that all the places on your shores that were ravaged by the storm will heal, and that everything that turns up should be dealt with. Most importantly, dealing with something doesn’t necessarily mean doing something to it.

Well, at least that’s how my brain works. I just refuse to acknowledge any unsavory vibes happening around me, and just deal with what I have to. It might not seem like the best way to live a life, but somehow, it works for me. Just look at my blog.

Political Adventures in Cycling

I was bored yesterday afternoon. I had exhausted all my usual methods of keeping busy such as stoning kids playing in front of my house and killing prostitutes in GTA 4. The first because they’d taken to playing somewhere else and the second because my monitor is broken.

So I sat there, looking out the window at the stretch of road in front of my house, and suddenly a kid rushes past in a bicycle. She turns around, shakes the pink ribbons hanging from the handlebars at me and rides off again. I was intrigued. I went outside, concealing a cricket bat under my shirt. I went around the corner and crouched behind a bush to lie in wait. The lady next door passes by, looks at me and starts throwing stones. I holler at her to get lost, harpy.

The little girl comes around the corner and I jump out in her direction and bring out the bat, aiming swiftly for the head… Of the man who had jumped out of the bushes across the street. I whisper “Sorry, Halik”, and go over to the little girl, who is by now quite shocked. “You’re safe now, here, have a cricket bat”. “Thank you mister, *giggle*”. She gets back on her bike and is about to set off. I push her off the seat, grab the bike and run away, laughing like a maniac.

Back at home I was inspecting my prize. I imagined cruising along Marine Drive at night, showing off my ride to the racers gathered there. But it was a short lived fantasy, for the little girl’s mother came over and started banging on the door asking for the bike back. I cursed and threw it out the window, yelling “It’s wasted on her! You’re spoiling her!”. My fragile ego was badly in need of some wind rushing through its hair.

So instead of sulking around the house again I borrowed a friend’s bike and set off. I had no clear idea where to. Eventually I got to a place selling king coconuts, so I stopped and asked the vendor to cut one up for me. While drinking it, he said “So the election’s coming up. Hope that criminal Candidate A doesn’t win”. I go “Yeah totally, can’t imagine what would happen”. He goes on “Candidate B is the only true leader this country has! He has no competition from the other fellow”. So I say “Of course! Did you know I have a poster of Candidate B on the wall next to my bed?”

After cycling for another half hour, I come to a junction and stop to ask directions from a three wheeler park. They’re in a heated debate about the presidency. I ask “This road leads to Pamunuwila, yeah?”. The guy says “Okay let’s ask this guy here! Dude, don’t you think Candidate A is the right choice for this country? We need change, everyone knows that!”. I reply with “Indeed. I pray to god that Candidate A wins every night before I sleep”. “There’s a good fella! This country needs more people like you”. I wholeheartedly agreed, from the bottom of my heart. I couldn’t have agreed more to that sentence if I was a bobblehead in Agreeville selling agreements.

It turned out that road did lead where I wanted it to. I ended up at the place where I usually repair the cycle, and waited in line while the man there fixed someone else’s bike. They were deep in conversation. Thankfully it was cricket.

The Brief, Yet Definitive Guide to Jaffna

The Food

The first thing we did when we got to Jaffna was eat. Do not do this. You will find mediocre fish and mutton thrown at you and get ripped off in translation when 150 in tamil turns into 180 when spoken out loud in English by the cashier. Instead, walk around a bit, weigh your options, look around for places that sell things like paratas or fried rice. The freshness of the east coast paratas have spread here as well, and you can’t go wrong with a simple dish of dhal and saambar. If looking for mangoes, look elsewhere. Preferably your back yard if you have a tree. Mangoes round here taste the same as mangoes grown everywhere else. Even the karuthacolumban trees grow in other parts of the island. Like my back yard.

The Scenery

The scenery is one of Jaffna’s strong points. Unfortunately for them it is littered with signs saying “Danger: Landmines” and other such dire warnings like “Warning: Perverts Abound”.  The place is not what you will expect, instead it will be lush and green for the most part, and have palm trees and elephant pass monuments sprinkled around the landscape. You will also see the occasional bullet ridden building but nobody cares about that, yeah?

