Dream for a while!
I Been Dreamin’ is a wild old Aussie blues song by Tinsley Waterhouse who was the housemate of a wonderful hippie I worked with back in the day.
The reason I thought of it was, there’s been a few things I’ve been dreaming of for a while that I’ve been able to obtain at last and both of them have been life-changing. Both of them are about survival. One I found this morning, a portable air conditioner.
You can’t always get what you want.
I know it would have been better to get a wall/window box air-con because they are far more efficient but my problem was that to fit one of them was going to mean structurally modifying my steel-framed back door and because I don’t have any welder mates close by, that was going to be both time and money consuming.
Bargain hunted!
The heat’s been barely tolerable so I decided to hunt down a good portable, and as it turns out I found a high performance unit with a retail of $1500, only six months old, for $350.
Even a base model of a cheap crappy brand usually goes for around the same price, but try buying one! They’re all sold out.
So I was stoked to find a good one for a fraction of its worth. I’m sitting in front of it now and wondering how I survived without it.
No more shivering.
The other life-changing wonder I bought this year was a diesel heater. These can go for over AUD $3500. Or you can take your chances with a Chinese copy for under $150.
I decided that I could replace a defective cheap unit many times for that exorbitant price.
As it happens I had a few months of problems with my cheap unit. Ended up being my ineptitude was the problem. A kind and most appreciated mate helped me sort the problem it’s been running reliably ever since.
These diesel heaters are amazing. Such tiny and simple units with such a powerful kick of heat. Not only unbelievable performance either, but incredibly efficient. Run on the the smell of an deiselly rag.
The lesson?
There’s a lesson here. Don’t buy stuff you think you need.
Buy stuff you really do need, dream about it, and hunt long and hard for it, find good stuff for a fraction of its worth or bargain-priced copies that do a fine job.
Edit. In addition, when you dream about something for a while you appreciate it so much more than if you [maybe] decimated your budget to buy it straight away.
Kinda like long-distance relationships or separate bedrooms but I digress!
