The Best Way of Shopping

I hate shopping. Ever since I remember, I never was a fan of shopping. I know the ladies wouldn't believe this, but I - and I'm sure many other men as well - go to a shop knowing what to buy and end up buying that thing. Unlike you species who go into a shop thinking of buying something - if you ever had any idea of buying anything specific in the first place - and then come out with six or eight completely different items minus what you intended to buy. Even if it is a huge shopping complex with everything you could possibly imagine is for sale, we still know what we want so we go there, buy that and leave. It's a very simple and straightforward process. That is how we men are programmed, and we behave accordingly. I'm no exception.

Except perhaps when I'm in an electronic store.

Then I struggle. I am torn between two, no, two to the power of many options and it takes like forever and a bit more to decide on something. The funny thing is, I don't even like these stuff that much. I can live without my phone perfectly alright. I never use it to browse the net, send a text very rarely and call someone only if necessary. I like the iPod, still it's not like I'm gonna die without it. The computer, well if there is some other way of communicating, I can even live without a computer to be honest. Yet there I was, in an electronic store the other day wanting to buy an ear piece for my iPod because the one I had was broken. Not like broken in half or anything, it just stopped working. Unfortunately, there was a sea of them, in all types and shapes and colors and prices. I just couldn't decide what to buy - I sort of wanted all of them but unfortunately you have to pay for these things before you take them home so, well, I had to choose. After many indecisive minutes, finally I took an approach which had worked very well for me in exams.

You see, never in my life, not once I have sat for an exam with the satisfaction that I'm well prepared for it. I always have large chunks of material I'm supposed to study, but untouched. So, naturally, in exams there are lot of questions that I have no clue to what the answer might be. But if it is an MCQ type question, then what I do is follow this elimination method. I just eliminate all the impossible answers, so usually I'm left with one pretty possible answer. If there are two, at least I have a 50-50 chance noh? Better than one in four. So I took this approach. There were few shelves containing all girly pink, luminous green and flowery ear pieces, so those were eliminated. Then price tags - you don't want to spend five thousand Yen for this do you? Something around two thousand was established as affordable. That cut the selection in half. Too cheap ones were also out. Then, I was still left with at least about twenty different ones to choose from. Crap. Then for some reason I decided I wanted a white one. Unfortunately almost every one of them came in white as well. I was going nowhere. Finally I decided to be bold.

I turned away and picked one within my reach without looking and went home.

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Went for a bowling session after some time on Saturday, but it was crap. Two rounds, barely managed to top 100. Even the others were not so good. Maybe I should go more often. Or perhaps stop it completely. Sunday was good though. There was this Sri Lanka Festival in Japan, where you could have all kinds of Sri Lankan food. Well not really. Last year, there was Indi Aappa and Pittu, so this time too I went hoping to gobble down as much as possible. Not that it will last till next year or anything, but you know what I'm at right. Unfortunately, neither was there. Oh well, you should never have too many expectations on anything. So I settled for some rice and curry and a Kottu and took home some Pani Aappa for dinner. Maybe they should have called it something else - there was hardly any honey in it. I think they add some brown colouring to make it brown. Still, it was better than nothing, and certainly better than Jap food which is worse than nothing. And the day ended after having a wine with some friends in Aussie. Like, they were having their drinks there and I having mine here and a web cam in between.

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And now, here I am on a Monday morning typing a blog post at work. How crap is that?

Happy week ahead people!

I went shopping for relatives!

And I mean the English meaning. You know that sentence has two different meanings in English and Sinhala right? In English, it means what it means. And in Sinhala it means, well, 'kade yaama' you know...

So it's the first one.

I know that most of you, if not all have an FB account. Is anybody a member of that awesome group called No Bitch...I aint Indian...I'm SRI LANKAN!!!!? You can assume what it is about I guess, and specially the people who live abroad know all about what it means, I'm sure of that. Here is the link.

Anyway, what I was coming to was, in the group description there is a long list starting with the words You Know you are Sri Lankan when.... And there is one entry goes like You're walking out of customs with your trolley at the airport and you see all twenty-five members of your family who have come to pick you up.

Ain't that so true?

The thing is, I'll be returning to Sri Lanka for a three weeks holiday (*YEY YEY YEY!! WHOOOOOOPPPSYYYY!!! LALALALAA*) in a couple of weeks and I have as many relatives if not more. And since relatives are what they are - relatives, (umm... I hope none of them are reading this...) you can't really afford to miss anyone, can you? If you do, it has dire consequences trust me. It's even worse than forgetting your girlfriend's birthday.

So I was facing a problem with wanting to get something for everyone and yet keep some money in my pocket so, you know, I could spend my holidays in SL without asking for any money from my mom. I carefully weighed my options. Being the cunning bastard I am, I found a solution that only a genius would. Oh maybe not, but still it was a pretty good idea. There is something called 100 Yen Shops here in Japan. I think they are called Dollar Stores or something in US. So if you're not a genius, let me explain. Anything - yes anything - that's sold there is just 100 bucks. And you can find almost anything there as well. From toys to exercise books or pens, spoons, knives, ornaments, whatever. You name it they have it. Add to that the fact that the shop I went to is the biggest such shop in Japan. It has five stories and absolutely everything. And when you look at those stuff, there is no real way you could tell that they are cheap. See, I'm good, ain't I? Oh you could tell the difference if you have ever been to Japan, but there is only one person in my family have been to Japan before and he's in Italy now. So, unless any relative of mine comes across this post, I should be safe.

Besides, it's not the value of the present, but the idea that you're giving a present is what is worth, isn't it?