. . an Apple Macbook. About 9 months since I wrote here about my crush on Macbook, I’ve finally done it. I must say I love it to bits. It’s this milk white 13.3 inch Macbook. It’s design is so unique that from any distance, as long as you sight this, you’ll know it’s a Macbook. In the constant battle between the Mac users and windows users, there is an one liner from the windows camp about Mac – “it’s not the OS that sucks, it’s the users”. That’s because every single Mac owner is truly a proud owner and he’s going to talk a lot about his Mac.

Mac certainly costs more than the regular windows machines. For the same configurations as my macbook, if it were windows I could have got it at about 60% of the price. But as they say, if you think Mac is expensive then Mac’s not for you. That’s because, it’s not just the cost of the individual components of the configuration that you pay for. It’s the wholesome product and the experience it gives you. There’s a beautiful harmony about macbook and the applications that it has. You get a feeling that someone’s made this notebook just for you. You really tend to think that they had ‘you’ in their mind when they made it.

The first thing that had me fall in love with macbook was its design. It may sound a bit exaggerating but I think it’s a work of art, this design of Macbook. Every little thing has been thought out. Everything that is there is because of a reason – the size of the trackpad, the design of the applications, the space for arm rest, the arrangement of sockets, even the thumb scoop, the look n feel, the logo – as I said there’s a harmony among all these things. There is a beautiful theme that’s so very consistent in all things Mac. Again, all these things may sound like exaggeration or ‘fanboyism’ – if you’ve not used a Mac.

The other thing Mac has managed for me is to revive this blog. Thanks the Macjournal application, posting an article to a blog is so so easy. Expect more posts from now on (how many times I’ve said this). Over the last few weeks and months, I’ve been reading some interesting books which have some great concepts to think about and have views on. Some of them can very ground breaking and thought provoking. Stay tuned.

I’m toying with the idea of buying a MacBook. But I have no valid reason to buy a MacBook. I currently own a nice widescreen Sony Vaio notebook which is in perfect working condition but I’m still ’seeing’ a Mac. If you ask me why, I’d say I love the style and elegance of a Mac. It’s so sophisticated that I can’t stop loving it. Above all, I just want to own a Mac. So there’s the reason why I want to buy a Mac. By now, you’d have got a fair idea of what kind of buyer I am.

I’ve always been like that. If I want something I just buy that. But the good thing is I don’t want so many things. And I never buy anything beyond my means. If something that’s very very affordable for me, all that it matter is if I want that. I need no reason, rationale or any such thing to make a purchase. Many a times, it looks completely arrogant and stupid but I just buy if I want to.

That also means that I do very less background work before I end up making a purchase. Sometimes I just google around too much to convince myself that I’m taking a very well informed decision but the fact that they matter only if I’m undecided. Or basically all I want to do is to find supportive arguments and positive vibrations. If I’ve pretty much decided to buy anything, I don’t care how many negative reviews the product has got nd why people run miles away from this product. I know looks are deceptive and all that. What clicks for me is not the looks, but also the X-factor that makes me think that I should buy it.

Many have called me an impulsive buyer. But I think I’m an intuitive buyer. I make instant judgments which always come correct. You can say that I have the eye for such things or simply say that I’m either incredibly lucky or I have psychic powers. As I look around my drawing room, I see that every damn thing that I’ve bought have been bought with ‘let me buy it’ style of shopping. May be that’s one reason I just don’t spend too much time for shopping. I just come, I see and I purchase.

If that looks like too much financial freedom for a married man, I must tell you that it doesn’t come that easily. You should know how to get your way around. I’m sure you know it all – repetitive references, building up the need, display of desparation, offer of sacrifices so on and so forth. As I said, I never try to go beyond my means, which prevents a lot of convincing around.

In a way, I can say that I pamper myself. I don’t deny myself anything that I want and I can get. Everyone has this little boy or girl in them, who makes them wish, desire, adore and long for little things and big things. And there is also this responsible and cautious (boring) old man or woman in us who keeps reminding us how expensive it is or why we can certainly live without it. I’d say I let the little boy rule over the old man every single time.

Why do you need a new laptop? What’s wrong with this? Didn’t you buy this Sony Vaio for 70k and said that this is all you needed? Don’t go around wasting money if you don’t know what to do with it. Invest money, buy jewellery, buy assets or at least save money for a rainy day. What does a Mac give you now? All that you do is browsing right. You’ve got your DVD player and TataSky plus for movies, you’ve got XBOX 360 for gaming and you don’t work at home and all that you’ve gonna do with your comp is just browse the net and this Sony Vaio is more than enough for that.

Er . . I want that, so I’m buying that.

When you tell someone that you’re a gamer the immediate reaction would be that of surprise and ridicule. People have a perception that games are for young people. Why should a 30-year old be a gamer? Gaming is generally looked down upon because it is considered a waste of time. Some even think it is silly to be playing games beyond your teens. Don’t you have better things to do? Is this the best you can do with your time? May be you should grow up and leave these to the teens? All those types of questions.

I’m an XBOX 360 gamer. I play only football games in the console. For those who don’t know, XBOX 360 is the the set-top-box-like equipment that’s connected to our television. There are various consoles in the market such as XBOX 360, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii etc. The games such as football, cricket, war simulations etc come in DVDs. You put the game DVD into the XBOX 360 and the game plays on television. How do we control the happenings on the TV screen? We have wireless controllers, unique to XBOX 360, which has various buttons each of which can be configured for each type of game that we play.

I do play for about 6 hours every weekend and sometimes play even in the weekdays. Why am I playing football games on XBOX 360? What do I get out of this? I think it’s amazing fun. It is addictive. It is harmless. How often you get to get hyper-joyed? How often do you get to laugh your lungs out so much that you cry tears? How often do you get to do something that keeps your focus and concentration well above 100%? When was the last time you did something with no sense of time or place? How often do you feel so light and feel completely chilled out? What if you get to experience all this together?

