Ok this is what I have been doing this week, summarized into ridiculously nonindicative minute chunks.

1) Concert at PLMGS
2) VJC invitationals
3) Shiyun's birthday
4) Khai Soon's birthday
5) Grandpa's birthday
6) Stock-taking at bbc
7) Bag-packing

And please sms me your preferred gift from Taiwan or else I'll randomly assign gifts to you on a first-come-first serve basis.

And I'm going for a flu jab tomorrow. Not that I'm morbidly afraid of needles or anything.

And now, to tacitly justify the little time I can spend online now that the nice people at Apple will only return my computer to me on Friday;

When life gives you lemons, well, make some lemonade. Not quite for Nokia and Universal which plan to launch a digital-download service that promises to offer buyers of selected Nokia phones free and unlimited downloads of Universal recordings. However, in the face of blatant contraventions of copyright laws, Nokia and Universal, in all their ambition and expediency, have decided to make a Nigella Lawson-esque Lemon-infused meringue with all that they've got.

Although relatively young, the digital music industry has been blooming, albeit being a rather monopolistic one dominated by Apple's iTunes Music Store. Furthermore, the closure of Napster, a free digital music download service, has catalyzed a reactionary response that has sparked greater awareness of online piracy and the effect this has on the stakeholders involved; in this case, the musicians, the recording companies, and the consumer base.

Due to the pressing need to fulfill the physiological level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, ergo sleep, I have chosen to focus on the cultural shifts in the Digital Age. While not entirely bad in itself since it is reflective of a non-stagnating society which theorists say is crucial for the evolution of civilization, such shifts in mindsets offer me an oft-daunting opportunity to look at the status quo from a Christian perspective, which leaves me with the haunting question of whether it's right to steal music if (a) I face little or no criminal charges (b) Media conglomerates are bending to my level and offering me free downloads already, in any case.

According to the Bible, it is very obviously a sin to steal. Likewise, with other secular cultural constructs, it's a crime to steal. As if to complicate matters, we start to wonder about the intangible fine line that separates intellectual property from concrete and physical goods, and at this point, my viewpoint is divergent from that of a secular angle because in spite of popular consensus, I do not desensitize my moral compass.

Let's augment this basicity with a secular angle, that it's only ethical that you own the exclusive right to your own music lest you give it up in a recording contract to the company. This is where the responsibility of the media company comes in as the conscience of a society too caught up in a whirlwind of consumerism to care for the ethical dimension to their actions: are the messages that the media companies send healthy for the creative climate in the industry? Does it reflect the value system that the artists uphold? Does it exacerbate the problem of piracy, or does it implicitly decrimininalize it altogether?

Yawn. Let me stop here, please. The lack of structure clearly reflects my state of mind, yet I'm aiming to offer as much insight as I can.