Thursday, September 29
at 8:31 p.m.
This week is clubs week at the University of Toronto, and as a result one is guaranteed to find any obvious place of student congregation to be filled with booths and stalls hawking the benefits of various clubs and associations.
I happened to have an afternoon class in Sidney Smith Hall - a favourite haunt of said glee peddlers - and noticed a booth for ooober on my way out. Curious, I walked over to find out what exactly this "ooober" is.
As it turns out, ooober1 is a sort of eBay for mobile content delivery. You create some sort of media (picture, video, audio) and place it on their website, ooober.com. You also set a price for your content. Anyone who likes it is then given the opportunity to download the wallpaper, video or ringtone to their cellular phone. Naturally, ooober takes a commission for their part in the transaction.
All the clubs at UofT almost invariably offer some sort of swag as an incentive for joining their cause. And since the ooober booth was masquerading as such, they too were offering something in return for the time I spent listening to their spiel: a small sliver plastic bag containing a number of unknown items.
So after lending them a ear, I excused myself and made my way towards the subway station, taking the walk up Bloor Street as an opportunity to have a quick look inside the bag.2 In it I found a can of pop (Lipton Brisk Lemon Iced Tea), several leaflets for local businesses and such (a club, a spa, and a job bank), and one large sized condom (Trojan's Magnum variety. Lubricated for your pleasure.).3
Unfortunately for me, I was neither thirsty nor contemplating a visit to a club or spa. I have a job. And as for the carnal delights represented by the little golden foil package... Well, that's not happening either. For reasons that are obvious, I hope.
Thankfully, there was a garbage bin nearby.
I happened to have an afternoon class in Sidney Smith Hall - a favourite haunt of said glee peddlers - and noticed a booth for ooober on my way out. Curious, I walked over to find out what exactly this "ooober" is.
As it turns out, ooober1 is a sort of eBay for mobile content delivery. You create some sort of media (picture, video, audio) and place it on their website, ooober.com. You also set a price for your content. Anyone who likes it is then given the opportunity to download the wallpaper, video or ringtone to their cellular phone. Naturally, ooober takes a commission for their part in the transaction.
All the clubs at UofT almost invariably offer some sort of swag as an incentive for joining their cause. And since the ooober booth was masquerading as such, they too were offering something in return for the time I spent listening to their spiel: a small sliver plastic bag containing a number of unknown items.
So after lending them a ear, I excused myself and made my way towards the subway station, taking the walk up Bloor Street as an opportunity to have a quick look inside the bag.2 In it I found a can of pop (Lipton Brisk Lemon Iced Tea), several leaflets for local businesses and such (a club, a spa, and a job bank), and one large sized condom (Trojan's Magnum variety. Lubricated for your pleasure.).3
Unfortunately for me, I was neither thirsty nor contemplating a visit to a club or spa. I have a job. And as for the carnal delights represented by the little golden foil package... Well, that's not happening either. For reasons that are obvious, I hope.
Thankfully, there was a garbage bin nearby.
- 1I'm not sure what ooober stands for and didn't think to ask. I suspect it might be a variation of the German word "über", which is akin to the English for "super" or "hyper".
- 2Truthfully, my looking into the bag while walking was the result of my anticipation: "What could possiblty be in the shiny little bag!?!" This has been something I always did as child, I've been told; whenever I was bought a new toy, it would be out of its packaging before we had made our way through the parking lot to the car.
- 3Please be assured - I am no expert on the finer points of prophylactic selection and variety. I'm just repeating what was on the package.
