The new era 2

 Not so fast. Just when I think I can throw out a lot of stuff in the garage, I found the box of music cassette tapes!

Do you know what is cassette tapes? How sentimental. I recorded two after being rejected by my first crush. She was in my mind for years and so are the two tapes, with me for many lonely lights. She wasn't on my mind since a long time ago. I can take a picture of them, trash them, and move on. 

One was made for me by a friend who happened to be her brother. BMFs don't try to be nice to each other but he did that when I visited home from far away. I appreciated that because I sort of miss the culture back home. If I throw it away I will probably forget all about it, even if I take a picture. I lost touch with my old friends and I don't expect to have reunions. We'll be busy with our grandkids anyway. But I won't have the same feeling that I have when I discovered something long forgotten in the garage.

There are tapes from Mrs Player. I'll keep that. It was her who doesn't like to listen to those classics again, now that everything is streamable on the internet.

There are some commercial tapes from my idols, who were long dead! Maybe they are worth something. People make money by organizing concerts for 10 year anniversary after their death. I have no problem trashing them. They live on the internet and their voice is better than the cover on their tapes.

Mrs Player also has an old high school diary and yearbook messages. I wouldn't have that sort of thing on paper. I have the internet and multiple identities.

Old maps. I threw them away without thinking. We don't need them ever again when we have mobile phones. But then when you are holding the piece of paper, you can almost time travel back in time, in space, back to the spot where you were. Happy times. Happy place. But since we have pictures and videos while we were traveling, they can go to the trash after taking pictures.

The problem is the box of video cassette tapes! I had been preparing for ages to convert them. I never had the mood to. I was fussy about what coding is best, what medium to use. But now I will be happy if the machine I kept still works and the tapes still work. If you can find people to convert it, it will be expensive and risky. But the NTSC and PAL standards are still alive because it's very simple for cameras to output a signal and two power wires instead of a digital bus.

Wow, the collection of jewelry and watch catalogs. The best money can buy. Mrs Player got them in person. Together with exotic vacation catalogs. Those things that you can find on the coffee table of a premium resort hotel.

If you decorate your home with wall of books, those will be what Mrs Player put up, lol. When I retreated from my workplace, I need spaces fast to put my things from the office. Those are the obvious things to go. But she was very reluctant. I had to hide them gradually but kept them in case she went crazy.

Books. A lot are hers. I kept her postgraduate textbooks in case she needed them later. But she is more inclined to read management for dummies. I also don't need my books. But some are obscure publications with my name hidden somewhere inside. The internet has records of everything but not all those. And the internet memory is limited when everybody forgets about it. I thought it would be easier to tell my kids and grandkids what I did. Maybe.

I also rediscovered my thesis together with the floppy disks of the word processor. I had been looking for those many years ago to archive it. Now in theory the disks might just work.