Christmas Wish-List '08

Updated tastes for 2008. Many items from my 2006 and 2007 lists are crossed out, which is why cat­e­gories like “fur­ni­ture” aren’t small­er now.

I’ve been told that I’m noto­ri­ous­ly hard to shop for. Not only am I extreme­ly picky, I have eso­teric (and expen­sive) tastes, and I usu­al­ly buy — and so, have — the things that I want. This year, I real­ized that good gifts are things peo­ple want, but which they don’t buy for them­selves because they can’t jus­ti­fy the cost. It does­n’t have to be lav­ish, but maybe a lit­tle over­priced, some­thing you would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly buy for your­self.

Photography

  • Canon EOS 5D Mark II (about $2800) — Yep. This is the big one. I had the Mark I on my list back in 2006. This one is full frame, does dust clean­ing, and records video now. Even though I have a cam­corder already, I want this for low-light and low depth-of-field work that con­sumer cam­corders sim­ply can’t pro­vide.

Housewares

  • Tea Forté Morehouse glass ($25) — A dou­ble-walled glass that can be used to keep tea warm (or iced tea cold). Made with a cov­er for the leaf on Tea Forté pyra­mid bags to stick out. No con­den­sa­tion means no coast­er need­ed. Love the design and func­tion­al­i­ty.
  • Tea Forté tea trays (×2) ($7) — For hold­ing indi­vid­ual tea tags. Comes in sets of two with four colour choic­es, but I like bone white.
  • Bodum Assam 1.5L teapot ($50) — My pre­vi­ous, small­er Assam teapot broke (rather eas­i­ly) as I was clean­ing out the fil­ter. I can’t give up my love of Bodum prod­ucts though. I already have tea mak­ers for sin­gle serv­ings, but I don’t have a pot for when I have guests over.
  • Oxo Candela Flare (set of eight) ($130) — I’d put these on the ban­is­ter that sep­a­rates my hall­way from the stairs. It’s pret­ty bland right now.

Furniture

  • B2C Expandable Dining Table ($699) — To replace the cheap, scratched-up din­ing table I have in my kitchen now. Frosted glass? More like frost­ed sex­i­ness.

Gadgets

  • Tenori-On ($1200) — I’ve been wait­ing for this to be avail­able in Canada for more than a year, and it’s final­ly come. I’ve always want­ed to get into music as anoth­er medi­um of cre­ativ­i­ty. I come from a musi­cal back­ground (as opposed to visu­al arts), but the Tenori-On com­bines both, in a sim­ple, easy-to-use inter­face.
  • Aromatherapy Car Diffuser ($16) — For keep­ing the car fresh, with refill­able scent pads.
  • Apple Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard ($80) — I’m hop­ing the next MacWorld Expo will announce an update, not a dis­con­tin­u­a­tion, to the Mac Mini, which I’d get for a home the­atre sys­tem (my TV is soon to be dis­con­nect­ed because I don’t use it enough). If this holds to be true, I’d have to buy a key­board, which I could already use now.
  • MicroFly Tiny R/C Hovering UFO ($20) — Small and easy-to-fly. Something I’d use to play with Dolly.
  • Colibri Throttle Silver Plaid Lighter ($60) — Much to my dis­may, the elec­tro-quartz trig­ger on my old Colibri died. It was one Christie gave me for my birth­day, with my name engraved on it. I’ve been look­ing for a lighter ever since, and this is the first one I’ve ever real­ly con­sid­ered. I’m super-picky about lighter design.
  • Auto LED ($25) — Plugs into the cig­a­rette lighter of the car, and glows blue (which would match the meters of my car). Pull it out, and it becomes a handy-dandy flash­light.

Games

  • Rez ($20) — One of the most under­rat­ed and genre-bust­ing games of the PS2.
  • Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition ($20) — DMC has always been one of those series I hear about, but nev­er got a chance to try. The spe­cial edi­tion adds game­play and fix­es var­i­ous issues.
  • Metal Slug Anthology ($20) — I love the arcady feel of Metal Slug. Something you can turn on, and play with your brain off. The entire series in one game? Yes, please.

7 comments

  1. DMC is my fav. DMC2 is a dud though, the rest are all good, very styl­ish. and long live met­al slug!

  2. I’d want to play all the DMC series in order, but I just don’t have the time. I read that it’s a game that would take a lot of invest­ment in learn­ing the com­bat sys­tem. I’m just fin­ish­ing up my oth­er games right now.

  3. I think for the 3rd year run­ning I say, my list is blank, or if I must, see Amazon list but usu­al­ly I want, I get imme­di­ate­ly. It’s a self-suf­fi­cien­cy. Once what you want is (beyond ooh shiny and fun paper to unwrap) spe­cif­ic it seems unnec­es­sary to ask some­one for it to me.

  4. Ooh some very cool lighters on that site.… going to con­sid­er one for a Christmas present if I run out of ideas. Thanks for turn­ing me onto some boy toys.

  5. @Pearl — Self-suf­fi­cien­cy is good, and I’m that way too. These are items (aside from the big-tick­et ones that I can’t afford at the moment) that I plan on buy­ing myself one day.

    @Xibee — Just a word of warn­ing: I hear that Colibri lighter qual­i­ty has dropped in recent years, but Colibri is meant more as jew­el­ery than a heavy use item.

  6. I know we’re not real friends in real life, but I would­n’t mind get­ting you one of these. I’ll need your address.
    Email me.

  7. I Checked three dif­fer­ent local game stores, they all were out of Metal Slug Anthology :(

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