First Impressions: Spotify

When Spotfy first launched in Malaysia, what really caught our attention was that it had rather a reasonable subscription plan. We signed up for the free account to give it a go, downloaded the app, and during lunchtime we realised we still preferred having the actual songs on our iPhone rather than stream it, for two reasons: we have limited data, and our battery takes a bigger hit.

A monthly data plan of 2GB doesn't really inspire confidence in us continually streaming music wherever we go, plus honestly data coverage isn't necessary great everywhere we are. Also, we can't plug in a pair of earphones and disconnect while in the office as we never know when someone may be calling us from across the room.

And so we made do with just a basic account, until the other day Spotify sent us an email with an offer for a Premium account subscription at RM2 per month, for three months.

Okay...that's tempting.

And so we decide, why not. And because we're trying, we tried to make an effort to use Spotify more, not only on our iPhone but also the PC version.

And now after 2 months, how do we find it? Well, while we do use it more than we did with a Basic account, but we're still using it less than we ought to. Mainly streaming music at work at very low volumes (unless no one else is in, like on the third day of Chinese New Year where we blasted the Opera radio throughout the day) through connected speakers, and on the classical/opera/instrumental genres (can't be blasting Combichrist's "What The F* Is Wrong With You?" now...).

Spotify's auto party playlists were great and came in handy during the New Year Eve's party and other meetups (and come to think of it why didn't we just let one of the easy listening playlists run at night when we're chilling in bed...).

We're also just realising we can use Spotify to preview albums to decide if their worth getting, especially since the last couple of albums we've preordered turned out to be...well, not that exciting.

Sure, there's loads of Spotify functionality we've yet to try out - discovering new music via their recommendations, the different radio stations...probably the only one we won't use is the Run function.

Our three months promo will be up by next month and we think we'll hold off continuing our Premium subscription for now...because there's Apple Music to also try out.

After that...see how.

Jelakjuice Time

So somewhere at the start of last year we decided to give protein powder supplements a try. We figure it would be cheaper than trying to have steak for dinner every night. So we headed out, asked for a bottle of protein powder suitable for the likes of us who are lactose intolerant, and came back with a big bottle of chocolate flavoured powder and a shaker.

The first time we tried it, it tasted ok.

After a few times, there's only one word for it.

JELAK.

Am so glad we have a word to fit this. It reminds us of the video of some people volunteering to try Soylent for a week and was already jelak of the thing by Day 2.

Still, we slogged through, tried packing it in small containers to take after workouts, tried blending it with yoghurt and fruits...and in the end we've settled to just taking the protein powder in the office before leaving and going for our workout - easier cleanup overall (this was why we never knew that there's a problem with people having smelly shakers where they never wash the shakers soon enough).

Once we finished our first bottle, we went back to the store only to find out that they don't have stock of what we took, and recommended a different brand.

This second brand had some hydrolysed beef protein isolate that, upon opening the bottle, offended our sinuses so bad we were tempted at times to throw the entire bottle away. We don't know how now that we managed to finish that bottle, the smell was so bad.

Now we're onto yet a third brand, and well the smell is acceptable, only that we're still super jelak of the thing and it gives us a mild headache after drinking it. The idea of steak dinners every night is rather enticing, if only we managed a decent dinner hour...

Oh well jelakjuice time.