After graduation from my first degree in 1995, I spent just over seven years working with an education provider who had numerous offices on the island. The work required me to move around the different locations scattered on all cardinal directions of Singapore, but the specific office where I had a desk space was in a pretty swanky district in Singapore – specifically the central business district. Back then, the bags I used for my lecture notes and laptops were invariably messenger bags or brief cases (!). I wasn’t a coffee drinker back then, so the daily driver didn’t need space for a coverage tumbler.
Fast forward 23 years from that point: all my bags for the last ten years now have been haversacks – because I can’t have a bag without a holder for coffee tumbler! The go-to brand for haversacks these days are from Thule: with my daily driver the over two years old Thule EnRoute Blur 2 Daypack. In what seems to be a manufacturing design issue for several of Thule’s haversacks, the mesh material used for side beverage tumbler holders don’t hold up well to rough use. So, like the first Enroute Blur that the Blur 2 replaced, the side pockets have likewise started tearing.
The Thule Subterra 45L Duffel Bag I bought in March this year is far too large to bring to/fro from work, that I drive notwithstanding. Just as well to look into a replacement. The requirements for the replacement are really quite simple and nothing quite as complex as some of the minutiae specifications I draw up for technological gadgets. Basically, I just needed the replacement backpack to:
Have a capacity at least as large as the 24l of the Thule EnRoute Blur 2 Daypack.
Preferably not use mesh webbing for its side pockets
Drop the expandable front pocket – e.g. to hold sweaters.
One Thule backpack met these requirements: the Thule Subterra Backpack 30L. The item is widely available at Isetan department stores and the numerous The Wallet Shop outlets here, with RRPs of SGD249, with the occasional 20% seasonal discounts making it SGD199 and thus quite a bit cheaper. The item as listed on Amazon goes for even lower and normally retails for USD129.95/SGD178. Moreover it also sees the very occasional large price drop too:
From the one year track above, the price drops seem fairly random. But as luck would have it: the item momentarily hit its lowest point ever just last week at USD98.98. Without hesitation and more likely because these sudden price drops are never permanent for Thule bags, I made an immediate order for the Subterranean – paying SGD154 including shipping costs. Quite a nice tidy sum saved if I were to have picked it up here at SGD199 even if I bought it during the seasonal 20% discount.
What was even more pleasantly surprising was how quickly the third party store shipped: the item was sent out on 20 August from Seattle, and arrived into a Minton self-pickup parcel box on the 23 August via DHL.
Tons of pictures!
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