I love mix tapes, I've made some for myself and have given and received some over the course of my college life and probably the first three years of my working life. One of the best tapes I ever got was a Christmas gift given by my Kuya Jon who was working in NU 107 then as an engineer. He gave me two tapes with songs from The Aghan Whigs, Peter Searcy, the Dambuilders and other bands that were the staple of NU's playlist during the 90s and the early 2000s. I played those tapes to death! One of those tapes even played a major role when me and Dan were just dating. (Side story - I lent him one of the tapes, which had Stuck in a Moment by U2. He was going to drop me off at the Ayala MRT station which was just a minute away from where we were. I told Dan that that song was one of my favorites then, so he turned the car around and we went around Ayala until the song ended. He then dropped me off at the train station and I was grinning from Ayala to the Quezon Ave. station after that.)
At the other end of the spectrum I had a mix tape made for me by a college friend that only had mushy love songs. Haay I was going through a phase then which was kadiri to say the least. That tape had Patti Austin, Kenny Rankin and yes even England Dan and John Ford Coley (Sad to Belong YAAAK!!! hahaha!) My mix tapes became a precursor to my mp3 playlists but nothing compares to the feeling of playing a tape in cassette player. Hearing the "clack" when placing the tape into the player, hearing the whirring sound as the cassette begins to play while at the same time hoping to God that your player doesn't chew your cassette tape up. When that happened -- and it always happened to me, that's why I invested in a lot of cassette head cleaners -- I would always rush to open the cassette player door (in this case my long suffering walkman) 
without even pushing the eject button, which always made things worse. Then with a small screwdriver, I would try to pull out my tape ever so carefully, making sure that I get all the tape that's stuck in between the gears. Then using a ballpoint pen, I would manually rewind the tape. More often than not though, playing the tape again results in the songs seeming like they were recorded underwater *boo!*
What I love most about it a mix tape though is the effort and care a "recorder" goes through to pick just the right songs for the "recordee". The great thing about doing a mix tape too is you get to listen to some of the best songs at the time over and over again. Recording is not instant because you don't just drag files onto a program then pressing "burn". There's also of course the preparation. The list that you have to come up which changes throughout the life of the recording and the calculation of playtimes so you could maximize the length of the tape up to the last minute. My friend who made the mushy love song tape was able to record up to the last minute of the tape so that the end of the last note of the last song ended with the click of the eject button. Mad skills!
This whole post (or flashback however you see it haha!) was caused by this which I saw at weddingbee:
It's the MIXA usb flash drive. It functions as any normal flash drive with 1 GB of memory. It also has covers and stickers you could use to personalize the cover just like you would any cassette tape. This product preys on nostalgic geeks like me, making me even think that a retail price of GBP 19.99 is pretty reasonable (EEP!!) Haay!
Preferred brand ko pala for my blank tapes is Memorex with the black and yellow stripes hehehe. I also remember buying a pack of Sony blank tapes for 99 cents at a dollar store in LA when I was in 6th grade hahaha what an investment 
Hmmm first tape I ever bought (well technically I had my Dad buy it for me) was Songs from the Big Chair by Tears for Fears (Shout! Shout! Let It All Out!). I think my second one was by Menudo, which my Dad bought for me for my birthday. Our family's player promptly chewed that tape up after just one play!
image credits: newcritics.com, dtfl.co.uk, google images
