A Life Worth Living

my hi-fi set has decided to develop a life of its own.

or is now possessed by a poltergist.

switched on my hi-fi a few minutes ago wanting to listen to a CD. Only problem was, the volume level refused to change. I thought hey, maybe it's got something to do with the buttons on the machine itself, so I tried my remote. No chance there.

Not sensing any alarm yet, I leave it alone for a while. Only thing is, I did not want to listen to track 1. No, I wanted track 7. So I pick up my remote and chose track 7.

That was when I realised my hi-fi was alive.

The numbers on the display kept skipping and refused to settle on a single track. When it finally did, it stayed for a few seconds and moved on. Then it just went absolutely insane.

I stopped it. (and this was probably the last time I managed that.)

I changed CDs. Hey, maybe it was my CD that was faulty.

The moment I put in the CD, I realised something was wrong. The hi-fi just read through ALL the tracks in my CD. It just kept reading the tracks without playing it.

I hit play. It ignored me.

I hit play again. It grudgingly obeys and plays track 1. But within a few seconds into the track, it figured it didn't like the song, and skips to track 2. I stare at it in disbelief. Then it decided it didn't quite like the starting intro music of track 2, so it forwards it a few seconds and then listens on...only to realise that it hadn't forwarded it enough....

My fight with the hi-fi (both using the remote and simply pushing the buttons on the machine itself) goes on for several seconds before I think, maybe I should try to change its function and see what it does in the radio function. Bad decision.

While in its radio function, it starts searching for all available radio stations under the sun, settling at certain ones for a few seconds before moving on. At one point, it stopped for a while at a Tamil station. Goodness knows why. It also stopped for a significant amount of time at Class 95FM.

Sometime while this was happening, I call Faith. It was her hi-fi before I owned it. Maybe she could tell me about the restless spirit haunting it. At the same time, I'm trying to change the function of the hi-fi again, to tape or CD, but it was simply having too much fun that it ignores me. Then I try switching it off. Once again, it refused to obey. It just went on and on, trying to find a station it liked.

After struggling for a good 5 minutes, she suggested I pull the plug. After pulling out 2 other ones thinking it was the correct one, and of course causing both of us to freak out because what would happen if the last plug didn't stop it? It finally stopped with the pulling of the last plug.

It was the only way it could be stopped.

I have a hi-fi that's alive.