"Where did you get your shoes?"

"Online in a spree".

"Spree? What's that?"

"I'll email you the link and then you go look for it yourself".

This was a conversation I had with a younger cousin 3 months ago. And since then, I am hooked onto this kiddish phenomenon called an online spree. But then again, it is not such a kiddish thing. In fact, some companies realised that there is money to be made from these "shopping tours" that they themselves have gotten into the act.

At first, I was hooked to the idea that shopping no longer knows any boundaries. I could buy stuff from the US to the UK to Japan, to Australia, to almost anywhere in the world.

But I was also skeptical. Let another person order? Pay the person first? Is he/she going to run off with the money? They usually have a capped amount of SGD400 (to avoid paying GST). 400 bucks is a lot of money for me, let alone a pre-adult. I call them pre-adults (these spree organisers the orderers) because most of them have a campus bank account, which means that they are probably only in tertiary education.

But I still tried. I started my enquiries with a total stranger, asking her ( I assumed it was a her) how I was going to transfer money to her account and letting her do the ordering for me. She was very polite to my enquiries and I felt bad making her answer me and assuring me that I took the final step of transferring my money to her. And three weeks later, I went to her house to collect my loot. It was a bag from Baghaus.com and yes, she was a young thing in University for that matter.

Day in day out, I am still sussing out the spree invitations, but I have since realised that, my wardrobe is bursting at its seams and that my pay check should not be used to fuel more clothes, bags and shoes. I only have one body and two arms and a pair of legs. How much clothes, shoes or bags do I need?

But why do I still go into these sites? Well, for one, I am a self-confessed convicted shopaholic. In fact, I think I need to join a Shopaholic Annonymous if my husband can find me one. I like looking at stuff a lot, but these days, it seems that I am more interested in the on-goings of the sprees, or in the community, than in buying things.

I have seen comments like "can you take my order first and I pay later? I'm broke and payday is next Monday." Or "can you wait for me till Sunday? I get my allowance then". I read it and then I wonder. Are these sprees causing over-spending? Was I ever

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