It's everyone's favourite time of the year again ... not Cop, not Union Day and not even Christmas. It's the release of Spotify's Wrapped, of course, and my time to gloat.
At last, I am part of the one per cent – not that one. Instead, I am in the upper echelons of the music platform’s global listeners, having racked up 114,619 minutes since January 1.
That’s 79 days non-stop, and the platform typically only counts data until October 31 as part of its annual statistical dump. It reveals a listener's use for the year, which is then paraded across social feeds – or kept hidden, along with a secret obsession for the Jonas Brothers.
It puts me ahead of 99 per cent of Spotify’s 574 million monthly users.
Want to know how I got there? Listen up.
Music is at the very centre of my life. Get a real life, I hear you grumble (course I do, I hear everything). Look after your children? None yet. Make friends on social media? Behave.
The only internet profiles my wife has to worry about me endlessly scrolling through are those of Peruvian pipe bands or obscure Finnish flautists. Even the stern looks when I accidentally call her Alexa have died down, and I’m free to carry on barking orders at the Amazon speaker to: “Turn it up!”
Forget putting in hard yards, it's just easy listening for 1,910 hours all the way to the top. More stats include 5,699 songs played; 2,753 artists listened to; 139 genres covered; and 146 plays of my top song (Metallica's Enter Sandman).
I've spent 2,118 minutes listening to Queens of the Stone Age putting me in the 0.5 per cent of their fans (I’m free for drumming auditions Josh Homme, call me).
It’s not only songs, though. Spotify says I’ve ploughed through 55,654 minutes (or 927 hours, 38 straight days) of podcasts. Three of the top five shows are on stocks, bonds and trading – though one look at my investment accounts suggests nothing is actually sinking in.
Wherever I go I have Airpods, they’re practically wired into my eardrums. At the gym, they’re in. Out for a walk, in. In bed, they're cranked to full to drown out the wife’s snoring.
When I can’t wear them, I have the Alexa on rotation. Head bopping in the shower, in the kitchen furiously chopping carrots to the rhythm of samba or at the laptop nonchalantly typing away.
I still pay my monthly subscription in the UK (it’s £10.99, or Dh46). And it’s worth every penny. Yes I know I need to swap to the UAE’s subscription, which is less than half price, and save a tidy sum. But those are precious minutes I could have been scrolling through Travis Scott’s setlist in preparation for his Abu Dhabi show or Foo Fighters at the city’s Formula One Grand Prix.
I can't join colleagues for a casual chat at lunch when there are podcasts – and minutes – to devour. Forget ChatGPT, the only artificial intelligence I want to be friends with is Spotify’s AI DJ, which I resort to when I’m driving.
It has dished out excellent suggestions over the year, expanding the number of artists in my repertoire and, ultimately, helping me cling to my position in the top percentile.
Wrapped brands me a “shapeshifter”, meaning as soon as I listen to one artist I’m onto the next. Some say it’s eclectic, some say it’s erratic. But I'm not listening, I’m over in Angola grooving to an a capella quartet.
Same time next year?
House-hunting
Top 10 locations for inquiries from US house hunters, according to Rightmove
- Edinburgh, Scotland
- Westminster, London
- Camden, London
- Glasgow, Scotland
- Islington, London
- Kensington and Chelsea, London
- Highlands, Scotland
- Argyll and Bute, Scotland
- Fife, Scotland
- Tower Hamlets, London
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Yuval Noah Harari, Jonathan Cape
MATCH INFO
Euro 2020 qualifier
Ukraine 2 (Yaremchuk 06', Yarmolenko 27')
Portugal 1 (Ronaldo 72' pen)
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Various Artists
Habibi Funk: An Eclectic Selection Of Music From The Arab World (Habibi Funk)
'The worst thing you can eat'
Trans fat is typically found in fried and baked goods, but you may be consuming more than you think.
Powdered coffee creamer, microwave popcorn and virtually anything processed with a crust is likely to contain it, as this guide from Mayo Clinic outlines:
Baked goods - Most cakes, cookies, pie crusts and crackers contain shortening, which is usually made from partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Ready-made frosting is another source of trans fat.
Snacks - Potato, corn and tortilla chips often contain trans fat. And while popcorn can be a healthy snack, many types of packaged or microwave popcorn use trans fat to help cook or flavour the popcorn.
Fried food - Foods that require deep frying — french fries, doughnuts and fried chicken — can contain trans fat from the oil used in the cooking process.
Refrigerator dough - Products such as canned biscuits and cinnamon rolls often contain trans fat, as do frozen pizza crusts.
Creamer and margarine - Nondairy coffee creamer and stick margarines also may contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.
