I Pad, You Pad, We All Pad for iPad?

All last year, Leena kept asking "what you want for your birthday?" and I kept saying "I don't know" or "no idea" even as my birthday flew past in August. She kept asking me, a few times a week, often prefacing it with "I won't ask again, you'll tell me when you know," as August flew past, September, October, November and December.

Finally in January Apple announced the iPad and I said "I know what I want!" and she thought it was totally cool, too, and the perfect thing to get me for my birthday.

In February some of her Canadian relatives visited and she gave them the cash to buy the iPad when it's released in Canada or they make a trip to the U.S. and can get it there. There's a a friend of Leena's family who travels regularly between India and Canada and said that since his luggage is rarely full he'd be happy to carry it.

March came and went, the iPad released. Then April... Finally in May Leena's aunt said they'd ordered it and expected it to arrive at their house by the end of the month. In the meantime my mother bought an iPad from Cory Comstock, the local Apple dealer in Waldport.

Last week, Leena's aunt apologized for not getting hold of the traveling friend, but they'd been busy in Toronto with other things going on. The traveling friend's phone number isn't reachable to ask what's up. The aunt said she'll try to track him down.

Now it's the middle of June, no iPad yet. I keep seeing my colleagues in Europe mention on Yammer they've got them. None of them are saying they don't like it... The latest comment is making me even more anxious to get it. The conversation goes a little like this:

New iPad owner: Internet on iPad IS different!

Sarcastic response: Different like this: http://bit.ly/aahsvW ;-)

New iPad owner: Nope, not in that sense (i have flash and ad blockers on all my browsers), internet on iPad becomes closer to you, even the same web based Yammer feels different

Future iPad customer: sound like a touchy-feely sort of thing, which is exactly the kind of "experience" Apple was aiming at. It changes everything when you actually "touch" the web with your fingers. Interesting.

Ooooh, I want one even more now that I'm reading things like this.

I'm not too worried about the missing Flash stuff, since I almost always leave pages if it looks like there's going to be Flash on them anyway, too much time for too little value (well, except for the Flash application I work on developing at work).

Maybe within a few weeks?