Chai's Blog

I bought a Kin­dle Paper­white and Kano Com­put­er Kit while I was in the US last week. I also did not buy an iPhone 8 Plus.

My first attempt to buy Kin­dle was at the end of 2010. But that Kin­dle was lost even before it reached me along with my friend’s lost checked-in bag­gage.

Over the years I have been read­ing a lot on iPhone, iPad and phys­i­cal books bor­rowed from the library. But I felt like I could ben­e­fit from Kin­dle in the fol­low­ing ways:

• Easy to car­ry.
• Gen­tle on eyes for read­ing in the night.
• Dis­trac­tion-free read­ing.
• Can add notes and high­lights.
• Cheap­er books.
• Longer bat­tery.
• Few­er bar­ri­ers between me and my books which should result in more read­ing.

I also had my eyes on Kano com­put­er kit for a while. So as soon as I saw it on the store shelf I knew it will be a great buy. I bought it main­ly for my son as a birth­day present, but I too am excit­ed to learn a thing or two about com­put­ers. We will unbox it once my son turns sev­en in June. It is my attempt to get him excit­ed about cre­at­ing rather than con­sum­ing things with com­put­ers.

I am also glad that I did not give into my impulse to pur­chase a new iPhone. I use iPhone 7. I was think­ing about the iPhone 8 Plus for a few months. The trade-in deal Apple Store peo­ple offered means I will get the iPhone 8 Plus for $600 NZD cheap­er than buy­ing it in New Zealand.

But then I recalled an impor­tant finan­cial les­son: No dis­count is too good for the things you don’t need.

The price of iPhone 8 Plus in NZ is $1450. But if I buy it in the States, I could get it for $850 NZD by trad­ing-in my pris­tine iPhone 7. That’s a good deal but only if you need, not want, a new phone. If I took that offer I would have spent $850 on a phone that I did­n’t real­ly need. Sure, I get the lat­est large screen phone with a good cam­era. But they are not real­ly game-chang­ing fea­tures for me giv­en how I typ­i­cal­ly use my phone. So even­tu­al­ly I walked away from the Apple Store with­out buy­ing any­thing.

I can tell that it was a lot of inner strug­gle to think clear­ly and not giv­ing in to the temp­ta­tion of a shiny new iPhone. I felt par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to resist the urge while stand­ing amidst all the cool gad­gets in the Apple Store and with cash in my bank. But in the end the feel­ing of exer­cis­ing some choice and thought while stand­ing right amidst the temp­ta­tion made me felt like a super-hero. If only I exer­cise my choice in a few more areas of my life.