Bangkok Post, Thailand, Insider Column.

Dec. 11--VIRTUAL SHOPPING SOLUTIONS: Asked to choose, some of you would probably prefer being boiled in oil, or perhaps a night out with the Yubamrung brothers, to holiday gift shopping.

The crowds and the shopping-mall jingles are the first disincentive. They can be managed to a point, if one does some strategic reconnaissance and assiduous list-making in advance.

Shopping online has been touted as the salvation of the mallophobic. For research and price-comparison purposes it has its merits, but at some point in the process, many people still want to have physically examined the goods they had in mind before making that final click.

There are some shoppers, though, for whom the acquisition of the gift is just the first stage. It's what comes after that completes the vicious cycle of holiday anxiety.

"Oh, it's lovely," the recipient might say, doing an unsuccessful job of masking the disappointment behind the smile. "But it's not really my colour." Or style, or size. Behind the smile a mental calculation might even be taking place to measure the item's value in relation to what she had spent on you.

The Internet has not yet devised an antidote for rejection, though doubtless there are places where people with gift-giving phobia can go to share their misery. But on the frontiers of invention there is a new program that refines online gift shopping to include virtual delivery -- and virtual exchanges.

This hardly sounds radical, and the fact that it has been granted a patent in the United States has revived the debate over the nature of novelty. But ever since Amazon patented one-click shopping, anything has been possible.