Sunday, June 3, 2012

Shopping Made Easy

Delhi Shopping Center
REAL MEN don't shop. We make incursions into enemy territory. Locate supermarket. Access aisles. Liberate beer. Return to base. Mission accomplished. Cheers!

During the mission, our main interest is keeping collateral damage to innocent parties, i.e. the banknotes in our wallets, within an acceptable range.

It is totally different for the women I know. Incredible but true, many females enjoy spending money.

To me, bidding farewell to even the smallest banknotes is like losing a family member. When asked for cash at shop counters, I frequently feel the urge to say: "Can you just take one of my uncles instead?"

Now, here is some astonishing news. Boffins are working on technology to help men shop. A new service allows a man to go to the supermarket and be guided directly to the product he wants by a Sat-Nav voice coming out of his phone.

Sat Nav: "In five meters turn left. Nearly there. Turn left NOW. On the second shelf on your right you'll find the can of beer you wanted. Enjoy it, you pathetic drunk."

Me: "What did you just call me?"

Sat Nav: "Nothing."

The system was set up last year at a branch of Tesco Supermarkets in the UK for trials, but the store has not released results. It is very suspicious.

Rumour has it that executives want to destroy the technology after they noticed that people who use the system spent less money.

It could be true. Shops do not want you to just get what you want. They want you to get 17 other things that you do not want as well. I mean, look at the way that department store staircases or escalators never match up with each other.

You go up one level and then the next stair case or escalator is miles away, often hidden in a separate wing of the building, or in the toilet corridor, or on an inaccessible lege outside, so that you have to pass every product on every shelf before you find it.

I once was trapped on the fourth level of a department store in Tokyo and there did not seem to be any downward escalators at all. Many of the customers were elderly, and I began to suspect that they had arrived as young people 40 years earlier, probably at the store's opening party.

Had I not found a cargo lift in the staff corridor, I would still be there today.

Meanwhile, a reader who lives in Sri Lanka told me: "My internet connection is so slow, it would probably be faster to fly to the Google headquarters, and ask them stuff in person."

Residents of Delhi are playing US$200 a month each to have trained langur mokeys pee around their homes. The reason is that the langu-pee is so smelly that it scares off other monkeys, villains, etc, the New York Times India correspondent reported.

So that time I lived near a bar and guys would visit my front yard on the way home, I should have paid them?

Latest stats suggest that half a billion Asians are overweight. Of course, those are just round figures.

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