Life Without TV

As my list of Twitter friends grows, I have come across many conversations about everything from The Sopranos to American Idol. Mostly American Idol, that is. And a good sprinkling of Heroes and Gray's Anatomy and a little bit of Lost. It got me to thinking about how little K and I know about what's going on in TV Land.

You see, K and I have been living without TV for more than seven years.

I know. Sounds funny, doesn't it? Especially in this day and age wherein almost all media is on demand at our convenience. Including television shows! And they're pretty good ones at that!

Our reason for this TV-less existence is simple. I was in a financial crunch at the time and had to sell nearly everything we owned - car, fax machine, my mom's china, washing machine, VHS player (how ancient!) and our television, among other... luxuries.

The first week was horrible. We were bored out of our minds and found ourselves at a loss with what to do with the time. So we hit the mall across the place where we lived. Which was easy because we were in a high-rise smack in the middle of the busy Ortigas Center. Actually, we were a stone's throw away not just from one mall, but three! We'd kill time window-shopping and movie-watching when money could be spent.

But then that got expensive.

Thank God we discovered newspaper-reading. How boring and geeky. I was such a bad mother to let my child know about current events. Gasp. And to make matters worse, she actually enjoyed reading the Science Section and even the front page. Shocking. We gave up our beloved television, mourned its loss, and found our minds stretched and fingers inked. Gasp.

At that point, about six months to a year without a TV at home, we started asking ourselves how we were able to get anything done in our days when we did have a TV around. And to the daily newspaper, we added on our re-discovering of...  books. I subjected my child to Jane Eyre, Little Women, A Wrinkle in Time and other mind-stretching reads like my old encyclopedia. Shocking.

And then someone gave us a computer which was an instant hit. Not for its internet connection. We couldn't get any in our building. But for its VCD player. So off to the friendly neighborhood video store we would go for a stack of movies every few days. We would watch, watch, watch movies. Movies that I grew up with; movies that she grew up with; new movies that we missed either due to time or budget constraints.

Our most treasured VCD discovery came from former Morning Show assistant turned jock, Larry Burns. One day, he came to the station with a double set of discs of a show called, Friends. "It's the Best of Friends Vol 1!" he volunteered as he handed me a thick case. I rolled my eyes. "I can't believe I am borrowing this. I can no longer claim to be the only person on the planet who hasn't seen an episode when I pop this into our computer..."

Larry smiled, "You will not regret this. Trust me."

To this day, I cannot thank Larry enough for introducing us to Chandler, Ross, Joey, Monica, Rachel and Phoebe. They turned our boring newspaper, book and movie ridden existence into a non-stop Friends-watching marathon that would go on for days. Larry had to pry his VCDs from my hands when I gave them back after three months.

I did buy us our own copies though. They're a bit worn out by now but they never fail to make us laugh. All on our beloved PC that has been a part of our lives longer than our favorite New Yorkers. The same computer that plays Heroes as fast as my friends can download it after it airs Monday nights in the US. The same computer that faithfully keeps us connected to the rest of the world through VOX, Blogger, WordPress, Multiply, tumblr, Twitter and Jaiku. The same computer that also plays DVDs now too.

Seven years... and it looks like we'll still be counting them. As long as we have our Friends collection, a video rental store, and cyberspace, I think we'll be fine.