Between The Dots

Have you ever had good clean fun by watching records being played or listening to music/songs from a jukebox? During the 1960s, even a chicken-shed-like Chinese restaurant in Hung Shui Kiu, Yuen Long, NT got a jukebox. The loud-though-not-clear point-to-multi-points narrowcast could be heard from a distance, luring customers.

I was not even in my teens then, but whenever I heard jukebox sounds, I felt excited and delighted, and wished it would never stop. I would get close to it, watching others inserting a coin, selecting and pressing alphabet and numeral keys; and seeing a robotic arm picking up a record among the many before placing it on the turntable.

Some jukebox sounds were really music to my ears and I would like to know their titles so that I might order them if I had any spare coins. But I noticed something strange - many of my favourite records borne the same name: "DOT"! And when I looked at the repertoires listed inside the jukebox, I could not find any titles by that name!

"DOT" stayed with me for quite a while until it dawned on me that it was just the trademark of a record label and the titles were actually in small prints. Since the opening up of the World Wide Web, getting the right dot trade name/mark has been a strategic decision. There is now a generic top-level domain (gTLD) ".商标", enabling direct connection between the dots!

#BetweenTheDots