The People

Are a mixed bag. Just like anywhere else I guess. There will be extremely helpful people and extremely creepy people. They all speak Tamil and only a few speak Sinhalese. Bus conductors are a worthy mention in that they don’t yell quite as offensively as those in Colombo. Instead, they are gentle and soft, like the name “Himal”.

The Beaches

Are awesome. Well, some of them. There are supposed to be a few beaches in Jaffna that are awe-inducing, but we only saw one. Maybe this should be re-titled “The (kinda) Definitive Guide to Jaffna”. Point Pedro will give you the thrill of being at the top of the island, but that fades quickly when you realize India is just above you and most of it is further north from where you are. Casoorina beach was our beach of choice and it looked like a bit of foreign land washed up here during the tsunami. It probably did, seeing how even the locals pronounce the name a half dozen different ways.

The Sights

Are few and afar. There is an old town and fort, an enormous Kovil near Casoorina beach, the Nillady beach near the Navy base at Point Pedro and sometimes, a solar eclipse even. In addition to this, there are a few remote places that just look… awesome.

Conclusion

Go to Jaffna. It is safe and fun to be at now. It also has possibly the beast beach I’ve been to in Sri Lanka. It might take an eternity and half to get thee but trust me, it’s worth it.

Motherless: A Collection of Journal Entries

Day 1
This can’t be that hard. I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again.

Day 2
Besides, my sister and father are still here. Never mind the fact that my sister has to go to work.

Day 3
Breakfast wasn’t on the table when I woke up. Should try waking up later next time. Maybe 10:30 was too early.

Day 4
No lunch today. Had to go out and look for food. I think I can keep this up.

Day 5
I can’t keep this up. I’m going to die!

Day 6
I started looking for a cookbook today. Looked in all the logical places where books are kept. No success yet, going to try other places tomorrow. In other news, the good lady next door suddenly started bringing over lunch for me.

Day 7
Found cookbook. It was in the kitchen. I am totally gonna pwn these recipes.

Day 8
Woe is me, for I was greatly mistaken. My mind cannot grasp the intricacies of these strange concoctions which I am sure an alchemist would balk at creating. I cannot hope to even r3nt, let alone pwn these vile mixtures. If not for the kindness of the lady at of the house next to mine, I would starve.

Day 9
I have taken my search for food to the internet. I have located a chat room dedicated to cooking for young kids. I learnt a few tricks.

Day 10
Exciting day today! Met a strange person on the chat room claiming to be my neighbor; ”sparkle_eyes18” . ‘She’ claimed to like helping people on the internet. Even tried to chat me up. Hah. As if I’d fall prey to some internet pervert. Strangely, the person knew a few useful techniques for quick meals. All the better to lure little kids into his lair, probably. Anyway, this evening I received a message reading “You sound fun! Let’s meet. Your place?”. Not being able to take any more of this parasite, I furiously typed “Not a snowball’s chance in Colombo, creep. I’ve had enough of you and your endless murdering of the innocence of the children in that chat room. Stop preying on young kids and leave us good people be before I report you to the authorities, you hairy old beast!”

Needless to say I will be sleeping very soundly tonight, knowing I may have even saved a few lives.

Day 10
The neighbor didn’t bring over my lunch today. Hope everything’s okay.

Day 11
Terrible news. No free lunch today either. So I went out to buy some and bumped into the lady who lives next door. She gave me a dirty look. I asked her if everything was okay. She replied “I know what you said in that chatroom, boy”. I didn’t know how she found out, but I was glad that news of my good deed had spread.

So I said “Oh that was nothing, though I am a little proud of myself. Somebody had to do it, I guess”. This seemed to anger her, for some reason. “Proud of yourself are you?! I’ll give you something to be proud of you ungrateful cad,” and she hit me with her purse. So I fled the scene. As I was fleeing I heard her yell “I’ll teach you to make fun of my daughter you git!” and then what I think was “She forgot to shave the other day, she’s human too!”

Day 12
I dreamt of ponies last night. Ponies that had been tied to each limb of whoever made me so paranoid about people on the internet, and were instructed to scatter to the four corners of the earth. I’m surviving on water and whatever food I can find around the house. A bit of bread here, a piece of newspaper there. Note to self: Pick pages with the least ink in them.

