That missing iPod Touch

Sometimes, unexpected situation intervene your otherwise plain and simple life.  You got puzzled, confused, frustrated and even angered.  Time and time again you thought of letting go, giving up, and yet your stubbornness dragged you back in the mystery, until ultimately you found out the answer.  Yet instead of settled with satisfaction of having the problem solved, you were even more intrigued by how the journey of hunting down the answer revived your true nature, surprised by who you really are.

My journey started when I realized that my iPod Touch was not in my recently brought backpack.  I got to admit that I have a pretty poor memory.  Because of that I trained myself to be organized, so that by building a habit of putting the same item at the same place, I have a much better chance to find what I need.  Change like having a new backpack, which is replacement for my overdue broken one, breaks that habit, but still I couldn't imagine myself not putting back my iPod Touch back to the front pocket which I used to leave it at.

I spent half an hour looking around.  As time went by I got more and more frustrated.  On the top of that, I was not feeling well for almost almost a week, trying my best to suppress my sickness by drinking tons of water and rest as much as I could.  Yet I came back from shopping with a friend spending most of the time pushing a baby stroller with malfunction wheels.  It was like a workout and the tiredness seemed to bring out the sickness again.  I needed to take some rest in order to suppress the sickness as soon as possible or flu would take over me.  The last thing I needed was a scavenger hunt of electronic gizmo.

Still, I pressed on searching around for another hour, while did some minor stuff that I needed to along the way, including putting a gift that I wrapped for my friend's birthday into the trunk of my car.  After a while, I was getting too tired and frustrated to a point that I couldn't stand it.  So I laid on bed to take a rest.  It was around 6:00 pm.

I woke up again by bright room light, and found out that it's 10 pm already.  I found my throat dry and knew that I needed to drink some water as soon as possible.  So I did, and with a cleared mind, I started to think my next week on solving this missing iPod Touch problem.

A few possibility started popped up in my head, one was that I simply didn't bring my iPod Touch back from work yesterday, since I used it a lot during office hour as a Internet device.  Another possibility would be dropping the device accidentally when I took our other stuffs from my backpack.  Suddenly I started to think of all the places my iPod Touch might dropped into: at the edges of my car seats, at the trunk, or many many other possibility.  My head started aching.  If only there's some magically service that allows me to check where my devices were ....

Wait, internet device!  iPod Touch is an Internet device, and Apple has a feature called Find My iPhone which allows me to find Apple iOS device, including iPod Touch!  So I went to my desktop computer and launched iCloud web site, and went to the "Find my iPhone" feature.  2 of my other iOS devices showed up, but my iPod Touch was shown as "Offline".  Damn it.  I probably turned off the device before I put it in my backpack.

Then, my friend pinged me on Facebook, and I realized that I should bring something to her, and maybe along the way, I could drive to office to confirm whether my iPod Touch was in the office or not.

So I hopped into my car.  My car audio system started, and some jazz music was played.

It took me a few seconds to realize somehow shocking was just happened.  It was so shocking that I had to stop my car aside of the drive way, as I was about to leave the town house I live at.

Those jazz music was played through Bluetooth from one of my devices.  And among all my devices, I only put jazz music in one device.

My iPod Touch.

I instantly started checking my auto audio system.  And sure enough, the audio system indicated that the music was played from my iPod Touch!

I was excited!  I mean, my iPod Touch IS AROUND.  It's signaling me that it's alive!  So looked around inside my car, and then search my backpack again.  I even search the glove compartment,  But no, I couldn't find my iPod Touch.

I tried switching songs using my car dashboard, and I was able to switch to other songs on my iPod Touch.  It HAS TO BE around!  But where is it?

Suddenly a dark possibility came up: my neighborhood stole it, and that's why I couldn't find it and yet able to access the music.

It ... couldn't be, I thought.  Wait, "Find my iPhone"!

I brought out my iPad and launched "Find my iPhone" with data tethered from my Android phone.  Nope, the app still declared that the iPod Touch was "offline".  But I was sure that the music came from my iPod Touch!  What is going on ....

At that time, I remembered that I promised my friend to bring her stuff.  I really needed to go now.  So I headed off.  Music continued playing while I was driving to my friend's house.  "Wait, if the music still plays, that means .... my iPod Touch is still in my car!"   I started to realize that.  That also meant that my neighborhood DID NOT steal my iPod Touch.  Oops.

After I dropped off something for my friend, I started to wonder if I should still headed to office to check whether my iPod Touch was there.  I mean, the continuously playing music from the exact playlist of all music in my iPod Touch through Bluetooth already proved that my iPod Touch definitely was in my car.  Still I was already half way there, and I was like, might as well.

When I arrived the bright parking lot of my workplace, I started to think that I should intensively check around my car since I KNEW the iPod Touch was SOMEWHERE in my car.  So I spent a LOT of time search up and down using the flashlight on my phone within my car and my trunk.  At the end, I DID NOT find my iPod Touch.

Disappointed, I went to my office.  And sure enough, the iPod Touch was NOT there.

Eventually I decided to drive home.

So I drove and finally arrived home, with music CONTINUED playing from my iPod Touch, even thought I didn't know WHERE IT IS.  I started to worry that if I didn't find it soon, the iPod Touch would eventually ran out of battery, and I would forever lost this last hint to locate it.  But what should I do?  I already searched everywhere in my car.  Where else could I search?

Suddenly,  I came up with an idea.
 
I took my backpack, left the car, went upstairs and left my backpack there, and then went back to my car and started it.

Jazz music continued to play thorough Bluetooth.

So that means my iPod Touch was NOT in my backpack!

Next I took a few bags from my trunk, including my gym bag, gadget bag and somehow I took the big plastic bag with the birthday gift I wrapped and left in the trunk a while ago too.  I did the same by leaving them all in my room, and went back to start my car.

No jazz music was played.  Instead, the dashboard indicated that it has problem connecting to the iPod Touch device.

Bingo!  So my iPod Touch was in one of those bags I recently took to my room.  I rushed back and searched all those bags.

But I didn't find my iPod Touch.

What the ... wait .... that .... birthday gift ....

A ridiculous idea came up in my head.  "Wait, it can't be."  But there's only one way to figure it out.

I took the wrapped birthday gift to my car, and started my car.

Jazz music started playing.  Dashboard stated that iPod Touch was connected through Bluetooth.

My iPod Touch was IN THE WRAPPED BIRTHDAY GIFT!

I went back to my room, and carefully removed Scotch tapes from the wrapping paper.  It turns out that the iPod Touch was NOT inside the box that holds the birthday gift, for after I loosed one side of the gift wrap, my iPod Touch was slide out between the wrapping paper and the gift box.

I wrapped my iPod Touch WITH the gift box.  I bet I did that accidentally when I wrapped the gift on my desk, not realizing that my super thin and light iPod Touch was right there on my desk.

So the mystery ultimately solved, and let me realized a few thing: I believed that my neighborhood will steal my stuff; I was super stubborn on finding my missing items.

And I was not able to think outside of the box, literally.