::A Geek in Korea::

My wife and I followed through with our plan to price compare strollers for Glow. We went to an upscale department store to look at a higher end stroller we plan to use for a few years. We got to put the baby in the chair, see how it folded up, and how much of a discount we could get at a physical store. The plan was then to check online to comparison shop and see if we could get a better deal. If we could get a better deal while it was on sale while at the department store, we’d pick it up in the brick & mortar store.

The lady at the baby stroller shop let my wife see that the sale they were running was having an impact on the demand for the strollers available in the country. It was on back order for a week all around Korea, but they still had two left in stock. She told us the sale ended today, and if we didn’t get it then we’d need to wait at least a week for a new shipment to arrive and put in a reservation to get one when available.

If I had my Motoroi Android Phone, the process for checking the price to know if getting this stroller immediately would have been finished in a minute. I’d have gone online, checked the price, and just told my wife where to pick up the stroller. We don’t need it immediately, but if we were getting a good deal walking home with it wouldn’t be a bad thing to purchase it immediately either. Since my phone arrives later in the week, I was unable to price check while in the store to see the proper course of action. We had to go searching for a place to check the Internet. I felt like I was a character in an episode of South Park.

Seeing as this is Korea, the chance to use a high speed connection to the Internet in a public area for a low price is about as good as finding a public toilet. The opportunities exist, if you know where to look, but just like the toilet always feel dirty and worried about picking up a virus after using it. I went to a few coffee shops to see if they had any PCs available to use for customers. Nope. Since Starbucks moved into the neighborhood they only offer WiFi service, if that. There was a hair salon that had PCs for bored people to use, but no one in the party needed a haircut. We weren’t willing to go in just to beg for a little time on the computer. We just needed five minutes, so we decided that even though we’d waste 55 minutes at a PC room, it was better than searching high and low for another place to go.

We ended up at a PC room within walking distance of the department store. This is the first time my wife had actually needed to use a machine at a PC room and she didn’t know the procedure. Heh. I stood outside with Glow since the place smelled like smoke. People must have thought we were the worst parents ever. Mom was inside getting her gaming fix while dad waited outside with the baby. She checked what we needed for the stroller pricing, determined the Internet was more convenient, and we left without spending the money at the department store after all. This process took an extra thirty minutes total. While annoying, this still beats the crap out of shopping in the United States, where PC rooms do not exist where I am from and checking the Internet involved DRIVING 30 minutes both ways to price check items.

I can’t wait for my phone to eliminate that sort of inefficiency from my schedule. I’m also  worried about the time I’ll spend playing around with my phone constantly being online. Between the house and work being wired for WiFi, and coffee shops and other places starting to offer it ubiquitously, the chance that my Internet addiction becomes free and portable is fairly disturbing. I’ll end up losing far more time just playing around online than I will save running around trying to comparison shop. Hopefully my limited data plan will cover whatever I need to do when I am online with my phone and I won’t end up with outrageous bills. Then my time and my money will both be gone.