Day 13
The edges of my vision are starting to go hazy. I see strange creatures in the extremeties.

Day 14
My house is turning into something like a Meth Lab. If I stay awake long enough I start seeing strange things, I feel like there’s plenty here that could get me killed and I’m not too keen on visitors anymore.

Day 15
Friends called today. They were worried because they hadn’t heard from me in a while. “We’re just worried man, we love you”. So I say “I love you too, in a bugger off and never see me again kind of way, man”.

Day 16
I had a dream that my sofa scrambled up the stairs in the middle of the night to try and smother me. I ended up sleeping on the roof. It was fun till the mosquitoes bit all over my parade.

Day 17
Dad took me to a hospital today. I knew he’d try something like this. He never understood. Never understood my pain. I played Eminem all the way there. When we got there I bit the doctor on the arm, kicked him in the crotch and ran away. Found an internet café that stays open nights.

Day 18
Everything’s made out of cushions, man. The world just doesn’t make sense any other way. You ride a platypus to work, make out with a park bench, it all fits in perfectly. Don’t you see the patterns? It’s staring you in the face like an old inkjet printer, looking at you with those big brown eyes going “Please refill my cartridges”. The beginning is neigh. I will paint the streets blue with participation trophies till the people understand what I preach. My sermon will not be denied. This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time. I’ll be back. Yippy ka ay, worthless excuse for a movie!

Fay 18
I really like hoe thisd cellphon battry taste/

3-9987 asdggase
ijibnjk; kjaegiage wuphuwn282[n 2n2

Day 2
Had a really weird dream last night. Recorded it in here. Not sure I’m gonna make it till mom gets back.

The State of the Union

Yet again my mom has gone off to India leaving us to fend for ourselves over here. My brother went along with her too.

Now usually, this wouldn’t have been a problem but now that my sister has to go to work, it means that my dad and I are left to our own devices for breakfast and lunch. This wouldn’t have been so bad if my dad didn’t still subscribe to the college frat boy school of cooking. Every meal is an experiment. Some might say this is a good thing but I think we’re forgetting about the countless experiments that go wrong and produce things like Godzilla, mutated sheep or Papareboy. Any dish that doesn’t quite taste right just needs more ingredients. The grocery list is a recipe to this far too common type of man. Eventually your meals start tasting like spongebob.

Women should just handle the cooking. After all, the best cooks being male means nothing. I’m sure there are outstanding females in classically male things as well; Such as not being insane.

So back to the food.

I just wake up each morning and wonder what I have. Today I found loaves of bread inside the microwave. I used a sharp looking piece of metal to cut the loaf into smaller pieces and made myself some chocolate sauce (the only recipe worth knowing for a man) and ate. Then I giggled (in a manly, testosterone filled way), thinking of how chocolate sauce is the only thing I’ll ever need to make. At least until my teeth start falling out at 23 and I start sweating sugar cubes.

But I digress. Cooking really annoys me because it just takes so much time. Time which could, for example, be spent on twitter or something. What? It’s just like real life, except more text and… less gravity. Men invented things like dishwashers and fire so that they could avoid the whole ordeal by not having to wash up after, and being able to make nearly anything eatable. Women think men need to enjoy cooking more, men think women have smaller feet so they can stand closer to the sink.

I just had naan and chocolate sauce for dinner again. I think this calls for some culinary skills beyond knowing what a spoon is. Or I might just show up at your doorstep with a “Will cease being sexist for food” sign.

Went to Kalpitiya over the weekend. Pics and details will be up on SinhalayaTravels soon. I hope.

The Year in Retrospect

So yet another year is coming to an end and we take stock of it. I’m not sure what “retrospect” is but I’ll use it anyway. There are lots of words like that for me; they just seem to fit the sentence but I’m not sure what exactly they mean.

This is what I got out of this year.

Older and less employed. I quit my job in September, started studying in the same month. I’ve been living off my bank account since then and it’s starting to run out. I’m the kind of guy who is lazy about actually finding employment. I have no qualms about being non-lazy while I’m working but I just can’t seem to muster up much effort to get myself into a job. I usually just wait for it to be dropped on my lap, all wrapped up in ribbons.

Kind of like a polar bear living in a cave but then feeling nasty about letting a three tailed arctic lemur eat his caviar. I was never good at analogies anyway.