Gaming does require some skill and that skill can be acquired only through practice and concentration. Using the controllers effectively requires some decent hand-eye co-ordination and very quick reflexes. It is this aspect in gaming which keeps you completely attentive and occupied. Generally the mind is busy with too many things. Even when you’re sitting quietly, your mind keeps thinking about various things at different layers. The objective of meditation is to make your mind thoughtless and still. For me, gaming is one step towards that. Laughable? At least, when I’m into gaming there’s only one thing I think about. Mind is clear of all other things. This could be possible with various activities. What makes gaming unique is that the fun is sustainable for hours (so I knocked one comparison with this point) and it requires your involvement and interaction (unlike movies) and in an environment as comfortable as you can make (unlike playing outdoor games under the ‘Chennai sun’).

For me, gaming is not at all a waste of time because I get value for time. Most people who don’t really understand the value of gaming may not have played a game in a console. If you have not tried this yet, don’t miss the next opportunity. Do play any game. See how engrossed you get into that. See how you forget what time of the day it is and where are you’re sitting. See how relieved you feel. See how you explode with joy and laughter which might even be very unlike you.

We are a small group of gamers that play for fun. The objective is strictly fun. We play either against the artificially intelligent computer (aka just ‘computer’) players or against each other among ourselves. In any case, the objective remains to be fun. So we win some, we lose some. When we win, that gives a good feeling. When we lose, invariably there is something to laugh about, with the way we played. Irrespective of the result, we have loads of fun playing that version of indoor football. In every single session there would be spells of laugh riots. Over the last few years, I think we have had over 1000 hours of gaming and possibly more than 2000 football matches.

This one happened the other day. Me and my cousin, as a team, were playing a football game on XBOX 360 against a computer controlled team. We were a goal ahead. Dying moments of the match. We were defending a well orchestrated, devastating attack by the computer. We defended the attack well as my cousin took control of the ball dangerously close to our goal line. Just when I thought he was going to clear the ball to safety, I saw him blasting the ball with unbelievable brutality into our own net for the ‘best’ own goal ever scored. Priceless moment.

Back in my high school days, we were made to believe that if we didn’t learn typewriting and/or shorthand, we wouldn’t have a career. To be honest, even when I was in the last year of my school I had little idea of where my career would be. Anyway, we guys used to flock the institutes to learn shorthand and typewriting. Most guys from boys’ school went to these institutes also because that’s where it is co-ed. The fact that you could write love letters in shorthand excited one and all. Typewriting and shorthand were considered as special skills. Some could type 60 words per minute and some wouldn’t even be able to push the keys hard enough to see the ink on paper. You can guess where I would have fallen.

I was a complete failure at typewriting. I did join the typewriting classes but it did not even last a week. I decided to drop out because of two reasons. One, I thought it was a bit too clerical for my liking. I came to a conclusion that my typewriting ability or the lack of it would never have an impact on my career. Two, as you’ve found out by now, I couldn’t type. As simple as that. The typewriter was such a hard mechanical device that lacked style and sophistication. I thought it was an everlasting symbol of industrial revolution. I was way too gentle for that. I just couldn’t do it. That’s not to say I’m not dexterous. I’m a console addict, can beat you to death in an xbox game. Typewriter was not my thing.

Meanwhile, I was always crazy about shorthand. There was something special about shorthand. That was like learning a new language. A language only a handful would know. In a way, it was also a code language. It’s fun to write stuff that not all mortals can understand. For some reason that I don’t remember, I never joined the shorthand classes. But I had this shorthand book that was picked up in a platform shop. I tried to learn it myself. It needed a lot of patience than I had expected. I could not graduate beyond cat, mat and rat.

About 15 years later, both typewriting and shorthand seem like a dying skill. There are not many institutes and not many willing to learn. Sometime in the last few years, I’ve learnt to type. I’m not the fastest typer (I hate the word ‘typist’) but I not a rabbit either. Typing with the computer keyboard gives me a lot of pleasure than with the typewriter. In terms of convenience, the computer keyboard is only a million times better. Flat keyboards with soft touch key pads. Also thank God for backspace, copy, paste and all that stuff. The most important thing is again the sophistication I was talking about. The other plus I see is that, with the keyboard, I can see and read what I type. The pleasure of admiring your own creation. With typewriter, the paper is arrested inside the metal frames and I feel like I’m punishing the paper with hammering hits. It’s like canning the paper and if you’re poor at writing, it’s even worse, pity the paper. I know there are people who still love the typewriter. As an invention, it is just brilliant and its design is absolutely original. In terms of usage, I think it’s slowly moving to the museums.

I still have the fascination towards shorthand. It will always be in the list of things that I always wanted to do but never did. One of the less obscene things in the list. I think shorthand has already gone out of fashion and business. Dictaphones have completely eliminated the need for learning this not-so-easy skill which requires constant practice to stay upto speed. With dictaphones, you just have to switch it on and you don’t have to go to institutes to learn how to switch it on. I don’t know if anyone still learns or practices shorthand. It’s a pity that shorthand is disappearing. There is something romantic about it.

I’m not sure if all those experts in typewriting and shorthand still stand to benefit from their skill. I know most of those institutes turned into computer education centres. At least the typewriting/shorthand institutes charged less. I’m not sad that these are going out of existence. I’m just amazed at the pace of technological development that has rendered these ‘once-career-defining’ skills to something useless in a matter of 10 to 15 years. I’m just 30 and certain things that I’ve seen and experienced back then now would look like a scene from those black and white movies. Can I say mobiles that we use now may go out of existence (or develop into something else) in another 15 years?