Monday, July 10, 2006

Men and Shopping

It’s been quite a while since I wrote anything here, and I’m sorry to all you friends out there who were still caring and sweet enough to make a check on me. It wasn’t really due to the world cup, though I was following it religiously all this while and it’s just a coincidence that I’m back after the Azzuri have won the cup yesterday. While Brazil losing out to France was a heartbreak, I’m happy the Romans took their revenge on the Gauls.
Most of this time (and even now) it’s just been too much work that’s kept me preoccupied, as I’ve been programming as a 1 man team for my current project. At times Life seemed to be limited to the dizzying routine of coding computer programs, and coming back here is like a scratching the long due creative itch.

Getting back to the theme for this write up, this pair might stand in the list of infamy as being next only to the ever elusive combo of Blondes and Brains. Predictably though, I beg to differ.

Well in case you’re talking about long, overstretched and pointless shopping sessions where the buyer goes to buy commodity X, bargains for commodity Y and brings home a totally different commodity Z (hmmm so there was P and Q free with it, huh ?), then I’d agree that Men are not half as adept at this art as the fairer sex is.( With all due respect to the ladies :p)
Hmmm but at least in my case, when I go “shopping”, more often than not I know when I like something I see, and then it’s as simple as paying for it and walking out. (Bargaining too in case the sum involved is substantial). But yea, I’ve had my fair share of annoyingly long shopping marathons with my mom, sister and friends, and honestly I never could decipher why most females would spend an hour deciding on something which a guy would in 2 minutes.

Now before I start practising to catch the online brickbats that would be coming my way, let me steer this to a related disturbing trend, which is the rise of the new breed of uninvited shopping critics.
Now I strongly believe that every person has his/her personal and unique taste while shopping ( specially clothes and accessories), and even though what’s fashionable for one might be outrageous for another, yet I really do feel that it’s quite rude to impose one’s biting opinion on another unless of course it has been specifically asked for.
Now I really do know what suits me and what doesn’t, yet the same has happened to me on quite a few occasions.
I remember shopping for a pair of black\white striped leather shoes a few months back, and a friend who accompanied me mocked saying I should act like a mature working guy now. Now I never really understood what that meant, coz I know for sure if and when I can carry something off, and I don’t think it’s anybody else’s business to decide what I should/should not wear.
Similar remarks were given when I got myself funky large brown shades and cowboy styled leather patched Wranglers.
Well my take on it is, this TIME is never going to come again. Do whatever makes you happy, wear what you feel like wearing, and never let anybody else’s comments prevent you from doing things the way you really wish to (as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone), coz the last thing you’d want is to someday look back on your life and regret not having done something you could but chose not to.

P.S. – Speaking of shopping…. After doing a lot of comparative analysis I recently got myself a new handset…the Sony Ericsson K750i… which doubles as a 2 MP camera with a 2 GB mp3 player that plays upto 1500 songs…. Going to and from the workplace isn’t boring anymore!