An occasional overlap

I won't tell you what industry I'm in, but my job doesn't have much overlap with my hobby - books.

An overlap happen this morning - a very small one, but enough to make my day.

We were having a discussion with a customer, who's in the paper industry. We asked about business growth and prospects. He said prospect is bright. Paper consumption is increasing year on year especially in Asia. Not so much in Europe, just stable in America.

"But sales of e-books has surpassed physical books," I said.

He responded, "Yes, but a lot more people are still comfortable with paper books. I think a major change may happen in our kid's generation, but for now, it's not a big challenge."

I may feel offended at the 'kid's generation' remark, seeing that he's maybe about my father's age. But then again, I just wrote in the last post that I haven't gotten into e-books yet.

Nope, we didn't talk about trees and environment and stuffs.

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Tablet sebagai e-reader

Saya kurang gemar membaca e-book (fail digital) di skrin komputer. Hilang sebahagian nikmat membaca itu sendiri. Saya lebih suka membaca sambil duduk-duduk di atas sofa atau berbaring di atas katil (jika di rumah). E-reader pula skrinnya agak kecil, dan fungsinya terbatas.

Tapi kini ...

Credit to image source www.examiner.com
Ya, apabila pasaran mula dibanjiri dengan gajet tablet pelbagai jenama, spesifikasi dan harga, saya mula menimbang-nimbang. Terutama apabila adik saya menunjukkan senarai e-book yang dimilikinya berjumlah 600 lebih! Meleleh air liur. Baiklah, memang bukan kesemuanya akan dibaca, tapi saya rasa lebih separuh merupakan tajuk-tajuk yang saya berminat untuk baca.

Apabila saya pegang, tablet itu tidaklah berat mana. Bolehlah kalau nak dipegang sambil berbaring. Saiz skrinnya begitu hampir dengan saiz buku biasa. Walaupun perasaannya memang tak sama dengan memegang sebuah buku fizikal, tapi ... 600 buah buku (lebih, semestinya) dalam satu gajet - mudah dibawa ke mana-mana, jimat ruang penyimpanan. Tablet juga ada banyak lagi fungsi lain, jadi ia bukan sekadar e-reader semata-mata.

Tapi, saya tidak mahu jika anak-anak saya banyak habiskan masa main game pada tablet. Suami saya kata, mudah sahaja, jangan download dan install game.

Tapi, saya rasa ia masih satu kemahuan dan bukan keperluan.

Banyaklah pula 'tapi'nya. Jadi, bagaimana?

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