Some of you know that I just moved to a new house, this time I can call my own to be exact.

Excited? Definitely.

I can tell you that the excitement had already started as I listed down items to bring and to leave behind. It does not take a genius to know the items that I arranged the first is my collection of DVDs and Blu-Rays. While it looked easy to just pack ’em and go, I did not prepare for what actually lied ahead.

Guess what? I did not have that many original DVDs and Blu-Rays as I had initially believed!

 Surprise, surprise.

 Goodness.

How will this look like among friends and people I know when they come to my new house?

Oh there goes my projected image of being a film buff I have carefully polished and upheld over the years. Oh, wait. Decades!

And I still have a few pirated stuff?

Tsk tsk. What a hypocrite. What a liar. What a … actually I run out of vocabulary to find synonymous words.

But then as those stacks of DVDs and Blu-Rays are stacked in open wall shelves, I sit down, take a sip of tea, and start thinking that it actually takes time to collect them.

I am not a die-hard film collector, you see. In fact, I have just started collecting DVDs and Blu-Rays in less than a decade. Prior to that, I always relied on video rentals, one of the benefits of living in a country where piracy of intellectual property is diminished.

Then I moved to another town, bewildered and enchanted by wide availability of pirated films in open market. Easy and free, almost, films, what’s not to like? Who aren’t enchanted? For sure I was, and managed to bring in a few home, all of which have endurance in playability as long as a ripe banana.

However, back since my rental days, I insisted on renting films with well-equipped extras and special features. I wasn’t as busy as I have been in recent years, but even then, I could only juggle two film titles in DVD per week, as I made sure to watch each and every special features in each and every DVDs I borrowed.

We all know those extras actually have longer, way longer duration, than the main feature film, thus you can roughly count that finishing one DVD title is almost equal to, say, watching 3-4 films in a row? Possibly.

The same logic subconsciously applied when I began collecting DVDs, and obviously, Blu-Rays. Bare-bone discs proved to be unattractive to yours truly, those “vanilla discs” that carry nothing but feature film only, sometimes with trailer. Yes, sometimes I buy those out of nothing-ness, i.e. no other versions of the DVD is available. Yet I have to store these titles along with box of pirated stuff, as I don’t see value in collecting them. 

Oh dear God, I can see Woody Allen fans start marching with their axes toward me! And I have many of the maestro’s DVDs!

Then maybe as we grow older, we want to stretch the use of our money. For once, I realize that I cannot splurge easily in buying DVDs and BDs, especially when having your own house requires greater (financial) responsibility. 

Thus, from now on, I have to be more selective than before in putting additional collection to the wall shelves.

Thus, it may even take more time to grow this so-called library. Nevermind, I’ll take the time.

After all, I want to make sure that I have watched all titles on the shelves before dust flocking in and getting thickened before I will no longer be able to dust them off myself. 

Recently I came across Ve Handojo’s blog campaign and contest on buying or having original DVDs. Interesting campaign for many still preferring to settle for less.

By all means, this blog entry is not intended to participate in the contest. But if you ask me why I am slowly building a library of original films, I just want to leave a good legacy behind. I don’t have much to offer. My skills are limited, my knowledge is only bare to spare. But knowing that someday these hard-earned DVDs and Blu-Rays will be taken care of well in hands of fellow film enthusiasts are enough for me to grow these collections for this lifetime.