The European with the 471MB USB
From time to time, customers at our food place would compliment
our piped in music. Not to brag, but I do curate our playlist to match the mood
of the place. Music contributes a lot to the ambiance and overall experience. I
love doing it too, an excuse to search for more music and expand my own personal
catalog.
The shop’s music collection is stored in a bunch of USBs
that we alternately plug into our speakers. I recently just updated one USB to accommodate
Christmas music (yes, we’re slowly crawling our way to Christmas so might as
well soften the “blow” by conditioning ourselves through music haha.)
Recently, our staff said that a customer once again expressed
how much he loved our music, praising one particular song. He asked for the
title, but no one in the store knew. I wasn’t present that time. He and my
partner chatted a bit and my partner mentioned that it was me who’s in charge
of our store music and I was the one who could provide the song title.
A few days later, he came back to dine in again. I was
present that time, so we chatted a bit. Let’s call him Fred. He is German who
lives in Switzerland and travels the world for work. The dream life. He was in
Baguio for a few weeks to conduct some business with the LGU.
I asked him, what was that particular song you liked? He
said, it was a male singer, with a guitar, and the song is relaxing, warm. He couldn’t
remember the melody though.
In my mind: Oh no, that could be any song. That particular
USB is 90% folk/indie/acoustic.
Good thing he conveniently had a blank/empty USB with him,
and I volunteered to transfer all the music from our USB to his (at least the
USB that contained his desired music). We worked on how he would pick it up, as
I had no means to transfer the music that night- my laptop was at home. He was
also about to leave Baguio in 2 days. We agreed that he would pick it up the
next day.
Funny how I even said, “If you want, I can give you all my
music since you seem to love folk.”
He said, “If it’s not much of a hassle?’
I said, “No, it will probably only take 5 clicks max.”
He said thanks. It’s always nice to share music with
strangers.
I made a mental note to do it first thing when I get home.
That night, when I arrived home, I plugged his USB into my
laptop, ready to do those 5 clicks:
Click 1: Open folder of USB A (I keep
a back-up in the laptop of the catalog in every USB. Music is that essential.)
Click 2: Ctrl +A – Select All
Click 3: Ctrl + C – Copy
Click 4: Open his USB…
---- OH.
His USB’s storage is 471MB… that’s not even 5 albums.
Abort!!!
Oh no… how am I going to transfer all the music from USB A,
when the entire catalog is about 2.5 GB?
How come a European from a Developed country STILL owns a
USB like this? Hahaha kidding.
Funny how I simply assumed that no one owns a 400+MB USB anymore.
Last time I had one was in college, in 2006.
If only I knew which song he liked, I would just transfer
that specific album/playlist. Most of these albums are MP3s converted from 2-hour
YouTube playlists, so 1 playlist file is about 90MB-120MB at least. And the USB
had about 10 playlists in there, plus other albums and popular songs that didn’t
match the description of his song choice. His song is definitely in one of
those YouTube-to-mp3 playlists.
I didn’t want to disappoint him, but I also didn’t know how
I was going to make things possible at this point. The first step I thought of was
to eliminate/delete all those albums and songs that I was sure didn’t match the
description of THE song. Next was to compress the remaining playlists. I went online
to find an MP3 compressor that would turn 120MB files to 50MB ones.
Those 5 clicks I predicted that would take up a maximum of 5
minutes… turned into multiple clicks and 2 hours. Hello, Philippine Internet.
LOL. Anyway, I would compress one file, and leave it loading, then go about my
evening, then do another, and so on.
Finally, when all files were able to fit the epic 471MB USB,
I called it a night, put the USB in an envelope, scribbled “for Fred” with a
marker, and put it in my bag, making a mental note to hand it to our staff or
my partner the next day to hand to him.
It was all worth it, because not only did he leave a Thank You
note, he also left a bottle of Soju. He wrote that if ever my partner and I
find ourselves in Germany or Switzerland one day, we should contact him. His
email address was scribbled on the note too.
Two hours is nothing compared to making a new friend, for
sure, who will hopefully enjoy the music wherever he is in the world (he said
he was off to India next). Music in his 471 MB USB (sorry, it is now an inside
joke).
We surely enjoyed the Soju, 3/4 of which I drank.
Any other person interested to have music transferred to your flash drive, please bring one with 8 GB storage space at least…
- Ivee (10/06/22)
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