I thought it was pretty interesting, especially since I felt that my day was mostly routine on weekdays, and it would be easy to list down all the brands of the things I use in the day. I also have fixed schedules at work, namely daily meetings at certain hours, or a fixed time for people to get their staff pass ID or namecard photos taken.

One thing to note would be that I do not repeat the brands of the things I use, even if I use it multiple times a day. For example, the number of times I use my handphone would be too tedious to note, as would the number of cups of coffee I drink a day, and the number of times I brush my teeth. I have also omitted brands of apparel because I have no brand loyalty towards any fashion house or brand, preferring to buy whatever fits my current tastes and moods.

For my “Brand timeline”, I chose to put everything into ‘brand boxes’, mainly for convenience, because I do not have Photoshop on my desktop at work, and had to use Excel and MS Paint to do this!

I also split it into 3 sections, namely before work, at work, and after work.

- Before Work -

Nokia HP as alarm clock and to check for SMS, Oral-B and Colgate oral hygiene products, Olay facial cleanser, Dettol shower gel, Nivea body spray, body moisturizer and lipbalm, Nescafe canned coffee, Missha face moisturizer and toner, Estee Lauder liquid foundation and lipstick, Revlon powder foundation and Blusher, Lancome mascara, eyeshadow and eyeliner, Dopod PDA to check Plurk and email, L’Oreal hair gel, Singtel mobile to call the office to check for messages before I head to the office, and Scholl feet deodorizer spray.

- At Work -

Ericsson desk phone and phone headset, Lenovo desktop, Windows OS, Sanrio mug/water bottle, Internet Explorer for surfing and accessing MS Sharepoint, Microsoft Office documents, Gmail for company email and personal email, Plurk, Meebo for MSN with family and friends, Gtalk for colleagues and friends, Facebook, Google (is my best friend for everything), news (online) at lunchtime from CNN and NY Times, blogging on WordPress, Pilot pen for meeting with boss to update on task statuses, Canon camera for photo taking for namecards or staff ID, Logitech webcam for department online conferences with colleagues in China.

- After Work -

EZ-Link card for bus/MRT ride, SBS Transit bus to the MRT station, SMRT train to my destination (usually in town), Comfort taxi for the ride home, Acer laptop, Sony hi-fi set, Johnson & Johnson baby shampoo and baby bath, Windows Live Messenger, Ping.sg, Phillips thumbdrive to download stuff that my colleagues pass to me for reading and preparation for work tomorrow, Wikipedia to read 5 articles a day, and Audio-Technica headphones with my Sony MP3 player to play music before I sleep (to drown out the sounds from the PIE).

ETA: I have forgotten to include the logo of my favourite browser, Maxthon, in my “After Work” brand box, so I’m just gonna put it as a post-script here! (I’m simply too lazy to re-do the last brand box, especially since it’s almost time for me to run off to meet friends for dinner!)

From this exercise, I’ve discovered several things about myself:

1. No matter what I say, I’m really a geek. Just look at the number of tech brands I have in my daily life, be it hardware or software or web-applications!
2. I spend too much time online. ‘Nuff said.
3. I put too much gunk on my face everyday. I startled myself with the amount of skin/cosmetic products in my “Before Work” morning routine ‘brand box’.
4. My life revolves around work. As you can see from the section headers.
5. I’m not getting enough sleep! Although I write that I go to bed with my music plugged into my ears at 0100 hrs, in actuality, the time I fall asleep would be closer to 0230 hrs or 0300 hrs. That translates into a mere 5 or 6 hours of sleep. Definitely not enough!
6. I am very stubborn about brands. Brands of items like coffee, facial care products, make up, hygiene products, are things which I stay loyal to. I’m 99% likely to buy these items again once I’ve run out, and would go to other stores if the store I go to is out of that particular brand or the exact type.

I’ts also interesting to note how much Google has become a part of my life. I use it for its search engines, email (at work and personal), instant messaging, and other miscellaneous things like document sharing, blog stats, maps, and videos.

Finally, I’ve also discovered (or re-discovered, rather), that I’m very forgetful. Several times have I intended to bring home the Excel spreadsheet in which I did this, but I never remembered to!

Question: What brands do you consume daily, and why do you choose some over the other (if any reason at all)? What kind of consumption patterns do you notice amongst the products you use, and how willing would you be to change them?