i fell into the pit of consumerism

Yesterday, I went with my parents to partake in the usual post-Christmas sales at DFO. DFO is awesome. That should be (and is in my mind) a universally known fact. It has all these awesome brands with all these awesome sales. It's just crazy. Well, anyway, this year, we thought we'd get there early. DFO was due to open at 10 and we thought why not get there at 9:20. I actually thought there would be nobody. I mean, who would be bothered to wake up early, JUST to be the first to get inside a shopping centre? Me, obviously, because that's precisely what I did.

Despite the fact that we got there well ahead of the opening time, we had to park out ages away from the doors. When we entered the shopping centre, which was open surprisingly (but the shops weren't), there was this massive queue at Oroton, which has mega expensive handabgs, wallets, sunnies etc, with handbags at around $400 on average. It was at this moment that my mum fell into the pit of consumerism. Or maybe it's that vulnerable part of the human psyche that likes to imitate what others do. In this case, it was seeing the 50% off sign and lining up outside Oroton. This is where I should be sighing. But no, I joined my mum in that queue. There were probably about 50 people already in front of us. By the time it was 10AM and the store was opening, there must have been 300. I kid you not.

Then realising that we would be going inside Oroton, we had to buy a bag. It went without saying. There were women literally grabbing every handbag within reach and hoarding them because of the limited numbers. There was this small handbag that looked nice and relatively modest and I went to pick it up. I didn't realise that it belonged to this other woman because there were about 6 other bags alongside it. The Asian woman then got really angry at me for touching it and saying that all the bags were her's. o.0

We did end up buying a bag for a reasonable price, that looked good. I kept thinking, I really could buy exactly the same bag, except fake, in China for a tenth of the price. =D

My dad spent the whole time sitting outside and spent the rest of the day complaining about how these brands were so stupid, and why did women have to spend so long looking for clothes, couldn't they just buy the pair of pants for god sake? He then went on to say that if you wanted to be rich, sell handbags. A wise statement daddy. I wouldn't buy anything the whole day until we got to Dotti. Everything, despite being on sale, was still expensive, or maybe just for me. I won't buy anything unless it's udner $20. Anyway, if you want to buy from Dotti, and can't afford the stuff at Westfield, you HAVE to go to the DFO store. It's so so so much cheaper. Skirts that were once $50 were now $10 or $6 and dresses were $10 to $20. My mum and I plucked every single item (under $20) that I was willing to try on. I had to wait at elast 15 minutes for a spot in the dressing room =='. That's how many people there were. I ended up buying a skirt and a dress and felt proud that I had found an honest discount out of the whole day. It was already 2PM and we had only seen one half of DFO.

We went to Yum cha straight away because we were starving and ate up. I have decided that I really like Yum Cha, only because everything is fried and if not so, has meat in it. =D I used to dislike it because you had to wait for a person to come round with their trolley.

My dad did eventually find out the price of the Oroton bag but didn't seem to mind too much. Consumerism doesn't taste too bad after all. :)