my brother came home from a company-sponsored trip to japan this past saturday night.  he was there since the first week of january for training purposes, so it was quite a long stint for him.  'twas also his first time to be sent by the company he's working for and also his first time out of the country since our trip to the US back in '97.

of course we're all thrilled that he's home and while it was a given that he brought home some goodies from the land of high-tech gadgets, nothing has floored me more than when he gave me a 30GB ipod.  it also supports pictures and plays mp4 video, so i guess it's a 30GB ipod video.  my god, i now have an ipod!  even now, three days after his arrival, i still cannot believe what i have in my possession.  this was just on my wishlist before and for the second straight year, i got at least one of the things i have on my wishlist.  talk about unbelievable!  i actually noticed upon him getting into the car that night from the airport that he had a set of earphones on and while i assumed that he was just listening to music using his n70, it left me speechless when, upon arriving home, he removed the earphones (which were hanging by the back of his neck during the ride home) and pulled something from his pocket and handed it to me, saying that it was for me.  i never realized that it was an ipod because it was still in it's case and upon pulling it out, that's when shock (in a good way) overcame me.  damn!!  🙂

i started using it sunday morning and installed itunes on my pc.  the only drawback i see on this device is that the songs cannot be dragged and dropped to the ipod from the pc.  it always has to use the sync command to transfer mp3s to and from the pc (well, transfer to the ipod only since syncing (did i spell it right?) automatically erases the songs which are de-selected).  i guess i still need to get used to the software, but nonetheless, it's all good.  the funny thing is, all the mp3s–and i mean all–on my pc can be transferred to my ipod and i still have, like 15GB of free space left.  so i'm guessing this is where pictures and video come into play.  my videos (favorite music videos) are in mpeg format and i still have to convert it to mp4, so that'll take some work.

thanks to my brother, i now have something new to focus my free time on.  being a music lover, this is something that i will definitely bring whenever i leave the house.  sadly though, i cannot bring it to work with the security thing and all.  he is one really, really cool brother.  the ipod was, as others often put it, an unexpected surprise.  but isn't a surprise be unexpected by default?  how will be a surprise if you know it'll come your way?  now that is a different story.