Good morning, dear reader of this post, my friend! Happy Friday, the end of the week is indeed upon us. How are you? As for me, I am just happy for being able to comfortably wear my favorite sweater and my socks in a day, because the weather is much more endurable, as we approach the first official days of Winter in southern hemisphere. Lovely rain, it is fresher than ever on my personal room of rest, and on the apartment as a whole. I am happy to be able to return and write what I wanted to write about some days ago, a bit on a disjointed way, but I just urge to put the thoughts out, let us jump to it! And the image of today's post is a bit of all of the themes portrayed today.
Ah, the house of my grandparent, of father side. What a magical place where indeed, everything was possible. It was bigger than life when I was a kid. Bigger than the Andromeda Galaxy, certainly. Built around the late 80's, it has elements of that time, such as the glass tiles on the swimming pool deck. Even as I grew up, I never grew tired of it. The christmas decorations there, they were my favorite, when I was 12, and when I was 23, one of the last years I saw that place. Grandma moved to a nice apartment, ever since. The house is being rented. I mentioned it, because it is a place that, when I think about it, has a certain frutiger aero feel to it. Maybe are the glass tiles, or me using my grandpa's laptop to play games, so long ago. Those days were the ones of the now mythical Windows XP. It is weird, isn't it, how a set of UI adjustments on a virtual machine can mean so much to us, and even define a whole period. There, at their lovely house, where I used to visit and stay for a bit, I experienced a whole era of Operational Systems, which later would be known as the Frutiger Aero epoch. Windows XP, Vista, and 7. All were heavily used by me, back in the day, when I was so young! I finished my first match of Civ 4 there, on a prehistoric machine, that in later eras of the game, would take around 5 to 10 minutes to load a single turn, Frames Per Second at the single digits. I remember when a game crashed so hard I had to do the first reboot of my life, very worried about making the computer explode, which did not happen, thankfully.
As I associate their place with Frutiger Aero, I could associate the apartment of my uncle, that I'd go to stay from time to time, with another era of aesthetic, maybe a more toned down Frutiger Aero, when I think about it, when glass tiles started to fade out of people's memory, given they have been out of fashion for years at that point, in 2008-2009. I have no pretension on saying the time in my life that spawns from 2008 to 2012 to be the height of my childhood, but many recollections I have from such times were happy. Specially 2012, that year was my favorite. I don't think it was my best year, objectively, anymore, given I have lived more by now, but I do think it is one I look fondly upon. Sometimes the height of a period is quickly follow by their ending, for in 2013, the iconoclast Windows 8 was released, and as in school, so in personal life, and specially in UI design, and overall just about ALMOST every aspect, things were to take a turn, for the worse. When the end of an era demolished a whole world, in 2014, and this adaptation would very fast deem obsolete, not through my choice. Definitely, the Frutiget Aero time were gone and even a distant memory in 2015, when just a few years before, they seemed to last forever. That cheesy optimism that nonetheless is much appreciated, the warm colors, the corny usage of technology with natural motifs, so bad in a way, that it is good, it is great, in another, because it welcomes you so well.
We are in 2025, now, and the epoch of Frutiger Aero is a nostalgia, more than even a memory. So much has changed since 2012, it is hard to think about it, and point out what exactly. The tech giants's products are no longer "cool" or "trendy", but we prefer to run away from them, when we can. I think of Windows, the disaster of Windows 8 was never to be reversed. Windows 11 did come with an attempt to renovate the cold and brutalist aesthetic of Windows 10, but the thrill, the warmth, the benefit of the doubt, are long gone, and with good reason, as we faced the storm of 2020, and the most catastrophic way the high evil reacted to it. It could be said it was the end of the world.
Anyway, I had this narration in my head for some days, just about this time that it is looked with rosy lenses now, which is an error, but we let this misjudgement roam free, even dangerously, because it is so good to remember. I recall my astonishment when the 1990s became considered "vintage", and now, would you look at that, even the early 2010's (2011-2013) are seen as such. What is exactly the point of this post? Ah, just to remember the happy house of my grandparents, perhaps, and their constant presence in my life, when times have moved to different places, where the christmas decorations don't have as much space, and grandma does not have the same energy, or help, to set them up. Such is life, it keeps on going, time is unforgiving.
So, I think it could be a good moment to wrap today's entry, even if I reluct a bit in doing so, for remembering this time is very nice, or at least the good in my life from that time, the thrill of Civ 4 and 5, the music of those games, and looking forward for the school vacations so to play nonstop on the laptop. It is getting long, though, the post, and I certainly will have more opportunity to write about such time soon, if I so desire. When should I be back? Hopefully as soon as I can, around next week, perhaps, I have some posts to do, that I'd like to put them out, such as wrappinf up the current month of May and opening the birthday month of my blog, June, time for the corn season. Until then, and even before that, see you real soon, And I wish you the best!!
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