So last night I'm foolin' around on Borders and Amazon and even Build-a-Bear to find presents from Jeremy and I to Valerie, Matt, and Ana. I had wanted to get a few books or a movie or something, things that might last a while since they don't have much space for frivolous things living in an apartment in Singapore. I know that DVDs have different regions, so I'm trying to find the region that will play in Singapore or (thank you, Joe!) region-free DVDs and funny thing-- nobody sells the Asian region DVDs! And, none of the movies I had on my list for them are available region-free! Talk about a scam!
I see that Amazon has a China site, which would be great to buy and ship from there because the shipping would be less, but of course the site is in Chinese so when the Amazon support desk gets back to me and tells me to just use that site, I get a little irritated because they're either ignorant or working under the assumption that I can speak/read Chinese. Maybe I can call Dustin...
Borders has stores in Singapore, and I'd rather buy from Borders anyway, so I'm like, "Awesome, I can get them a gift card and they can just pop over and pick up whatever they want which is equally as good as my generally on the nose guesses." (yes, I actually said that, because I'm usually great at picking out books and movies for people) I ask the Borders help desk, and... you can't use Borders gift certificates anywhere but the US, which is the same problem with Amazon.
Do we really have such a poor relationship with Asia that we can't make it easy to get things to loved ones over there? I mean, geez! I'll have to get everything together and shipped to Memphis so that Marc and Jan can put it in their big box to Singapore and hope that my gift for Ana doesn't get crushed (not that I don't trust them to pack it on top, but I'm paranoid about things breaking). So, Jeremy probably won't get to sign the card. But, on the upside, I'll probably get Marc and Jan's presents at the same time, so maybe I'll get enough for free shipping ;)
Anyway, that was my adventure in Christmas shopping... I need to e-mail Jan and check on when they're sending that thing anyway. Blargh. People make things entirely too complicated in a world that's supposed to be simple!
No need to go to so much trouble!! Thanks for thinking of us!
ReplyDeleteHaha, well, it didn't seem like trouble at the time! I mean, even if they could just do it so you could use a silly gift card anywhere it would be easy as pie, you know?
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