The Glory of Bidding (or, why ebay should be deemed morally reprehensible by the Church)

So Paypal now allows transactions for buyers from the Philippines.

With this development driven by laissez faire market forces, folks from the good 'ol P.I. are now free to bid with (reasonable) confidence at the glamorous online palengke mecca known as ebay. Having checked my trepidation at the door, I dusted off my long hibernating ebay account and proceeded to link it with my newly minted Paypal account.














This actually took more time than I thought as Paypal requires that one validates a credit card by competing a transaction with them first, which is then reversed during the first use of the account. So after a couple of days of waiting, I was finally able to place some bids on Saturday afternoon.

And bid I did.

And did.

And did.

And did.

And did I bid.

36 hours later...

I'm a certified auction junkie! For all of you out there who have experienced the thrill of seeing a bid go green, or felt the unbridled shock and panic of a deal turn red with 5 minutes to go before closing, you know exactly what I'm talking about. My hands are shaking from lack of sleep, I'm frazzled from watching multiple bids, and am cursing at people with names like hotdiggedy78, urbestglfr and dallasplayer.

It's unusual behavior, it's not gentlemanly in any way, and I can't stop doing it!