Tag Archives: shopping as therapy

“See what the others are buying right now!” God helps us.

I confess: I have a shopping addiction. With free shipping and return, I have got into the habit of ordering everything that I think “may” look good on me (Ok, I also am an optimist. Shut up!) from Myhabit.com and Gilt.com.

As a matter of fact, I am wearing these right now (fresh from the UPS box I just opened). And it’s almost 2 am.

NOT me.

Not me either

So, yeah, my addiction, fortunately, is more like a shopping AND RETURNING addiction.

UPS and USPS. I am looking at you. I am single-handedly keeping you both in business.

Tonight, Gilt.com rolled out a beta called Gilt LIVE.

See what members are buying right now!

Images of goods that have been sold populate your screen one after the other. I was supposed to be in bed about an hour ago, yet I have been staring at my screen. Mesmerized.

This is consumerism unfolding itself live in front of our very eyes.

You get to watch our economy being rescued from a potential recession one shoe at a time.

Whoever came up with the idea of Gilt LIVE is a genius and deserve a huge bonus and promotion. I am so serious about this I am pondering writing Gilt Groupe a letter to put in my $0.02. As I watch the live stream of things that’re sold artfully morph into each other and the discreetly small box at the corner discreetly alert me that they are almost gone, it’s rather tempting to at least click on the images and see WHY they are so popular. What’s more, to be 100% honest, a part of me feels more confident buying something that others have rushed to buy because “it must have been a great deal!” “The dress probably does not look as ridiculous once you put it on!” otherwise people would not have bought it in droves, right?

A self-fulfilling prophecy if there is one.

I am so amazed by the genius in this move, yet at the same time I am amazed why nobody else had thought of this sooner. Being a data nerd and a marketing/strategy person, I am dying to know how much additional sales Gilt LIVE brings in and how quickly, and how many idiots like me click on the images as they rapidly scroll by as if we are at an arcade playing Whac-a-Mole…

The things I do for my children

15 Replies

When last summer was over, finding pants that fit all of a sudden became my obsession. Oh not for myself (I mean, that’s another, sad sad story). For the strange teenager that took over my oldest boy. Overnight the pants from BOYS’ department no longer fit him and those from MEN’s department won’t for a while. My choice seemed to be either highwater pants or a barrel.

Of course my son was no help.

“Can’t you just ask your friends where they buy their pants? For sure you cannot be the only person built with crane legs!” He looked at me with horror.

For weeks I had to refrain myself from asking random model-grade teenage boys with legs rivaling Manga characters (ok, to be fair, so you won’t tzk tzk me, they look almost 20. I think.) where they got their jeans.

After repeated whining of “mom I need new pants!” for a few weeks, I managed to drag him along to the mall. To be honest, the only store I was familiar with was The Gap. But somehow their designers have decided that the waist on boys doubles as soon as they outgrow Size 18. I was gearing up to go home with Erkel when I walked past this store with a name that I could not (and still cannot) pronounce.

Aéropostale. (I am still calling them Apocalypse just to annoy my children)

Why didn’t anybody tell me about this store? They call their two departments “Guys” and “Girls” for goodness sake! And because this store is for teens, there is no BASIC items, no STAPLES, no CLASSICS. You know what this means right? SALES. DRASTIC DISCOUNT, every season. Before the season ends.

$18 for a pair of jeans. 50% off of sales price.

AND they carry size 28*32 for jeans.

As I was grabbing at sweatpants, jeans, hoodies, shirts with the cut for gazelles, I was at the same time telling myself:

I am a good mother. I am a good mother. I will NOT wear matching clothing with my son esp. the way the clothes are emblazoned with the logo.

I did get a Peace bracelet for $6. And this:

Love the bag. It's now my favoriate bag. Only $15.

Love the fuzzy hoodie too. But…

I will not wear the same clothes as my son. I will not buy another hoodie for myself.

But, it is fuzzy. Did I mention that it is fuzzy. It’s like if you scalpe a teddy bear and line the hoodie with the fur. You head is cushioned by the dead teddy bear’s fur.

On top of that, once we got home, he repaid my kindness by pulling on his new jeans without unzipping first.

Zooom. The jeans were on him. Zooom. They were off.

Like a potato sack. It irked me to no end.

I am an adult. I will not wear clothes from the same store as my teenage son and his friends. I do not have anything to prove. I do not need to dress in clothes from “teen stores” nor will I covet those clothes. I am not going through some mid-life crisis. I will not (threaten to) steal my son’s cool new hoodie lined with teddy bear furs… (repeat the mantra)

I told him. I hate you. Seriously.

He beamed and demonstrated the ease with which he pulled on the jeans a few more times.

I said, “I love you. And that is why I will not wear clothes from this store so we won’t seem to be wearing matching clothes.”

He did not seem to appreciate the sacrifice I made for him.

* SHOES are the exceptions. Of course.

I’ll take the one on the left to go

55 Replies

I am letting it all out today.

What you are looking at is my butt. Well, half of my butt: I had to crop the top of my butt off so you cannot see my muffin top. Ok, so technically, I am not really letting it all out today. Just half out.

I took these pictures when I went to a Warehouse Sale for 7 for All Mankind. Because it meant the potential of buying jeans that did not have any stretch capability in them and allowed my muffin top to hang over the low-rise top like an over-risen bread dough for a whopping… WAIT FOR IT… 20 to 30% off, I proceeded to get jiggy with it, ~~struggle~~ wiggle out of my clothes, and strip nekkid right inside the Union Station. Only to notice later that there was a camera pointing right at the makeshift dressing area.

