So much leisure, so little time – to write about it! Yes, I’m now in a ‘hectic’ leisure life, having to refer to the calendar for plans on every single day of the week, rushing from study groups to Wayang Golek, to discovering new, exciting markets, and of course, making friends, catching up for coffee, getting stuck in traffic, new diet, exercise regime, yet having all that laundry and some cooking to do.

Yesterday, however, I had to pause, on hearing the sad news about Steve Jobs. Went back to a time, 11-12 years ago, when, as a management trainee, I first spotted the iMac in bright blue and orange colors and was infatuated. Didn’t think about owning a computer in those days, had no clue about Macintosh and Apple, but I did go down to that shop a couple of times to admire those babies.

Years later, Apple finally started to make its presence felt in India, and I spotted some more objects of desire – all those MacBooks and iMacs in little ‘lunch box’ sizes, spending considerable time simply admiring them, still clueless about features and all that jazz. They just looked so delicious!

Until, finally, I had a soft loan from my company to buy household stuff, and I spent most of it on the Mac. Within 20 minutes of plugging it in, I was in love! Practically all my waking hours at home were spent with ‘Vicki’ the system voice that called out the time to me, and obeyed my verbal requests to ‘open iTunes’, etc. It was almost torture to work on the PC in office, with its clunky interface.

iPod Shuffles and Nanos came and went, in fact, Souvik took up running thanks to the Nano sport kit, and is now training for the marathon (the half-marathon, at least).

I had another long wait for the iPhone – no camera phones allowed in the office. But once we moved to Hanoi, and I twiddled my thumbs for days waiting for the luggage to arrive, Souvik presented me the iPhone. And he couldn’t find me free to talk any more – I was so busy with the apps and games and books and maps, OH! So he got himself the iPhone 4.

And I found Magic Mouse! And the sexy keyboard!!

We resisted the iPad for the longest time, until the iPad 2 was released, anyway. Couldn’t wait after that. And it was time for Monopoly & Trivial Pursuit with friends on iPad. And Geo Bee.

Then we moved to Jakarta. And my beloved Mac got packed up. But I needed a computer! So (sigh) we completed our little Apple family with the MacBook Pro.

Yesterday I spent a lot of time thinking about Steve Jobs and his extraordinary vision that brought joy to so many people, read tributes and stories of his life over and over again, as many people said, on devices he helped create. His death was not a shock, just a deep sadness for the loss of a genius.

And with a heavy heart I say goodbye, Steve Jobs, and thanks for all the fun.