The season of gift-giving and decorating the malls is round the corner and the one thing on everyone’s wishlist must definitely be a gadget.
I make that assumption because everywhere you look, from websites to print magazines, you have a list of gadgets along with mouth-watering cutouts of the electronic stuff that makes it easier for you to choose.
The list obviously begins with tablets (thinner, faster, more comfortable for you to play or work) that sell for than less than Dh900. Since your tablet does not have great-sounding speakers, you will need an external speaker system that packs a punch, says the pitch line.
Or, if you wish to listen to music quietly, there are great headphones that will rock you while you quietly crunch numbers at work, doing the accounting for some moneybags.
If you are bored with the tablet you already have, there are great gaming systems that will take you into a world of guns and mayhem, say the advertisers.
For book lovers there is the HD (that’s high definition for people like my un-nerdy friend who thinks it means hard disc) tablet that gives access to 22 million books from your device. It seems like a very stressful gift, because as for me, I haven’t yet read the old-fashioned ink-and-paper books I bought last summer and having 22 million books on hold would take up all my weekend.
Incidentally, I realised that there seems to be some sort of a conspiracy against my Blackberry for the past couple of weeks. Someone sneaks into our building every night and sticks a glossy booklet under my door that has pictures, prices and details of bundled gifts that I would get if I buy a new smartphone. If I buy a phone, the store is promising to give me a free pair of trainers and yoga pants in the bundled package.
Anyway, the booklet is the first thing I read in the morning before I get around to scanning the news. Now I go to malls and check out Androids.
Meanwhile, as you are procrastinating as usual and putting off buying the gifts till the last moment, shopping frenzy has already begun in North America.
The Friday following Thanksgiving Day in the US is known as Black Friday and people regard it as the onset of the holiday shopping season. Shops open real early and offer great bargains to kick-off the shopping spree.
According to reports, consumers had the usual fun-time stampeding and fighting over consumer goods. One person tweeted (on the social media Twitter) that there was a huge fight in the towel aisle at Wallmart!
A blogger wrote that it may be due to the recession, but there were several physical encounters over a towel and washcloth package priced at $1.74 (Dh6.39). One tweeter complained that a girl fought with her over the towel. “Who does that?” she asked angrily. The blogger said that such fights were usually associated with high-priced children’s toys during the gift-giving season.
Hopefully, such encounters may become a thing of the past. Just as the way you order take-away while sitting in the comfort of your home and your sandwich comes to you riding on a motorbike, Amazon plans to home deliver the gifts to you.
The gifts will come to your home on a drone if the plans of Amazon’s top honcho come to fruition within five years. A report says that if the plan succeeds other retailers or even the local pizza store could start home deliveries via drones.
I will have to hide my wallet and my credit card from my sons and keep a broom handy at the door to fight off the gift-bearing drones over Dubai skies.
