Incentives

Last week I bought something in a large department store called HEMA. At the checkout the girl asked me the following mind-boggling question: “Would you like bonkies?”

Now, that is not a question I’d been asked before. I didn’t have a clue what she meant. Would I like what? I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think bonkies is a word in the Dutch dictionary. It sounded like she was asking me if I would like her to hit me over the head. But she could not possibly mean that. Could she? My face must have expressed my thoughts, because she tried to clear things up. ”You get a bonkie with every 5 Euros you spend”, she explained. It didn’t help. But I’m curious (wanted to know what bonkies are) and Dutch (like to get things for ‘free’), so I said: “Yes, I would like bonkies”, and got ready to duck just in case… The girl took a dive behind the counter and surfaced with two small plastic wrappers, containing the illusive bonkies, and handed them to me.

When I got home I put the wrappers on the garden table and forgot about them. (I blame the Lyme. I keep forgetting things. It can’t be age-related. I’m far too young for that. I am!)

When hubs came home, he saw the wrappers and asked: “what’s that?” ”Those are bonkies.” ”What?” ”Bonkies.” ”Oh?” ”You get a bonkie with every 5 Euros you spend at the HEMA “ ”A bonkie?” ”A bonkie.” ”Oh. What’s a bonkie?” ”No idea.” ”Oh.”

Hubs was happy enough not knowing more about bonkies, but I wasn’t , so I opened the wrappers and discovered what a bonkie is.

It’s a marble. With a scary face. And a name. The left one is called Katy and the one on the right is Luv. She appears to have a big plaster on her head. Maybe she got hit over the head. When I Googled ‘bonkies’ I discovered that you also ‘have to’ collect little plastic bodies, called ‘skinnies’, for these faces. With every 15 Euros you spend, you get a skinnie. There are 15 different bonkies and 5 different skinnies. You do the sums. Invented by a marketing department as an incentive for people to buy more stuff at the HEMA, so that their children can 'collect them all!'. I hate that. But I always accept the ‘free gifts’ and give them to our neighbour’s children. And I hate that I do that. But the neighbour’s kids love it. And that is why I can still live with myself.

Anyway, that is not what this post is about.

It’s about the joy of Windows Live Writer. Why did I not know about this before? I’ve been struggling all this time with Blogger’s prehistoric lay-out possibilities, while I could have been enjoying Live Writer. I’m in heaven. In one of the comments made to this post of Jinksy, I first read about the existence of Windows Live (remind me to thank ‘Fletch’). And then she herself mentioned it in this post. And that was an incentive for me to check out the possibilities of Windows Live Writer. Did I mention I’m in heaven?

Are you still struggling with writing your posts in Blogger? Let this be an incentive to you to check out Windows Live Writer. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know. Everything I managed to do is based on luck and coincidence. Ask Fletch. You can find him if you follow (one of) the links to Jinksy.