📖 shopping

"Be prepared, be prepared,
This lesson must be shared,
This lesson must be shared,
Be prepared!"
- Be Prepared, Hoodwinked!

with a new year, new textbooks are needed.

with the help of Google Maps, I navigate my way from my sister's apartment to the bookstore. before I reach my destination, I find that a construction site is blocking the optimal route.

no biggie, I tell myself. a quick detour will get me where I needed to be. 

and so I stroll into the bookstore, down to the lower floor, ready to buy my textbooks.

except for one little thing - I've forgotten to note which books I need.

no biggie, I tell myself. I can pop up to the bookstore's cafe and use their Wi-Fi to figure it out.

when I get to the cafe, I run into one of my classmates from high school, so we chat for a bit while I try to surreptitiously get my freaking page to load.

after a few minutes we part ways, but the cafe Wi-Fi is acting up and I still haven't figured out which books I need.

no biggie, I tell myself. I'll just move deeper into the bookstore and hope their Wi-Fi is better on the second floor.

it isn't.

at this point, it really is becoming a biggie. the long-ish line is probably going to get longer if I let too much time pass, and I want to get my book-buying out of the way AQAP. if I try going back to the cafe, I might run into my classmate again and it would be kinda awkward. but if I want to find which books I needed, I have to walk somewhere with Wi-Fi, then walk back to the bookstore, then walk back down again.

sighing to myself internally, I exit the bookstore and make my way down the avenue to the nearby Starbucks.

after a few minutes of trying to connect, I finally manage to link up with the Starbucks Wi-Fi and lo and behold, the website loads!

... to reveal that an error has prevented the page from loading.

frick this, I tell myself. just as I'm about to throw in the hotel and head back to my dorm, I remember that there's a secondary page where I can find my textbooks, albeit in less detail.

it's good enough for me, though. I pull up the page, screenshot it to be safe, and make my way back up to the bookstore.

thankfully, all of my books are in stock and the line has gotten slightly shorter since I left. it's still a bit of a wait, but nothing compared to, say, Disneyland at peak hours.

I'm also quite thankful that there was enough money on my debit card to purchase my books. last year I'd forgotten to reload my card, so I had to leave my books with the cashier, use the cafe Wi-Fi to get mo money, and come back to buy my books. that's why I expected the cafe Wi-Fi to work this time, but obviously you can't always get what you want.

so, you know. at least I learned one lesson last year.

with my purchases in hand, I make my way back to my dorm, grateful that things worked out okay.

moral of the story: write stuff down.