I bought a new office chair yesterday. I have been desperately needing one for many months but I have put off buying it for a while. I inherited my last office chair from my brother (Read: I stole his chair when I moved to Canberra). My new work moved all my furnitures from Perth to Canberra. Since, I lived in a fully furnished apartment immediately before I got transferred to Canberra, I actually did not have any furnitures. My belongings consisted of;
- Girlie Stuff
tons of clothes,tons of shoes,tons of bags,tons of make up, accessories and beauty stuff,tons of stuffed animals - Geeky Stuff
a laptop, a desktop set (CPU, monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc), printer, two external harddrive, tons of CDs and DVDs, tons of books, tons of comic books and anime stuff, graphic tablet, stationaries and drawing stuff (inks, pens, pencil lead) that will last for generations, 2 x digital cameras, speakers, 2 x routers - My childhood pillow which actually belonged to my mom when I was 5.
So, when I moved to Canberra, I raided my brothers’ house for a study desk (from my middle brother), computer chair and sofa bed (from my eldest brother), bookshelf (from my youngest brother).
Anyway, then this happened:
Me: “I need a new chair”
Boyfriend: “I know.”
Me: “It’s making a noisy, annoying, creaking noise”
Boyfriend: “I know.”
Please note that the above conversation happened every week for about 8 months. So, my boyfriend’s mental sanity had been severely tested and his ability to respond intellectually to this topic has been reduced to two words.
The first attempt
Some time between Christmas 2008 and New Year 2009:
Me: “Ok, I wanna buy a new chair. Let’s buy a new chair. But I don’t want to spend a lot of money on it. I want to spend between 50 and 100 only. That should be enough for a good office chair isn’t it. So please stop me if I want to buy anything more than 100.”
So Boyfriend agreed to drive me to officeworks and patiently waited while I tried several different leather, high back, office chair.
Me: “Ooooooooh… this one is very nice. It’s very very comfy.. I like this one.”
Boyfriend: “It’s $149″
Me: “Do you think it’s worth it? Do you think I can haggle it down? Will you buy it if you were me?”
I then spent another hour being indecisive at officeworks. I tried and tested so many different chair and comparing the merits of buying one versus the others. By this point, boyfriend gave up reminding me that my budget is only $100. He also refused to offer any coherent advise.
So, when I decided to finally buy the chair, It was SOLD OUT!!! Officeworks also did not sell display unit. So there goes my first option. Then I pick another chair, SOLD OUT! And another, SOLD OUT! And another, SOLD OUT! By the time I got to my fifth option, we figured out we probably should come back next year.
The conclusion
At the start of this year, I got really busy and did not have time to go get the chair. I only decided to go to Officeworks yesterday and got the chair. The price has gone up to $167!!! 
This time, I wisely did not take my boyfriend with me. Which is a good thing, because I spent an hour there making friends with another customers deciding which chair we should buy. OMG, I am so getting girlier and girlier as I got older.
But It was not all in vain, because I decided to buy it! My boyfriend still contributes to the process. He turned the chair from this:
into this…
WOOOT!!!
