Lost without Lost

I was going to write about how I came to be an Aman junkie, but I'm about to get on a plane tomorrow for Frankfurt and all I can think of is how miserable the 12+ hour plane ride will be without any previously-unwatched episodes of Lost or other shows to keep me entertained. Sure, there's the in-flight entertainment system, but I've pretty much already watched all that I want to watch. Which got me thinking that I might have become an iPod video junkie. I got my 60gb iPod video for my birthday earlier this year, and it has changed my life. No joke! It has proven to be one of my most treasured travel companions; the other being my mobile phone (most of my friends call my HP iPAQ the largest mobile phone around, but I like to think of it as a laptop that fits in my palm).

Since moving to Hong Kong nearly 13 years ago, I stopped watching television, with the exception of CNN or BBC in hotels and Sex and the City and the first season of Six Feet Under on DVDs. It's not that I didn't want to watch TV; I just never had time to sit down in front of a television when the shows were actually on-air. But now, with iTunes Music Shop selling the most recent episodes for just US$1.99 an episode, I've become hooked not only on Lost, but also Desperate Housewives and Commander-In-Chief. I may even start watching Top Chefs, since I've just downloaded their free pilot episode, which I only downloaded because I had run out of fresh episodes of my afore-mentioned fave shows. Now, I look for things to download whenever I travel. I watch my iPod video on 4-hour train rides from Geneva to Zermatt, in long immigration queues at Heathrow and, of course, on the plane. And the best earphones have got to be Shure's E-series. They really do block out all the ambient noise, whether it's the humming of the jet engine or even the wailing baby. For the iPod video's battery life of about 4 full episodes of Lost, I am in another world. So now, my only problem is that I can't fill my iPod with enough content to fill my transit time. So I'm hoping the folks at Apple, iTunes and various studios work out a deal fast, that will allow me to buy and download the latest movies. But first, Apple needs to double the screen size of the iPod and extend the battery life to around 12 hours of video play time. But I have faith, that all this is in the works as I type. In the meantime, I'm...