Gadgetmania

Oh how I love gadgets. With their shiny surfaces, their LCD screens, their special features and their magic that their little microchips inside create. Other women can spend hours in fashion shops, me on the other hand, put me in a Dixon's or PC World and I can just forget myself.

It all started way back in the mid-seventies. Ever since I remember myself, I remember me next to my mom's cassette radio recorder, which looked something like this on the right. I would spend hours taping from the radio. Rewind and tape again. And then a friend of mine lent me her microphone, which I found the most desirable thing on earth. Other girls were playing with dolls, I was making tapes with interviews from my family and friends.

By 1979 we had bought our big stereo. We used to have my mom's turntable, which now is an antic and it's still in my house in Athens. So with the new stereo and a colour TV, a couple of cables at the right...holes and I could record Greek comedies from TV. I would listen to them in my room and I would fall asleep while listening to them. That's how I've come to know most of them by heart, sleep therapy.
I had by now my own tape recorder (like the one on the right) to listen to my tapes and make new ones. Some of these tapes I made with my sister still exist and whenever I listen to them I fall on the floor laughing.

Then the god named SONY invented the Walkman. I nearly fainted when my aunt who lives in New York brought me one from USA. It was the best present EVER! I wouldn't be seen without it. It looked like the one on the left at the picture on top of the blog, it was huge and very heavy but it was the most heavenly thing for me...

Come 1983 and on my behest our household acquired our first VCR, which for me is still the best and most ingenious invention. Not only I could record my greek movies, but also anything else I fancied. I used to have the whole Fame series, until in a "I hate the 80's" crisis I erased them. Tapes and tapes of movies greek and foreign, which are all still intact, some of them here and most of them in Athens.
Of course gadgets like Discman, mini tape recorders and stuff were still coming in, and I had my first computer as a present from my family for finishing school mostly with 'A's! I learned 'BASIC' by myself and a love relationship with computers and software began. I discovered that I have a talent for computers, a rare perception of the world of software, that is why I studied IT for two years and my first job was Software Instructor for businesses. Of course my main studies were Journalism, which I think I chose so I can still keep using gadgets. LOLOLOL.

But, I digress...
After I started working and had my own income it just snowballed. Come the era of the mobile phone and I (and everybody else) looked like out of Alice in Wonderland with those huge Motorolas.
As the mobiles went smaller, so did my pocket. I can't remember how many I've bought by now.


So here we are in the techi 2000's and my house looks like Dixon's warehouse... My latest toy, my beloved Video iPod is in my bag all the time. My mobile phone is as tiny as my (empty) credit card. And my next coveted gadget is a Blackberry. I'm just waiting for the price to go down, hehe.




Before you accuse me of being materialistic, here's what I think about my Gadgetmania: most of the things I buy have to do with preserving life moments: tape recorders, cameras, video recorders, walkman, ipods et.c. I can repeat something I like over and over again, it be a song, a photograph, a movie. If I want to go back to it, I know I can. I can relive the same moment, the same feeling, the same memory. I can watch my Keith in So Sad About Us and still feel thrilled, or listen to Bittersweet Symphony and still want to cry. I have it, it's there. And I can take it with me anywhere.
So, for me gadgets preserve life, and I love them so, because, most of all, I love life.

What's your favourite gadget?