What are your lockdown "essentials", and what has lockdown taught you...?

It's a brave new world that we're living in... like something out of a 90's sci-fi movie!
Now that the Covid-19 lockdown and quarantine are the temporary "new normal", we have been forced to adjust and change the way in which we live and work daily.

As someone who has been self-employed for 15 years, I'm quite used to working from home, but it's a bit different when you can't go out to see clients and colleagues at all.

It's also very strange to be out at the shops and be unable to see who you are shopping next to, because their face is covered by a mask - you can't even see if someone is smiling or scowling... how very odd!

As I'm sure is the case for everyone, I have found certain daily "essentials" to be very useful in getting through this unique time.
Here are some of mine - feel free to chirp in the comments :)


My Bose Soundlink Colour:

Ah yes my old faithful - who can do without a bluetooth speaker nowadays?
It also doesn't hurt that Bose are all about really good sound - despite the small physical dimensions of the Soundlink Colour, it produces excellent sound quality to satisfy my need for beats through the day... and night if I choose to work late :)

...which brings me to my next essential...


Spotify:

Whether I'm in my car, working from home or just doing something around the house, I always have a soundtrack playing in the background :)
Once upon a time I used to keep all my music on an external hard drive, until one day when I discovered the genius of Spotify.
Until then it didn't make sense to me to pay a subscription fee for music, but when you think of the pros - almost any track that you can think of, available 24/7, across all genres, and not having to worry about ever dropping a hard drive and losing all your data - suddenly R59 per month is really a small price to pay.

Add Spotify Connect which allows you to control your music from multiple devices, and it's a no-brainer :)
If you are a music lover and aren't already part of the Spotify universe, best you head on over to www.spotify.com, sign up for free and take it for a test drive.


Coffee:

I'm a coffee snob. It's that simple - I really enjoy a decent cup of coffee, and can you blame me?
So one of the things which has really helped keep things "normal" during a decidedly abnormal time, is my Breville Barista Express.

I was fortunate enough to become the owner of this incredible machine last year, and I have spent the last few months practicing and perfecting how to use it, resulting in these, which really do taste as good as they look :)

Of course the "perfect cuppa" is the result of a combination of which beans you use, which milk you use and a hundred other factors, plus of course personal preference, but it certainly helps not having to rely on coffee shops for a really nice cup of coffee :)

Oh and it saves a ton of cash...!

A garden:

We simply don't realise the value of having a garden until we've been cooped up inside for a prolonged length of time.

To be able to simply walk barefoot on grass and breathe in the (relatively fresher) air, devoid of the normal amounts of pollution... it does something for the soul.

      

Of course the economic downside is a real mess, but I think it's incredible how this period of forced isolation has forced us to try and get by with less.

Less stuff, less noise, less hustle, less bustle, less human interaction.

All in the name of staying safe.

Hopefully we are all able to come out on the other side of this thing a little bit more sensible, and changed for the better.

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Help! My Bose Soundlink Colour won't switch on... what to do???

In the world of Bluetooth speakers, you really do get what you pay for.

I've sampled a few models in my time, and the sub-R1000 units, while they may be loud, are usually very tinny with a lack of low down bass response.
I've been fortunate enough to own a Bose Soundlink Colour for a few years now, and this speaker has delivered solid performance the whole time.

While it may not be the loudest bluetooth speaker that I have heard, it can sit in a corner and push out very decent sound at a moderate volume, without any distortion.

At higher volumes, the bass does drop off somewhat, but I've been very impressed with this little gadget overall.

I was therefore understandably alarmed when the unit refused to switch on yesterday, leaving me stranded in a world without music.
The situation was dire.
I started to envision an expensive visit to Bose South Africa, followed by an unreasonably large EFT from my bank account to theirs...

Thankfully, today we have a resource called the internet, which pretty much makes us all professionals in all fields. Instantly.
It's also a great place to spread dodgy news and make up wonderful factoids.

In this case however, it helped me to get to the bottom of my conundrum, and what follows is the recovery process for a Bose Soundlink Colour that refuses to switch on (assuming that it is charged):

1. We want to get the speaker into something called "Shipping mode"
2. To achieve this, first plug the speaker into your wall charger
3. Hold down the Play / Pause button for 15 seconds
4. After 15 seconds, while keeping the Play / Pause button pressed, unplug the charging cable from the speaker
5. Release the Play / Pause button
6. Plug the charging cable back into the speaker
7. Press the power button, and the speaker should power on

This process worked perfectly for me, and saved me a repair visit to a Bose store.

My Bose powers on.

Long live the Bose.

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