Toshiba Chrystal Zephyr

Toshiba Chrystal Zephyr

[one] My father tells the story of how he had purchased this amazing Japanese oscillating desk fan 44 years ago a hundred times. How he and his friend bought two of these for 350 Tomans each, paying 50 Tomans each month. And how this unbelievable piece of machinery has worked all these years without the slightest hesitation.

Off the topic, let me explain that 350 Tomans equals 0.35 USD right now, but it was a reasonably high price back then.

So, the Toshiba Chrystal Zephyr has been in our family for many years. Kids has broken some buttons, the timer hasn’t worked for as long as I remember, but the main engine is still good to go for hours. Basically, my father doesn’t have any use for it these days, but nevertheless, he uses it. It has a cool breeze that reminds me of the hot summer days when I was a child, and we sat together as a family, eating ice cream, and I had this playful moment of waiting for my turn for the breeze to come.

[two] I bought this great phone a couple of months ago. The big HTC HD2, which rivals the iPhone and blah blah blah. I love it. For a geek like me, it’s pretty amazing how a device can perform like this and do all these things. But then I think, how long it’s going to take for it to join the obsolete junk we throw away as they cannot satisfy our technological needs anymore. This is my third phone in the past five years, and I’m not used to changing sets unless I absolutely have to.


[one+two] And I think to myself: Are we the no-memories generation? Are we trying so hard to go forward, we forget to look back and see how far we came?
We always use the words, economy, consumers, business, technology, … and yet forget to leave something for our children.

All my memories, my work, and a big part of my life has become digital these years. Twenty years from now, I have nothing to offer to my children but a bunch of DVDs and hard discs, and I don’t even have the slightest idea how to preserve them.

Of course, a desk fan seems lame, useless, not practical. But once, our race had the power to build a simple fan that could go on for 44 years. Hell, we once build the pyramids, which even now, we ourselves, have no idea exactly how. What has happened to us? Are we disappearing into shadows of the digital era and slowly destroying the little things we used to touch, to remind us who we really are?