Ponto de Vista

Formerly called AfterShokz Endurance, now Shokz OpenSwim

TL;DR: Cough up the dough and get the Shokz OpenSwim. Don’t waste time on JBL (ugh), Sony or Pyle or anything else

If you want to swim with music, my caveats, explanations, and explorations on waterproof mp3 players for swimming that I’ve tried in the last decade, read on. Click on any image to expand

I’ve been swimming seriously (for joy, not competition) since 2013 and way back in 2014 or so I thought music would only enhance my experience, help me set a pace, and also entertain me and stimulate my brain as I did laps with an unchanging scenery. At my peak form, pre-pandemic, I was doing 2,000m in 1.25 hours (slow, slow) and I’m building back but you can only imagine that going back and forth in an environment, where only obnoxious humans change, can get a little too same!

Back in 2014 I bought my first music player and it was a no-name Chinese mp3 player for some $20. It worked until one day it didn’t. I didn’t seal the usb port cover fully and the electronic components drowned.

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https://www.instagram.com/p/7sGH4_HgJl/?taken-by=chhavi_sachdev

I usually try to do two international trips every year, one in Asia, one elsewhere, but this year has been remarkably poor – both moneywise and healthwise, so I’d only done short trips within India (Assam, Goa, Delhi, Jaipur) until August, when I went to Portugal. And of course, I’d timed my Schengen visa application really tight. I had wanted to wait until some funds hit my bank account and realized quite late that VFS can take up to 15 working days to process it since it’s forwarded to Goa! Grrr.

So I ended up totally scrambling and getting to the visa centre a bit earlier than I’d planned.
The good thing was I have most of my documents scanned and digitized and I had already bought travel insurance that covered me through September of this year. (I buy it online and you can find several options with companies like ICICI Lombard). (more…)