Friday, December 12, 2008

Relics

I put away the VCR the other day. We obviously aren't much of movie watchers. It had accumulated a fair amount of dust. As I sat there looking at it, I wondered how much power it had needlessly consumed over the years. This was my overwhelming thought. All this green business must be going to my head. It was somewhat of a nostalgic sight. I'm pretty certain it hadn't been used in 5 years at least. It pretty much just lay there. Nobody used it but nobody touched it. If it ain't broke.

I felt pretty embarrassed actually, putting it away. This must be the last living room with one of these. I did acquire a DVD player at some point in the recent past. Can't remember when exactly but it seems it was in the course of this year. Sometime after February. Mainly out of that sense of embarrassment. Everyone has one, so I'll get one. So that I can fit into conversations that have "my DVD player..." somewhere in them. In the time since I bought it, I've probably watched 3 DVDs or VCDs on the thing. It's gathered it's fair amount of dust too. I lost interest in movies quite a while back now and I never caught that series bug that was going around. The few movies that I did watch, I went to the big screen to see. And even then, they weren't always all that. You walk out of a screening of Wanted and wonder to yourself what kind of nonsense that was.

Anyway. There seemed to be a trend. There's this one Saturday evening I showed up at the office. We were coming in for an all-nighter. If a guy ever mentions power upgrade and more specifically anything that sounds like "complete power shutdown", curse him, then go ahead to put on sackcloth, cover yourself in ash and start to repent. There was this time on TV some guys were wearing gunias. Literal sackcloth. Found it quite funny. That's the kind of thing you need to be doing. Anything to get it postponed or better still forgotten all together. Because it means servers have to be shut down and systems stopped. And this can only be done at an hour when night runners are meant to be doing their thing. Nairobi doesn't ever completely go to sleep these days actually, but it had to be done. So I leave the house all prepared for a long night ahead. Wasn't sure why I was going. Anyone can click on Start | Shutdown. But hey. The boss said. I've just had supper so I'm good for food, have some warm garments on and a walkman. All set. Get to the office and we're basically a bunch of guys sitting around doing nothing. Waiting around for the magic hour. Then the laughing starts. Took a while to figure out that guys were laughing at me rather than with me. They couldn't believe that I owned a walkman, or would willingly be seen in public with such an [apparently] ancient device. Guys are sporting PSPs and here I am. The guy from the '90s. I don't understand what they are going on about. I wear the thing all the time in the house. Listening to radio. It works. Buy batteries every so often and that's pretty much it. Never considered buying an iPod. Nano or not. I had playlists on the computer. Like 5 of them. Don't need to be listening to playlists all the time. I like hearing different songs. Songs in different order. And turning on shuffle just doesn't do it. So I have no reason to discard my walkie. It serves my needs. I actually think it's rather nice. I like it. Why change. Surely not for the sake of it.

There's a wider concern though. That of turning into one's parents. Probably too late for me. There was this evening I turned off the telly. Sat there in silence reading a paper I think. My mum was rather concerned when she walked in. "Nothing interesting on telly", I declare. Or useful. Didn't believe what had happened myself. I'd just turned into my folks. Right there. That thing that you swear when you are much younger, and ignorant I can now add, that would never happen. My sis was mentioning yesterday how sijui the gal next door was telling some other neighbour sijui what. On Facebook. And sijui she got mad because he said sijui what. I don't follow gossip too well. Am I the only one without a Facebook account. Apparently even moms are on there and stuff. Wacha hiyo. I only heard of Twitter last month. And only because I was watching TV [US election news] all of my waking hours. Should he or shouldn't he tweet. Still not sure what the idea is. I might as well be 70.

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