The books haven’t arrived and I’m getting a little worried. I have had amazing shopping experiences with Amazon before. Once during a festive season and twice on non-peak periods. The former took a little more time due to increased traffic and security clearance required to clear the packages while the latter arrived almost within a week or two.

The problem is (still is), the previous purchases always met the deadlines and arrived as estimated but this time round, it’s three days late, for crying out loud.

I have emailed Amazon regarding this and they apologised profusely and requested that I give them a little more grace. The forecast is for the package to arrive no later than the 17th. Let’s wait patiently eh? They mentioned that they will take full responsibility for any lost items in transit and will replace the items and ship them at no additional charge. They are more willing to ship the replacements immediately but feared that I might receive duplicates and have to return the extras which causes more hassle eh?

It was an acceptable explanation but I am still feeling edgy because I want my books now.

I wouldn’t want to impose on the wrong people. Who knows the books will arrive tomorrow?

Suffering from a little self denial plus self calming syndrome, ain’t I?

No, the original nursery rhyme didn’t sound like that.

It’s just that - The books have arrived!

Unlike Amazon which require aeons before they got shipped, travel miles across the pacific blue and then to the postman. Books from LuLu.com however, just arrived within two weeks. The amazing thing about LuLu is that - your books are printed on demand and then shipped almost immediately! They are fresh hot out from the oven. If you were like me, you probably wished there’s an Amazon.sg or iTunes Store @ SG.

I did remember Apple mentioning about the possibility of iTunes coming over to Singapore.

Back on track, good books aren’t always available in local bookstores. Pathetically speaking, we only have three bookstores namely Kinokuniya, Borders and PageOne adequately carrying a wide range of books. And of these three, Kinokuniya’s Ngee Ann city main store is probably the best to shop at, don’t even mention about the Bugis Store. Borders used to top the charts when coming to speak about books, but I feel that they are grossly overpriced, not even if you have that Priveilged Member card. PageOne carries books for designers wannabes, but its location irks me. Who the hell finds travelling all the way to VivoCity just to buy books fun?

The last alternative is probably to buy online. Amazon has the widest range. In fact, you should find whatever you want from there. Cameron Moll and 37signals chose to publish through Lulu.com exclusively, so you can only buy them online.

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On left: Getting Real: A set of guidelines and practical advice for all web application developers to get their webapps quickly done and roll out. 37Signals are the guys behind the Ruby on Rails framework. With only eight people in the company spanning across different time zones, they still get work done. Pretty.

On right: Mobile Web Design: Cameron Moll, one of the well known web designer known in the community, gives his take about the Mobile Web industry and how we should approach this very niche area of web design.