Other than that, the past year has gone past me like a woman who just saw 50% off on something across the mall. Nice to see my chauvinistic ways are still intact.

My New Year’s Resolutions are non-

OMGWTFBBQ. My mom just asked me to do yet another chore, as I’m writing this post. Clearly the Christmas season is still dragging on…

[Much later]

As I was saying, I don’t have any resolutions, apart from the ultra corny 1440×900 on my desktop. Oh snap, I didn’t just type that.

Hopefully everyone else will have a few so that my quality of life improves.

Considerably.

I’m watching you, people.

Happy New Year!

A Christmas Tale

It’s Christmas again, and I am forced to crawl back from my blogging hiatus, imposed partly by limited access to the internet and partly by general laziness.

This year’s Christmas looks to be the tamest in quite a while for me. There’s just more cake than the rest of the year floating around.

Christmas, as the years passed

I can’t even write a proper post. That’s how bad this season is. I just can’t think of anything. It’s as if some weird parasite has been sucking out all my energy.

So instead, I will leave you with a Christmas tale of woe, misery and also some hope.

There was once (and still is) a young man of 20. He lived in the magical land or Sri Lanka, and was, at the moment, just sitting around at home most days since he was unemployed. Education took only weekends and he had plenty of time to just relax and do whatever he pleased.

But one day, suddenly, his mother said to him “Christmas is coming, you better get ready to clean the house!”

“It’s still quite a long way away; it won’t get here so fast that I won’t notice it creeping up on me.”

It did.

And so, two days before Christmas day our hero sat, trying to type write a letter to send to all his friends, because he was nice like that and liked to…write letters to his friends. But alas! His mother again said to him “Venture outside the house, and what do you see? There is a wild bush growing just outside the gates! Take this blade, and slaughter it for me, for I do not wish our home to be ridiculed by the neighbors!”

“Mmmffrrprglll”, he replied, engrossed in his letter.

“You are but a good for nothing spick of a lad, do you know? Your brother would have done what I bade him”

“Then why not ask my sibling to carry out the cleaning?”

“He has work.”

“He is but playing ‘Dragon Age’ over by yonder abacus, mother!”

“Quiet, youngling! You will go clean out the weeds by the gate, or else!”

“But why must Christmas be full of this cleaning business and you yelling at me to do things?”

“Because that’s what we do for Christmas”

“Yell at me?”

“Nay, fool boy. We clean our house so that visitors think it’s clean all year round.”

“But is Christmas not a celebration of the birth of Jesus? Would he not rather you cleaned someone else’s abode?”

“Don’t try to get smart with me boy; you do what you are told”

“But Jesus was born in a filthy farmstead!”

“But you aren’t Jesus are you? You are welcome to go live in the shed outside, but as long as you live in my house and you don’t find gainful employment to keep you away from home this season, you clean it”

“What would Jesus do?”

“Clean it.”

And so the young man ventured out the door of his home, stood around for a few minutes till his mother scurried off somewhere else, then strolled back in the same door, and sat.

He then continued to sneak into the kitchen, steal some cake and run out the back door, not stopping till he reached the house of a nearby friend, who happened to be of a different religion and did not have to go through the cleaning ritual.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Sony Walkman A720/728 Series: A Review

We recently got our hands on a Sony NWZ-A728 Walkman, and decided to write a short review on the pros and cons we ran into. We realize the players been out a while, and that the Walkman X is all the rage in Sony’s showrooms, but most people aren’t even aware of these great players existing so here we go.
I think I can stop referring to myself in plural terms now, since I have already dragged you in with false impressions of credibility.
So anyway, The 728 is the 8GB version in the series. This may seem paltry compared to most current players, but since my music collection is a mere 13 odd GBs, its more than enough for me. The A729 is the 16GB version.

In The Box

When opened you will find the player, a little stand thing you can use to keep the player upright, an adapter for using with a docking station and a pair of Sony EX082 premium headphones. These in-ear ‘phones themselves sell for around $50 on the market, and are a welcome step up from regular stock headphones. You will also find a pile of documentation and a CD with some software on it.

