Goodbye my Philips DVD player ...

This is why I'm sick and tired of buying electronic goods ... If you don't take care of them, or use them often, they will eventually break down and die ...

But this is not the case of my Philips DVD player, which I have had for at least the last ten years ... I've used it often enough to watch my movies ... At one point, it did break down, which I think happened sometime in 2009 or 2010 ... As it turned out, it was because I always left it in standby mode, and if I'm not mistaken, the fault had something to do with the power source ... This was told to me by the person at the electronics repair shop ... Anyway, this was like six or seven years ago ... So, I got it fixed and everything was dandy again ...

Until very recently ... I watched Mad Max Fury Road for the second time, and I didn't finish watching it, so I left the DVD in and switched the player off ... I'd thought I'd continue watching it the next day ... Well, the next day, I turned on the DVD player, and for some funny reason, it just kept loading ... I took out Mad Max Fury Road and put in another DVD ... Same thing happened ... Alright, Philips DVD player, you definitely needed to get fixed again ...

I went to a different electronics repair shop ... I told the lady at the shop that my maximum budget is RM70 ... I didn't want to spend too much on an old DVD player anyway ... This was on the first day of my week-long Chinese New Year leave ... Guess it's a good thing I work at a Chinese company, or else I wouldn't have gotten to do many things during the week-long holiday ... Anyway, the lady said that I could only pick up my DVD player after CNY ...

So, I went to the shop on the first Saturday after the week-long leave and picked up my DVD player ... It only cost RM30 to fix it ... I was surprised 'coz I thought it would cost more ... The lady said that there was something wrong with the IC board ... I don't know what an IC board is, and I don't care ... I took my DVD player home and plugged it in and everything and put in a DVD ... Now the screen read "No Disc" ... I took that DVD out and put in another ... Same thing ... I put in four different DVDs ... Same thing ... Either the electronics repair shop ripped me off, or it was time I put my DVD player out of its misery ...

I told my mother about the whole thing, and I was really surprised by her response ... She said "Inna lillahi wa inna ilaihi raji'un (Arabic: إِنَّا للهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعونَ‎‎), which means "We surely belong to Allah and to Him we shall return". This phrase is uttered by a Muslim upon hearing that another Muslim has passed on ... You can Wikipedia it ... What really surprised me was the fact that my Philips DVD player was an inanimate object, and yet my mother uttered a holy phrase ... But, in retrospect, my mother was right in saying it ... Everything in this world belongs to Allah, including Man's inventions ... The ideas and the construction of machines could not have happened without Allah's will ... Okay, okay, I'm preaching ... But we are living on borrowed time ... Death will eventually come, and to Him all of us shall return ...

And so, my Philips DVD player, it is your time ... I accept your passing wholeheartedly ... From now on, it's just the cinema and the movie channels on my pay TV provider ... I will not be buying another DVD player, in memory of a cherished old friend, even though it's just a DVD player and nothing more ... Plus the fact that I barely have money to buy a new DVD player anyway ...