Did I scream and run away when I noticed the security camera? Nah. First of all, I took a picture of it. (Of course!) Then I felt sorry for whoever had to sit there and watch. Besides just at that moment, I noticed that my butt looked different in the two types of mirror they had there (as you could see for yourself): my problem area, as many of the diet programs would call it, looked decidedly less wide in one mirror than in the other. I was very excited about my discovery: My own magic mirror! I stared at my own butt, the one on the left, with appreciation. I committed it to the memory vault for future emergency use.

No. I did not buy the mirror on the left. I tried but they wouldn’t let me. The guy just looked at me like I was crazy.

What? Oh. Duh. Of course the one on the left is my real butt. That’s my story and I am sticking to it.

Like all of you here, I am ~~obsessed~~ fascinated with and intrigued by Search Terms.

Compared to some of the search terms that led people to the other blogs out there, Yes you know who you are, the ones that led people here are lame.

“Tiger balm in ass”. Funny but not jaw-dropping eye-popping funny. I don’t even want to know why people searched for that. OUCH.

I am also worried that people may actually be disappointed when they come to a page on my blog and realize that it is NOT what they have in mind, for example, when they typed in “Wedding Invitation” and they saw THIS.

Anyway, I have been noticing a trickle of people searching for “People of Walmart” AND “Muffin Top Belly” and landing on an old post of mine written when I first discovered People of Walmart with uber excitement.

It showed up again today.

Muffin tops.

Yeah. I have a big one of those myself. I KNOW that me getting rid of my muffin top would be one of the Top 10 Wishes on my husband’s wishlist. I don’t understand. I see my muffin top as a safe guard for our marriage. There is NO way I would want another person in this world to see my muffin top. So there goes the risk of me having an affair. Just sayin.

Food for thought.

You are welcome.

p.s. For more exciting key words that REAL people ACTUALLY used for their Internet searches and frankly, that make you worry about humanity, Elly over at BugginWord does a weekly column on Search Terms that led to her site (I like calling these things “Weekly Columns”, it makes us all sound more sophisticated, with our cardigans and fountain pens and stuff…)

For the Dedicated Follower of Fashion

30 Replies

If you are like me, your life, at least the part that is connected to the computer and the Interweb, is interconnected with Google: Google Chrome (which I am using right now). Google search (Duh!). Maps. Directions. gmail. GTalk. Picasa. YouTube. Picnik. google checkout. google translate. Calender. Google analytics. Feedburner. Google Reader. Google Desktop. Google Docs. Google Earth. (Ok ok. I left Blogger for WordPress a while back ago, but still…) and so on.

So if you were google, what’s the next big thing you’d go after?

Would you have said FASHION?

Google launched Google Boutiques yesterday. They did drop the google name and call it simply Boutiques / Boutiques.com. With Boutiques, google aims to revolutionize the way shopping for fashion is done online, with the help of powerful algorithms.

I won’t bore you with the details, New York Times published a detailed review of the website and explanation for how it’s supposed to work.

Anyway, ever the Early Adopter (<– self-deprecating sarcasm) and Fashion Maven (aka I-wear-jeans-and-tshirt 350 days a year), I decided to check it out.

I started out by going through a series of “tests” so the powerful computers could determine what my taste is. Like this:

This pair is one of the most "down to earth" in the series of images shown during the "aSSessment/evaluation"

It turned out to be a long and arduous process of self-loathing…

no images were found

which proved my point that some of these things are not meant for you if you have trouble seeing the point. In the case of fashion, if you don’t see the point, you are either too poor, too old, or not thin enough. Or all of the above, which I believe applies to 90.5% of the population. 1% is so filthy rich they can look like whatever and people will still be fawning over them. 8% of the rest of the population is simply self-delusional.

At the end, a verdict was given, according to the strong and powerful algorithm, my style and taste is…

I can’t blame Boutiques.com though, after all, I DID hit SKIP too many times and it became depressed and wanted to get away from all of this too…

… and don’t tell google, but I think I drove it to drink too.

Coda: Despite the fear and loathing I went through, in the end, I think there are loads of fun that can be had with Boutiques.com. This is online window-shopping and virtual magazine clipping (Think: Tumblr for fashions, fashions that are for sale), and for the competitive amongst us, another place where you can amass followers, this time, with your keen sense of style.

Oh yes he is (oh yes he is), oh yes he is (oh yes he is).
He flits from shop to shop just like a butterfly.
In matters of the cloth he is as fickle as can be,
‘Cause he’s a dedicated follower of fashion.
He’s a dedicated follower of fashion.
He’s a dedicated follower of fashion.

To Market, To Market

26 Replies

It always feels kind of surreal when I am home. In fact, what I called “home” is an apartment I did not grow up in. It is home simply because my parents live here, with my nephew who, instead of my two elder brothers (long story…), takes care of them.

I am a different person when I am over here for many reasons. It is even stranger to come home by myself because I am all of a sudden the lone girl in the family who everybody wants/needs to take care of. My father keeps on asking me whether I am hungry even after I have been stuffing my face non-stop. My mother won’t stop asking me whether I am cold; she is wearing a thick jacket while I, a short-sleeved t-shirt. The night when I arrived, when I was not paying attention, she unpacked my suitcases, put away all my stuff, hung up all my clothes and even folded my underwear. My nephew and his fiancée will not let me lift a finger because, even though we are only 9 years apart, I am still his aunt. I am an elder and he has to be respectful. So the rules says. Sometimes it is simply AWESOME to be Chinese.

People often ask me what I do when I go home. Eh. Nothing exciting really. I am chaperoned around to eat, eat and eat some more. I also go to a lot of department stores because that is what my mother likes to do. Judging by the crowd and the lines outside of many popular restaurants, these are also activities enjoyed by 90% of the people in the city.

Just like every other big city around the world. Right?

The Absence of Alternatives

My therapy sessions…