First Impressions

The thing is quite thin at just under a centimeter, and most of the device is covered in black metal. I think it is available in other colours as well. It feels pretty solid (58g), except for the buttons on the side, which feel slightly less solid than on their previous players. Not to say they feel cheap, but they do give just a bit to the touch. The actual feeling of it is pretty good, as the matte black finish feels quite good to the hand.
The front has a nice 2.4” screen (320×240) with a familiar 5-way navigation pad just below. The pad is flanked by two soft keys.

Features

Sony has always taken a very Spartan approach to functionality in their line of players (This is excluding the Walkman X). They’ve had this same interface since the S610 series players, and you can find the same in the A828 (Same as the 728 except with Bluetooth).
It plays the MP3, WMA, PCM and AAC formats. For video it supports MP4 video, nothing spectacular there.
This interface, while extremely quick and responsive, looks quite drab. A black background with white text makes for great readability but when you go past the home screen with its glowing icons, it all looks a bit plain. The menu system supports displaying album art in various ways to add a bit of colour to the menus. The Now Playing screen has standard information such as artist and album. It also has a smaller than average album art image. A useful bit of functionality is the ability to press the down key to access each attribute like Artist, Genre, Year or Album and select them, and being able to play all songs on the device matching the selected criteria straight from the Now Playing screen.
Fast forward and rewind are good, offering two speeds, slower when the track is playing and moving at a much faster pace when paused.
Battery life is impressive at 36 hours rated for music and 10 hours on video. The display is bright enough to be viewed clearly while outdoors.
Getting music onto the player is quite easy as it is detected as a portable device on Windows Media Player and most other software that supports MTP devices. Alternatively, you can just drag and drop files onto it as well. For video, transferring files is a pain as you have to have them in the proper format. But the good news is that the same format that you use for iPod MP4 files will work on this, so there’s plenty of software out there.

Audio/Video Quality

Audio quality has always been pretty damn good on Sony players. This player sounds even better than its predecessors, and is noticeably much better than most other portable audio players on the market. The supplied in ear set sound great with this player, and are far superior to most stock headphones you get with other players. For most people, they negate the need for buying separate earphones with your device.
Even philistines who use standard stock headphones with their standard sounding players *cough*most iPod users*cough* will appreciate the massive increase in quality, before picking up their old earphones and burning them in a large fire.
The supplied EQ has a bunch of presets and two custom settings, which you can use to fine tune your listening. It works very well when pumping up the bass.
For videos, the screen is quite good, but not as good as on the older S610 series. This has a black level that is slightly too bright. Other than that, the colours are vivid, video is super smooth at 30FPS  and the resolution is decent for this size. You can’t really watch any movies on it since its only 2.4 inches, but it should be fine for short clips such as TV Series’.

Conclusion

The thing sounds great, but it has a few minor annoyances like dropping the FM radio found on the older players and not having a separate section for audiobooks/podcasts. Music management offers only basic controls such as sorting by artist, genre and album etc. but you still can’t create playlists on the fly. You can import playlists when synching but I’d rather have been able to make them on my own.
If you want your music to sound great there really isn’t much competition to the new set of Walkmans. If you can set aside the slightly dated interface, and need a player solely for music, this is the best thing you can get. As for video, it’s more of an afterthought on this player, due to the limited format support.

Pros: Awesome sound quality, snappy interface, sturdy, good looking build, good battery life.
Cons: Bland interface, no FM radio, other minor niggles.

On Letters to Your Past Selves

Everyone’s been busy sending messages to their past selves these past few days. I myself sent a brief message. But I still don’t get why everyone tells themselves everything. Why do you do it? Most times you don’t even tell yourselves to DO something about it! What’s the point of telling your past self you’re going to wake up next to a dead hooker if you’re not going to tell yourself not to go to that party and get drunk?

I’m sure you think your teenage woes are fascinating to the general public of the blogosphere, you can’t be blamed, we look at lolcat pictures, but just think! Think of the possibilities! My brother over at lame-duck was the only one I saw giving himself investment advice. Dinidu told himself not to crash into a pig. Mos tof the others were just whining on and on about how they would meet a boy/girl, fall in love with them and how suddenly, together, they would reach the end of the rainbow and find a pot full of coal.

Useless. You’re given such opportunity and you don’t even make use of it. It’s like carving a delicious turkey using a cat. And you call yourselves an internet.

Pfft.