Jason De Quadros

The first time I ever saw a Sony Walkman, my entire understanding of what “portable music” meant changed in an instant. I was at my cousin’s house, and he had just won a Sony Sports model — the legendary F5 — in some contest. I remember the moment vividly: the bright yellow casing, the matching headphones that looked impossibly cool, the rugged, water‑resistant body that felt like it could survive a fall off a cliff. The buttons were right on the front, bold and tactile, and the clamshell door snapped shut with this satisfying plastic click that made the whole thing feel indestructible. After that day, I *had* to have one. Fortunately, I had a paper route back then, so after about a month and a half of saving every dollar, I bought my own Sony Sports Walkman — the WM‑F63. It felt like a spaceship in my hands. AM/FM radio. Auto‑reverse. Dolby B noise reduction. Features that, at the time, felt like the height of audio engineering. The coolest part wasn’t even the tech — it was the free...

Full disclosure: I’m a writing addict. I didn’t realize it for most of my life — not until one quiet afternoon when I started counting the number of Moleskine journals I’d filled over the years. They were everywhere. On shelves. In drawers. In bags I hadn’t used in years. A small army of black notebooks, each one holding a version of me I’d forgotten about. You know the ones I mean: the iconic matte‑black covers, the elastic band that eventually loosens with age, the ribbon bookmark that frays just enough to feel lived‑in. And of course, the little paper pocket in the back — the one that always ends up holding ticket stubs, receipts, and scraps of ideas that never made it to the page. Every new Moleskine comes with that tiny booklet tucked inside, the one that whispers: *Hemingway used notebooks like this. Chatwin used notebooks like this. Picasso used notebooks like this.* It’s pure marketing, but it works. When I open a fresh Moleskine, I feel like I’m tapping into a lineage — as i...