Here in the Philippines, Black Friday is known as a day in Holy Week, supposedly the day when Jesus Christ was crucified and died on the cross. It was actually only a few years ago when I learned that Black Friday meant something entirely different in the U.S. So when I was there for a visit last year, I was able to understand the whole frenzy surrounding the event.

Hours before Black Friday officially began, my sister and her husband were mapping out their strategy for obtaining certain items from Best Buy, Circuit City, and Walmart. My brother-in-law was pretty methodical about the whole thing, and even made sure to check out Black Friday ads and find out what time those stores opened in order to determine which one we'll be hitting first. The best part is that we found that a lot of the things we were planning to buy were on the list of items that were priced much lower for Black Friday. That definitely made it easier for us to find the items and snap them up before anyone else did. (That day, we headed to Best Buy first and was extremely successful in snagging a laptop and a Bluetooth headset.)

It always helps to do some research first before doing anything, and who knew that the Internet would be a great help in buying things offline? Because of sites with Black Friday ads, it turned out to be a pretty amazing first Black Friday experience for me.