an aussie in austria

Everything I do has a soundtrack. I hate sitting in silence – be it in the car, eating dinner or working – if there’s no music playing, I’m just ever so slightly edgy.

I understand that plenty of people find it difficult to concentrate with music on – but I’m the opposite – I find it difficult to concentrate without it on. There are some situations where silence is required, but for me, they are very few and far between.

I consider my taste in music to be epic. And I consider my music collection to be extensive. Extensively epic, obviously (this is my blog, I can write what I want). Of course most of it sits in what one might call the ‘alternative’ sphere – and in that sphere I’m quite mainstream with a bit of quirk on the side. I don’t really do hip hop or rap or jazz or classical or metal or dance – my passion sits in what I might call light alternative. To demonstrate, here’s some of my favourites: The Living End, Birds of Tokyo, Bloc Party, Radiohead, Nirvana, The National, Muse, Ballpark Music, and the list goes on.

When I was preparing to go overseas for my first Eurotrip, my boss asked me what I wanted as a farewell present. An iPod was my answer. I needed to have a giant iPod that could keep all my music in one place. Enter the iPod Classic, with its never been beaten 160GB of storage space. This was back before the humble iPhone, and I remember my boss questioning me multiple times that the Classic was what I really wanted. Didn’t I want an iPod Touch? To be fair, a Touch would have been game changing, because it had the Wifi capability I actually needed when I was travelling, but I didn’t know that at the time – my only thought was to get the biggest storage space possible so I could store all my music.

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That iPod is still with me today, almost ten years later. Recently, the old dinosaur even had a battery change. To be fair, I have discovered that my iPod is nowhere near full – and these days there are much newer models that would still store all my music. But I’m not having that. I’m sticking with my dinosaur – my friend who’s been with me through all my Eurotrips, my move to Austria, and everything in between.

My 4584 songs apparently equates to 12.8 days of listening pleasure. It’s a mixed bag, because I literally burnt every single CD I ever owned and uploaded them. As a result I’ve had to make a multitude of mixes, because, well, that’s what I do. Some of my favourites include: Getting Ready to Dance, Daggy Dance, Love, Driving, Cooking, and of course my all-time favourite ‘Deb’s Special Mix’ which is probably not truly revered by anyone but Deb.

I literally have a playlist for every occasion. And I know that these days there’s these things called Amazon Music or Spotify (and I do have a subscription to Amazon Music), but for me there’s something special about having it all on the old dinosaur. So that’s how it’s going to stay… for now at least.