Listening to music has been my interest since I was a kid. When I was in my junior high, I spent most of my pocket money on 2 things: comic books/music magazines and pre-recorded cassette tapes. I love music since my early age: theme songs from TV series, cantopops from Sam Hui, Alan Tam and Leslie Cheung, foreign pops from Michael Jackson, Madonna, British bands, etc. When I was young and poor, I really cherish the 'bullets' that I had in my pocket, so I had to choose this cassette over that cassette whenever I found there are multiple targets in record store. LP was more expensive and took too much space. It was difficult to hide that from my parents, cos I didn't want them to know how much I spent on this kind of hobby which is not financially approved. As I had a very large urge and drive to possess all the music that I like, so I spent a lot of time to acquire them, especially when I began to be able to afford them after I began to work. I remember that when I was still a student, I spent a lot of time to copy CDs to cassettes or cassettes to cassettes to create my favorite collection. When I began to work, I went to CD shopping like crazy, because I think that CD sounds better, more durable, and it is something that I will enjoy with repeat listening. So, I spent a lot of time to track down the CDs contain music that I used to own in cassettes when I was a kid. As a result, my CD collection grew non-stop. As time goes by, my taste of music was getting so broad that, I could say that, other than opera and country, I listened to almost all genres of music and possess at least one of two CDs in most genres. Certainly, for my favorite musicians and artists, I own like dozens of their albums, also include some CD singles and compilations. Well, I did enjoy owning those CDs and listening to them. Whenever I discovered some great CDs from some musicians that were new to me either from friends or by I, I would be very excited, especially when I was alone during my days in the States. I don’t know exactly how many CDs do I own, during my few previous house-moving, my heaviest items are my boxes of CDs. I guess I've own over 700 CDs.
However, 2 changes have tremendous impact on my hobby in the last 2 years.
The first one is getting married. Even before Cora and I got married, we had spent so much time to prepare this and that. Certainly, when we were together go out, dining, movie-going, shopping, etc. I couldn't listen to music. When I got home, I do have other interest like surfing internet, reading news, listening to radio, watching movies, etc. They took away my time of listening to music. Then, I got married and living with Cora. We don't have similar music taste and there are other priorities between us, so I don't really play much of my music collection at home......
The second change began with my Ipod. Thanks to Cora, she gave me an Ipod per my request as my birthday gift more than 1 year ago. It is a 5G 30GB Ipod. I love it so much; I spent a lot of my time loading my CDs in Itune and load them on my Ipod. Well, you might think that I would listen to more music........Ha.....it is not exactly true.....cos there is something very attractive.....called 'podcast'...after I discover podcast, I have been download them every week, podcast from NPR, Businessweek, CNET, CMM, RTHK, National Geographic, etc. They are my favorites. So, with the limited time that I listen to my Ipod (mostly to/from home/office), I listen to podcast 80% of the time. So, music just become for filling in scrap time, like....if my podcasts are 8 minutes long each, and I only have 2 minutes left between last podcast to my office, then I will switch to 'shuffle' to play a song to fill the time gap….
So, what happen to my current feeling/attitude about music. There are 2 aspects:
First, I collect digital format of music file like crazy if you know what I mean. There are so many 'generous' people in the world that like to 'offer' and 'share' with the rest. I love to be a beneficiary of their generosity. As this format is different from CD, since it is so easy to get, I do admit that I don't cherish the music as much as I was in the old days. As a result, my collection of music in my hard drive counts in thousands, total size in tens of GB! Honestly, I really don't know how many of them I've ever listened to before....
Secondly; I almost stop buying CDs, except in rare occasions. I used to buy like 50+ Cds a year in the States, now I may only buy 5 at most in a year, only those that I couldn't find 'anywhere'. So, finally the growth of my CD collection finally halts.
As the aftermath of this, now I began to feel the 'pain' of owning so many CDs, especially since my latest apartment move. Sometimes, I told myself, 'IF' I know there is something called 'Ipod' back then, I wouldn't spend so much money on CDs, now they don't worth much and it is waste to throw them away. Considering that, moving them and storing them is a pain (when you need space for other things, like baby stuff), and I don't have much time to listen to them anyway. So, I try to comfort myself that 'maybe' I can share my CDs with my son in future when he discovers what a collection his dad has. He may cherish them as treasure. However, come to think of it, he may disses his dad's CD as antique and with the way technology goes, MP3 is the way to go now, God knows what new format will come up when he grows older. So, I can only think that my CD collection is part of my youth and good old days. Hopefully, I will continue to have space to store them, and someday they will be become valuable somehow.
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