Treat myself time

When I started my current job I recall someone saying to me "Oh thats great you'll get to stay away and get put up in Hotels !" Well I dont know what kind of home life and interests that guy had but I certainly thought to myself "Get a life!" at the time. Since then the experience of spending hours each day travelling and then nights in Hotels certainly hasn't convinced me that he was right to be excited for me.

The novelty of getting put up in fancy hotels wears off fairly quickly, at least it certainly has for me and after a while one Hotel seems much like another. My secretary, God Bless her cotton socks, does a good job though and it's only occassionally that I find she has booked me into the equivalent of the hotel from Psycho.

So I've started getting tempted and buying myself portable gadgets to make living life from a suitcase a bit more tolerable. I bought myself a mini digital radio and an mp3 with speakers and now I have got my eye on portable dvd players. I try to be rational about the gadgets I buy. I do check up all the websites and reviews but after doing this I have a habit of just going out one day and buying the gadget on impulse. Actually the Wikepedia article on impulse buying describes me exactly,

"Impulse buying disrupts the normal decision making models in consumers' brains. The logical sequence of the consumers actions is replaced with an irrational moment of self gratification."

Been there, done it, got the T shirt.

So currently I am humming and haa-ing about portable dvd players, which one to buy and where to buy it from. Some sites like give price comparisons for the portable dvd players that they sell. The good thing about sites like this is that the price you are going to pay is clear and you can see the cheapest supplier easily. Online purchase of items like portable DVD players is often the cheapest as well.

Of course I could also go down the e-Bay route. Maybe pick one up cheap second-hand? This is very tempting but of course a bit of care is needed on e-Bay because not every seller is reputable.

Alternatively I could do it the old fashioned way and just walk into a shop and actually handle the merchandise pay for it and take it away. That way I would satisfy my consumer lust for a portable DVD player immediately. Actually that's been pretty much my pattern with these things; check out the online reviews, then check e-Bay and then still end up walking into a shop and buying the thing on impulse.

This time? I am really going to try to resist the impulse buy this time. One things certain though - if I keep buying "portable" gadgets at this rate I am going to need a larger suitcase!