Something that always bothered me, walking around in America, was everyone else walking around with an ipod-- headphones in their ears. It just seemed so unfriendly and made people seem very standoffish and unapproachable. My opinion has since changed.
Now, not only do I enjoy my ipod while I walk to work (45 minutes—it makes the walk more enjoyable! And don’t worry, as I have worked in retail myself and had to deal with this, I always take out the headphones before attempting to talk to people). But Moldovans have started to listen to music with headphones… a development for which I am glad.
Why is this a huge development? Because, up until now the streets and busses and hallways of Moldova have been ruled by the self-proclaimed “Cell Phone DJ.” Wherever you go, you would be assured that you would hear music pumping out of someone’s cell phone—for everyone within 15 feet to hear (unless, of course, you were in a closer proximity to someone else also pumping a different song out of their own cell phone). Most cell phones here operate with a disk, like a flash drive, that can be used on the computer and for a phone. Thus, most youth have many songs on their phones, and play the distorted digital versions loudly through their cell phones, ALL THE TIME. A lovely symphony it was, the Russian techno in a 7am bus… through a cell phone speaker. But now, people are being only self djs, and I’m liking it a lot.
Kudos to whoever started this trend. I also saw, last week, an advertisement for an MP3 player for 50 us dollars on a billboard on the side of the road. While this is still really expensive for Moldova, I was surprised they were advertising it. AND last week in Chisinau (the capital), I saw an ipod for sale, a real true ipod. Good job advertising, Apple.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, November 13, 2007 at 6:37 AM.
