Post-holiday depression remedy

After the initial shock of coming home to the humidity and heat following a month of being in the European winter, I spent the next few days trying to get over my post-holiday depression by ... shopping. Okay, to be fair, I had been researching new speakers since we were in London. My old sound system was pretty low-end (Yamaha ones) and they were about 10 years old, so I reckoned it was time to get some new higher-end speakers to reward myself for how hard I worked.

After a lot of research and decided that Bose was overrated and overpriced, I settled for these:

There were heaps of very positive reviews about Bowers & Wilkins speakers and now that they are up and running, I can see why. I almost burst into tears when I first hooked them up and listened to a couple of songs through them. The clarity was astounding. Even when I turned up the music, the speakers handled the volume with grace without the slightest hint of distortion.

The only inconvenience of the system is the centre speaker. If I put the TV on it (which would not be ideal), the TV would not be at eye level from the couch. On the other hand, I am not comfortable using the free speaker stands I scored as part of the purchase negotiations because the centre speaker is quite large and heavy, so I am now organising to get a special stainless steel stand made for it. I can't wait to get that done.

Naturally, in between shopping and setting up the sound system, I went down to Wilde Kitchen everyday, even though I had to send back the beef one day because it was too chewy. Even so, there wasn't an awful lot of choice in terms of restaurant/cafe choice on the paleo diet, so Wilde Kitchen was still my best bet.

 

As part of the new sound system bonanza, I also got the new Apple TV. I decided to get it to replace the WD TV Live, which was touted to be a little wonder that could stream almost any file format videos to the TV. As it turned out, the WD TV Live was starting to get unstable and the build quality of the machine was woeful, coupled with the fact that the new Apple TV now has the Plex app, which would allow us to stream videos from our NAS, I wanted to streamline our gear. Boy did I make a good decision - apart from Plex, there were tons of great apps, including Netflix, which we are trialling at this stage. Unlike the old Apple TV, I can really see us using this new Apple TV on a regular basis. If only I could say the same about the XBox One.

The beauty of buying the new speaker system was that Bowers and Wilkins was running a promotion, which meant that I was also entitled to claim two bonus products from the company. I made a claim for the A5 wireless speaker and a pair of P5 headphones (which I am going to sell because I already have the same headphones anyway - by the way, they are gorgeous headphones!).

The problem with me is - I like things in sets. Once I bought the B&W speakers, claimed the bonus wireless speakers, together with the headphones I already had, I decided to get the B&W desktop speakers for my desktop computer as well. I had the Bose Companion 20 speakers; they were good but just not amazing. The new B&W speakers certainly weren't cheap but I just couldn't stand the thought of not having B&W speakers all through the apartment now that I had started. :P All I have to do now is to sell the Bose ones and I am all set!

Coincidentally, as if it was dying of natural causes, the old Yamaha DVD/CD player also decided that it had had it, so I went to Videopro again and picked up a new Bluray/DVD/CD player that could apparently upscale video output to UHD resolution. Even better, it was only $130! It was a great and zippy little machine, which was just as good for music as it was for video. Hopefully, we will get years of use out of this.

Anyway, so that was pretty much all I did ever since we got back from our holidays. The first day of work on Thursday was a bit tough but it got a bit better on Friday. Today is Monday and it was better still. Thankfully, tomorrow is Australia Day, so the weekend and public holiday tomorrow are doing their job to ease me back into the intensity of every day work life.