Waiting for the Black Friday

Here I am back in Houston again for another 3-month assignment. Ten days have passed and almost 7 million seconds remain to go through before I can feel tropical rain and heat again. But the good thing is that it's not that long for me to meet my family as they will come here in a month from today. Can't wait....

It's now fall season in the US. The weather is totally different from when I came here on April - July. A bit cold in the morning and night, around 5 Celcius or can be lower on the windy days, but rising to nice, sunny 15 Celcius from 9am to around 3pm. It's already dark around 5.15 at the afternoon, compared to 8pm on summer. But overall it's mostly always friendly weather on this side of Texas (but not on north or west Texas).

Today is Thanksgiving Day.... and this is what I want to write about now. No... no... it's not about the history of Thanksgiving, which we can find abundantly on the websites, for example on this site or on this wikipedia site. As the title suggests, I am now waiting for the Black Friday -- the good one -- as there are so many Black Fridays in the world and in the US, and most of them are associated with bad things, either financial panic, market crash or even massacre....

This Black Friday that people are eagerly waiting now is the great sales after the Thanksgiving Day, historically and arguably the busiest retail shopping day of the year. According to many sources, the term 'Black Friday' refers to how businesses records their gains in black (opposite of losses which are in red)... it's a usual 'accounting color'. People also say that 'black' is also associated with how early normally retailers open in the morning of Friday after Thanksgiving. They mostly open at 5 or 6am and the great sales usually end around 11am. People normally already line up before the stores open or even hours before in some select stores, especially major electronics chains like Best Buy, Circuit City or CompUSA.

Is it really worth it getting up early in the morning and lining up on the cold? As a matter of fact, it IS. Not only that... a good research is highly recommended days before the D-Day. There are so many stores offering so many items on huge discounts. And the time is very limited, only 5 hours or so, to grab the benefits. Let's see some examples.

You can get a Toshiba notebook, Centrino Core Duo Mobile, 1GB RAM, 80GBHD, with DVD burner, wireless-ready, Vista capable, for $759 or Acer notebook with AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core processor, 1GB RAM, 120GB HD, with built-in DVD burner, webcam, wireless, and Vista capable, for $599 in Circuit City. Or if you are fine with a Centrino Solo notebook, you can get an HP with 512MB RAM and 80GB HD, DVD burner, built-in wireless, and Vista-ready for only $379 in Best Buy.

Or you might want a 250GB external hard-drive, so go to Best Buy to get an early bird price of a Western Digital for $69 only! You can also grab a slightly bigger one, 320GB for $99 in CompUSA!

You can also find steals on many types of digital cameras, like Sony Cybershot 6.0 megapixel for $149, Polaroid 6.0 megapixel for $99, Samsung 7.2 megapixel for $129 or Canon ultra-zoom S3 IS (12x zoom, 6 megapixel) for $399.

If you think a 2GB Ipod is still expensive at $149, you can think about a 2GB Sandisk Sansa MP3 Player for only $69 or its 1GB version for $39.

For smaller items, when else can we get a 2GB U3 Sandisk flash drive for only $29?!

Enough about electronics. How about a leather jacket for $49? Go to Walmart on Friday early morning. Levi's jeans for $16.99? Visit Sears.

So many bargains, so little time. Decision, decision, decision...... When it comes to consumerism, this country is unparalleled. As a capitalism nation, the notion is that higher consumption level will trigger higher production and that's good for the economy and people's wealth. It is all up to the consumers to be as wise as they can. Too many temptations could drive unnecessary consumptions and pile up the individual (credit card) debts.

So, come back to the decision making... How can we be wiser on the face of these many temptations? It's good to know that in this age of internet, information is highly overloaded and there are many tools to help us plan for the Black Friday.

Many good people have created very useful websites days or weeks ago relating to the offers that all stores will carry during the Black Friday. The sites are designed to be user-friendly, complete with their filter by stores, category, price, etc. I like the following sites: DealsPlus and BlackFriday2006. Lifehacker and its discussion forum also help finding better deals.

That's all about the 'good' Black Friday. The countdown is now less than 15 hours. Let me do some more research, create a shopping list and get prepared for the cold morning queue.....:-)