Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 149 - Yum Cha Wake for the iPod Departed

My iPod 'died' on Thursday.

Well, it didn't so much die as simply stopped playing sound through the right channel. I assumed initially it was the fault of the head phoneswhich takes a pounding being used day in and day out, but upon checking at work with another set of head phones faced the horrible realization - trust me, when you love your iPod as much as I do, 'horrible' is an understatement - that the iPod itself was ailing. Thankfully the good folk at Apple Care were more than helpful, and got me an appointment with one of the people at the Genius Bar at the Apple Temple, and so it was that my good friend Fahmi and I found ourselves at Temple this morning, after getting up way too early, talking to the lovely Ash, who went to a great deal of trouble to troubleshoot what was wrong with my portable music device.

Goodbye old iPod and thank you.... hmmm think I am tad over attached?

Turns out that because they are made as a unit that can't be disassembled for repair ( thank you control freaks at Apple!), that my only option was to buy another iPod for $189, which of course I did. I have become so used to having 8000 songs at my disposal that the idea of not having it was anathema. So once again, I left the Temple with a brand new iPod in my grip, and the old one off to be vivisected by Apple for god knows what purpose.

What to do when you have given up your iPod to be chopped into small pieces by sonic vivisectionists? Why go to Yum Cha to have a wake of course! Truth be told, we were starving by this point so Yum Cha at Sky Phoenix on the top floor of Westfield Sydney City seemed like a perfectly fine idea, and a chance to mourn over dumplings and pork buns. It was more expensive that some otehr Yum Cha places we have been to so not sure if we'll go back but the dumplings were delicious, the pork buns soft (I forgot Fahmi doesn't eat pork so I ended up eating all 3! Filling), and best of all, they were different flavours to what we get normally. So yummo scrummo all around.

Full up to pussy's bow (love that phrase!), we headed first to JB HiFi who in this store at least had no music - what madness is this?! -  and then to Nespresso so Fahmi could buy designer coffee in little metallic cups so colourful they even made an Aboriginal art work on the wall of the shop with them. I don't drink coffee but kind of wish I did after visiting there. It's very clever marketing, turning Nestle coffee into a designer brand, and the staff are delightful.

I wish I had drunk some of that coffee because we then headed all the way up Oxford Street to Daly Male, a funky  mens clothing store I love, where I bought a new shirt and belt for Fahmi's party (any excuse will do!), before we stopped for hot chocolate and almond croissant at Swiss Bakerz, run by the boyfriend of one of Fahmi's female colleagues from his old job. Wishing I could just teleport back to the car - we had done lots of walking by this stage and I just wanted to rest some more! - we walked back to the City via HUM music, found the car in the car park (score!) and headed home....

Autumn colour in Hyde Park

...where I promptly synched the iPod up to iTunes making it more than just a pretty paperweight before sprinting across to my lovely guy's place for some R & R, reading Entertainment Weekly and Saturday's Herald. The plan was for a chilled night at his place with takeaway food, but he wanted to go check out Fahmi's 50th birthday party venue, and so after quickly watching the Saturday before last's Dr Who episode, which was a muddled mish mash of ideas desperately in search of a narrative, we met Fahmi at Zanzibar Hotel in Newtown, downed some wines, and pizza & wedges, dodged the dripping rain (we were on the roof top bar) before heading down to level 2 to get ideas on decorating for the party on the following Saturday (red and orange are the colours to be used and it will look faaaabulous, of course!) before waiting for the torrential downpour to subside so we could dash back to the car... and home....

PHEW! Fun day but I am exhausted just typing all that in! Many zzzz's were generated when I finally  made it to my warm, snuggly bed....