Shopaholic Anonymous

I think I have to check myself into SA - Shopaholic Anonymous. This is terrible. It's the third time this week that I have shopped and the week isn't even up yet. I must keep myself at home away from the malls so I wouldn't do anymore damage.

I went back to my parents' place today because ah ma (ah ma = grandmother) was going to cook her delicious signature pork chops and she asked me to go home for lunch. Since Desmond always wanted to open a CDA (Children Development Account, another incentive by the government in a bid to promote birth rate in Singapore. For up to 6000 bucks deposited in the account, the government will put money into the account, matching dollar for dollar in the account to help with the expenses needed for the child's education.) for Alyssa, I suggested that we have lunch at my parents' place then we will go to Jurong Point to do the necessary. We also had a few Fairprice and Robinsons' vouchers so we thought we could get some diapers for Alyssa.

The only problem was, we didn't open any CDA account for Alyssa and only shopped the entire afternoon.

Well, it wasn't entirely our fault. We didn't know that we have to produce some authorisation letter from MYCS in order to open the account. We only learn of that bit in the procedure when we got to the bank and they refused to let us open the account without the authorisation letter (like, wouldn't the government have some record and they would check before putting in any money in the account?) We have to make another trip to the bank again just to open the account. What was more infuriating was the lady at the bank, upon seeing Alyssa, even added, 'You just need to produce the necessary documents. The baby needn't be here.' I wanted to ask her if she was going to take care of Alyssa for us if we had left her at home.

Before we headed to the bank, we went to Harris bookstore. TFG told me there's some good sale at the bookstore so I decided to pop in to take a look at how good the sale was. True enough, the sale was rather attractive. Titles like Shopaholic and Baby (hey, that sounds like a book about me?!) and A Thousand Splendid Suns were at 50% discount. Who on earth can resist that offer, unless you don't read? I also saw a few interesting books such as Reality Check and this other book by Thomas L. Friedman who write The World is Flat. Well, if you haven't guessed, I bought the abovementioned books. =X

There was a revamp at Jurong Point and there is now an extension that houses many more shops, much better than those that existed before the revamp. I finally got the tube top that I wanted o get for ages (and along with it, another dress. Sigh) and TFG finally got the shorts she wanted. Hurray for the both of us and praise the developer of Jurong Point.

The real shopping began when we went to Fairprice extra and started picking up whatever we wanted off the shelves just because we had a couple of vouchers. Who would have thought diapers could cost more than 60 bucks? The fact is, at the end of the day, the bill was 100+ bucks and we only got one packet of diapers while the rest were all junk e.g. 2 cans of beer, a packet of ham, eel etc. Luckily we had those vouchers. -_-"

The good thing was we really spent the last Robinsons vouchers we had on Alyssa (I had evils intentions on the vouchers actually. Luckily I didn't manage to get my evil ways.) We finally managed to get some clothes for her for Chinese New Year (it's difficult to find clothes for her as she's not a big baby) and stuff e.g. face towels and baby wipes to prepare for sending her to the infant care when I have to return to work.

At the end of the day, there was hardly enough space in the car for 4 people with all these shopping bags when it was time to go home.

Sounds like a shopaholic at work? I really have to check myself into SA and not spend anymore for the rest of this month. (Remember! New Year resolution!!! Put thoughts and wishes into action!)