Old Things

I gotta be honest with you.

I'm not really into changing my stuff every N years so that I can keep up with the fashion trend. Like if you need a guy who can tell you that the only thing a real man needs is three pairs of footwear (formal shoes, rubber shoes, slippers/sandals), I am that man. I'm not being preachy about it. I'm just saying anybody who comes to me saying he's flat broke and he's got more pairs of shoes than me, his plight's justifiable

(yeah, screw you and your Nikes bro).

Anyway, so yeah. The going thought is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it's broke but manageable, don't replace it. If you're going to buy, buy sturdy. If you can apply that for everything, you'd be surprised how far your money can go without having to spend them on personal upkeep.

Here's a list of really old things that I still use on a daily basis:

The bag that I used to go to work today is a black Lacoste backpack I got during my last trip to the US. Around that time, the average American wouldn't even know who Osama Bin Laden was - at least not for another six months. Starting service in early 2001, I've been using this bag daily for school and work for the last 8 years and from the looks of it, it might as well hold up for another 8. Runner up is my Eastpack backpack which my mom got for me, which I got around the same time as the Lacoste backpack. I just don't use it as often because it's pretty big, but I can tell you it's got a lot of mileage as well.

My wristwatch is a DW-9000 Casio G-Shock. The first time I wore it, Fidel Ramos was still president, I was still in puberty, and people still generally believed Gloria Arroyo is just a harmless wallflower senator. 1998 was a pretty messed up year, I tell you. Anyway, since then, this watch has gone into countless pools, under the sea, inside showers. The paints have long since chipped off and the protective body has about a dozen scars and countless scratches, making this the Spartan King Leonidas of watches. I guess when Casio says it's a tough product, they fucking mean it.

The monitor I'm using at home is a Hewlett Packard monitor we got as a package with our computer back in 1999. The computer it came with is a 400mhz Pentium 3 workstation that's long since broken down due to power supply problems. The monitor's endured, however, first being used by my younger sister in our home and later on by me at our flat in Manila. There are sign's of aging, with the monitor having some brightness adjustment issues, but it's nothing the videocard can't compensate with. The outside casing looks horribly dirty too, but it's not bad, considering nowadays the lifespan of a monitor is no longer than that of a hamster left to the care of an ADHD kid. An average CRT will last 3 years. Mine's 10 years old and still working strong.

The keyboard I used to type half of this article is an NEC keyboard. To make you understand how old the keyboard is, it came with a computer package boasting 122MHz, 128MB ram, and 1 Gig of hard disk space. You read that right. HARD. DISK. SPACE. It included a 28.8kbps modem too, the first modem to ever take me to the net. When I first started using the keyboard, I didn't even hit puberty yet. April 1996. 80% of the stuff I put on my blog were written using that keyboard, along with just as many of my long stories. Best part of it is the keyboard is still in almost perfect condition despite the abuse and the filth that has accumulated under the keys through the years. Only the 'A' key has faded. Meanwhile they keyboard I'm using now's starting to breakdown already after using it for five months. New isn't necessarily better.

The bag I use for out-of-towners is an Orlando Magic varsity sports bag, and it's even older than the NEC keyboard albeit if only by a few months. I was grade six when I first got the bag. GRADE 6. I think 1995 was the last time Magic got into the finals, until this year. I'm just thinking, if I hold on to this a bit longer, there'd come a time this bag will be a championship bag or something. And even then, I'd probably still not wash it.

Do you guys have old stuff that you still use?