Shopping

Here comes Saturday and I am in all enthusiasm to write. I have realized that in the last two blogs, I have written too much about my fat. Enuff said, no more cracking jokes on my transport vehicle on this planet now (my body!). When we aliens invaded this planet (That is a closely guarded secret! But I know human beings to be so naive that even if we aliens leak a secret unless its sleazy it doesn't spread :)), we had no option of choosing bodies. So I got into the one that I got. Now I have to stick with it :) !!

Now, let me get onto some other interesting topics.. shopping!
With Christmas just two weeks from now, you can't escape sales, discounts, mail in rebates etc. etc. A day is incomplete without at least 10 visits to Deals2buy. I have realized that slowly and steadily I am being infected by SSS (Serial Shopping Syndrome).

What is SSS?
SSS is a new type of disease infecting wanna-be geeks like me. The victim in question gets attracted to words such as "sale", "buy one get one free", "mail in rebate" etc. And then the victim's subconscious mind takes over. Thereafter the subject reaches for its pocket, withdraws its credit card and buys the product in question. In advanced cases (like mine!) the victim has already memorized its credit card number, so it just goes and enters it online and buys things left right and center. At times, while driving down the road, this disease suddenly takes control of your hand and makes you enter a shopping mall parking lot.

There is no known cure for this disease.

Symptoms:
Well, how do you figure out that you have SSS? Its simple, if you tend to stock upon things because they are on sale, or because you will need them 45 years from now (like buying a walking stick when you are 25, or buying diapers when you are still single!), or if you find out that the mail man delivers parcels to you everyday, and you have no idea what is inside, cause you do not remember what all you bought online.

I am now a victim of this disease and I am hoping someone somewhere saves me! The obvious short term cure is that you guys donate a few hundred bucks per head so that I can buy some more stuff for this shopping season ;) !!

Talking of shopping and money reminds me of Microsoft Money. I use it to manage my expenses. I know I know, I should use GnuCash instead. Trust me, I went through a lot of pains to use it (including installing Ubuntu 6.06 LTS on my laptop, configuring my stupid Broadcomm wireless card etc). But at the end of all that, I realized that there was a small problem. I do not understand accounting :) and you ain't gonna get any where if the only knowledge of double entry accounting you have is by reading its article on Wikipedia :) !!

Money on the other hand is a typical Microsoft product (read - extremely user friendly! I bet when MS makes products the end users in their mind are chimps like me :)) Well, coming back to the topic of Microsoft Money, it kinda keeps on reminding me that I will go bankrupt if I continue with my current expenses :) !! Hehehe, typical doomsday warnings which I conveniently ignore. After all, predictions always go wrong :) !!

Money also helps me to plan my life ahead. So I told Money that I want to retire at the ripe old age of 35 .. and it predicted that I need to earn at least 500 times what I earn per year now for me to live a happy life in an old age home somewhere in *istan :) !!

That doesn't leave me with much of an option but to look for alternate sources of employment after the age of 35 :( !!! So here is a list of things that I have compiled, which I can probably do..

What I would like to do after I retire at 35?

Become a full time cook: I know most of you who have eaten my food (or atleast tried to look at it!) will die laughing at this statement. I know, I know my cooking is absolutely bland and tasteless and you would rather graze on the lawn outside than eat my food. But let me explain. I will be a cook for someone who is very diet conscious. That way, the person won't be able to eat what I cook and would automatically control his/her diet :) !! Solutions are always out there, you should just know how to look for them :P !!

Non-lethal weapon for crowd disposal: For those of you who don't know, I have awesome vocal chords. I can sing and make the slowest of snails zap by me. I know there are bad singers out there, but what I do is just generate a lot of noise. Cacophony at its best :). Imagine how useful I would be for the Police to control unruly crowds. Instead of using tear gas and other tactics, they could just make me sing "Unchained Melody" in my *original voice* and in no time, not only the protesters, but also the police will be displaced from the scene.

No wonder when I introspect, I find myself to be the most talented person on this planet :) !!