Zodiac Buying Behaviour...

Apparently a person's sunsign determines how he or she buys stuff. Like most people I did not give any credence to this sun sign stuff. But the proof is irrefutable!

Consider this, I am a Virgo. Apparently Virgos "know what they want and are not satisfied with anything less or different than that." Now in normal circumstances I scoff at this. I have absolutely no clue about what I want from life. What is that one driving force that would motivate me relentlessly.

But the evidence? Atleast in terms of buying stuff is amazing as was pointed out to me by a friend who doesn't really know me for too long.

Most of the purchases I make, the process for deciding on the product takes way way longer than the buying actual buying process. In fact once I've made up my mind to buy some specific thing I have this huge urge, and absolutely childlike craving to get the thing...NOW!

But I am also willing to wait and wait till I can get the exact same thing. Or till i'm able to afford that particular thing. In the meantime I do not even look at other things or even if I do, they don't really register in my psyche as potential alternatives to the initial decision.


Consider some cases in point.

My watch

I did my summer internship with the erstwhile KSA Technopak (www.technopak.com). It was a project about a feasibility study for a couple of malls which the consultancy's clients wanted to set up in Mumbai. So for the 'extremely important and critical primary research' work (read grunt work that no actual employee of the organization wanted to do) D and I were packed off for two weeks to Mumbai.

(As an aside, this was going to be my first trip paid for by someone other than my parents. I was quite excited about it even though we only got train tickets and not air tickets. Unfortunately a day before the trip I crashed my car in a highly stupid way into a divider. Fortunately I wasn't going too fast and I managed to get away without too much damage. Also, I wasn't wearing a seat belt at that time. So all those people reading this blog - WEAR SEATBELTS AND HELMETS. Its just such a stupid way to get injured. Anyway inspite of this I did go to Mumbai the next day)

The work we were doing included visiting a large number of malls and speaking to shop owners, mall managers, customers etc etc. Obviously it was a very plum assignment as compared to most of my batchmates who were researching parts of rural India or even if they were in cities, were doing unglamourous stuff. (Ours wasn't really glamorous but it could be made to sound extemely glamorous - which is what I did while talking to batchmates upon returning :). Oh, and this was improved even further as a batchmate saw D and I having ice cream while strolling along marine lines while he was travelling in a bus. This obviously meant that the image about my project was - he gets to go to Mumbai, cavort around in malls and other air conditioned places while we struggled in hot, semi-rural places. AND he gets to go there with a pretty girl as well! God is not fair. Needless to say I got a lot of dagger eyed stares when I returned to campus (snigger).)

Right, so coming back to the story, I came across this watch in one of my er..work related mall visits.

I just fell in love with the watch. It was awesome to look at, very sporty and had an angled display. Ohh it was just what I wanted. I went back to see it 3-4 times more. It was 3500 rupees. Way way more than I could afford at that time.

I was so sad to leave the watch behind that I actually took down the number of the model of the watch. I carried it in my wallet for a few months before Titan came up with an exchange offer of giving your old watch and getting a 25% discount on their fast track watches. The day I saw the offer, the very next day I went and bought this watch. Completely emptying out whatever I had saved out of the stipend I got during summers.

I still use the watch and am still as in love with it as I was the day I saw it first (er...this doesn't sound too psychotic, does it?). Since then I can afford watches which are much more expensive and are amazing to look at but I just don't feel the urge to buy it the way I felt with this!

Virgo buying behaviour.

The Car

My love for the Palio I have is well documented ( http://swappinglives.blogspot.com/2007/08/my-own-set-of-wheelswheee.html ). I saw the Palio for the first time in 2001 and decided than and there that I had to have it. When I finally put together enough money to buy a Palio, Fiat went and changed the car. They changed the headlights and reduced the power. AND I HATED them for doing it. I just had to have the old model only. I took a used car, but I took the one I wanted forfeiting a better model, or a new car, or even some other car more suited to psychotic driving of Bangalore.

Again the Virgo buying behaviour!

And the latest to join this league is my new phone!

Yes, yes, I bought a new phone over the weekend. Eventhough I didn't take too long to decide on the model, I got that urge to own very very strongly. I slept fitfully one day after dragging my poor flatmate PS half way across the city looking for the phone. The next day I got up bright and early and went through 5-6 shops.(I've become quite lazy about taking out my car and driving across Bangalore on weekends but for this I went for it crazily. So from decision to buying a fairly expensive thing took me about 17 hours!!

Oh, the phone is a Sony Ericsson G700 ( http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_g700-review-220.php ), very cool phone. I'm broke now, but happy - true Virgo fashion !