The day has finally arrived when The Ordinaree sees the light of day. It’s like a second coming, except the first time it didn’t even pop its head out into the world properly before being told to go back in.
Perhaps it’s destiny that I’m writing typing this on my new wireless keyboard. I like to think the wires on my earlier keyboards were the ones holding me back. More likely, though, it’s my Level 91 procrastination skill that has delayed anything being posted on this “investment” of mine. Investment. Fancy word. That’s what I like to call it when I spend money foolishly on something I would be better off without. “Ooh, shiny! Want!” Ka-ching, ka-boom and ka-pow. The novelty value wears off pretty quickly and the very next moment I’m on the hunt for someone to take this white elephant off my hands.
And there have been a couple of white elephants (one was literally white) in the recent past. The first one was a PlayStation Dos (see, I’m embarrassed to even type the correct generation of the console but I can assure you it was greater than One) that I purchased off the Internet just because I could. They should put some sort of “Are you sure?”, “Are you drunk?” and “Is this some kind of joke? Do you really want to pay for THAT?” prompts before someone makes the payment for these things. But alas, they don’t, and I ended up being the first buyer of a new PS2 console since 2002.
Once the beer goggles, which were, oddly enough, shaped like my credit card, came off, I could see what the PS2 was all about. Or rather, I could see why the PS2 is dead. But I wasn’t done yet. Oh no, not yet. I went ahead and bought even more stuff that I wouldn’t want to use, just to provide it some company. “Maybe it will spit unicorns and rainbows if I buy it some friends,” I thought. It didn’t. All it ever produced was a ghastly spattering of colours and objects with more jagged edges than me with a 5-day beard. Off you go, into your little corner, where you will stay until someone pays me enough to save my face and lets me come out of this episode with a hint of dignity left intact.
The other white elephant I purchased also arrived, courtesy of the Internet. Somehow my brain convinced me that I would get stuff done much faster if my phone had a hardware keyboard. With a hardware keyboard I’d be able to write blogs on the go, reply to texts faster and be able to stand out from the crowd with their large, touchscreen phones. Blame it on my hipster gene being activated at that time. After a quick toss-up between the HTC Chacha and the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro, I settled for the Xperia Mini Pro simply because of the “larger” screen and that fact that it would be embarrassing, even for me, to have a Chacha in my pocket. In came the white (because everyone has black phones, you see) Mini Pro and worked pretty well for one month. Then I grew tired of the small screen, the bulky exterior and the fact that I need to flip it sideways and slide out the keyboard to type anything exceeding 5 characters. And it looked like a girly phone in white (thanks to my fiancée for pointing that out after I had been seen with it for more than a month. In her defence, she had already declared it a white elephant at the outset). As I smacked my head once again, I wondered how I missed noticing all these deal-breakers when I had the chance to. Thankfully, this white elephant was much easier to get rid of, seeing as it was still about 5% relevant to today’s technological trends. I had no such luck with the PS2 which still lies unused, unloved and uncared for, the mileage on its DVD spinner showing 6 hours of… err… spinning.
What about you? Have you ever bought something that you immediately regretted as soon as you held it in your hands? Ever tried getting rid of a “white elephant” with no success? Share your stories in the comments! 