Have Earphones, Will Travel

From now up to the 19th, I'm one of the cool dudes in Makati.

You see, I'm walking around the concrete jungle toting uber-fashionable earphones in my ears.

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Yup, I got an mp3 player. Well...technically it's not mine. I bought it for my daughter as my gift for this Christmas. She's been harping about wanting to own an mp3 for the longest time. I wasn't planning on actually giving her an mp3 yet but when I passed by a CDR-King outlet and saw a relatively inexpensive mp3, I just bought it.

It's quite a cute toy, actually. It's a little smaller than the palm of my hand, it can carry 2GBs'-worth of songs, it's got its own speaker, a blue mini-screen, a recorder, an FM radio, and it comes in a gold casing that lights up with pretty LEDs running the entire face of the mp3 whenever the mp3 function is played.

Now I'm using it -- until I have to surrender it to her on the 19th when I go home to Leyte for the holidays.

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Ingrid (my daughter) was so excited when I told her about buying the mp3 player. Now all her texts are dedicated to either telling me what songs she wants downloaded or developments about her school crush.

Being the dutiful mother that I am, I'm currently downloading her songs, with a sprinkling of my own tunes, from my office computer. (Take that, Xlibris!)

Now I'm walking around Makati grooving to songs spanning from the Googoo Dolls' Iris to the High School Musical gang's We're All in This Together.

I even bought a nifty mini-speaker to plug onto the mp3 player so I won't get an ear infection from wearing earphones all day at home.

Yup, I'm the epitome of cool...

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I never really understood what the big fuss was over mobile music. I was thinking: there's enough noise in the streets already, why add to the din?

Now I understand.

First, listening to music while commuting gives one a steady gait. You can actually keep in step with the tunes playing over my earphones.

Okay, so that was a lame reason. Oh, here's another. Since I got this mp3 player, I've been quite alert when commuting. You see, those who have commuted with me on a regular basis have noticed how I managed to take snoozes while travelling from Point A to Point B. One even nicknamed me "Jack Piraw." Now that I have my earphones on, I have been quite awake lately. It's better than getting a caffeine kick.

Also, I'm now more in tune with the latest hits. In fact, I've already updated my knowledge of music from the early 90s, and now I can say with pride that I so truly like listening to Jordin Sparks' and Chris Brown's No Air, as well as Flo Rida's Ayer.

One more thing: now that I go around town with earphones in my ears, I now share an affinity with other Makati dudes and dudettes who strut around to mp3/mp4/ipod-induced music.

Now, I'm "cool."

Until the 19th, that is.