The Holy Intel Stand

IFA was completely packed. Cedric had brought Rebecca along, and I’d brought whoever I was seeing at the time. The whole scene was this beautiful chaos—gorgeous booth staff, middle-aged guys desperately trying to hand you flyers, Asian businessmen who’d basically mastered this dismissive float through the aisles with their hands held up like shields. But you could at least get close to the new tech. Digital photo frames. 3D TVs. The iPhone.

Gaming was on too. I beat Cedric twice at Wii boxing and tennis, which felt like a real achievement. They were broadcasting the German StarCraft and Warcraft 3 finals, and we caught some of that. The announcers were pretty annoying though—too much nerd energy, not enough humor about what was actually happening.

IFA itself was genuinely fun. Strange people, weird atmosphere. I’m pretty sure I saw Mola Adebski somewhere on his phone. And then at the Intel booth there was this notebook I almost won. Almost. Rebecca beat me to it—or at least she did in her head.