Zit Seng's Superwall

You’d have expected that an upmarket retail shop like that of Tag Heuer would be a picture of perfection. Neat, pristine and clean. Especially in a display cabinet which is not exposed to dust, fingers, and other sorts of intrusions. Yet, as I walked past, something just caught my eye: a smudgy fingerprint on a mobile phone in the display! Somehow, it stood out so clearly under the intense halogen lights. It almost seems like the fingerprint was planted on purpose, as if it were in fact part of the display.

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Here’s what a merchant did with his EZ-Link payment terminal: Shelved neatly inside a glass display. Nice to look at, but not to be used. I’m guessing this merchant doesn’t want to use it at all.

There are certainly some benefits of electronic payment systems, but clearly they are not for everyone. I imagine that this EZ-Link system was provided free-of-charge to this merchant, so there are no overheads and per-transaction costs involved, but yet he’s reluctant to use it.

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I was at Cold Storage yesterday to pick up a few items, and a new gadget there caught my attention. It’s “Futurecart”. It has a LCD screen mounted at the end of the cart. That’s nothing terribly futuristic about it, but it is certainly an evolutionary development of the same old supermarket trolley carts that have served us for decades.

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Fancy a jacket for $20? It’s a casual jacket I got from a Samuel & Kevin sale during my Lunar New Year shopping spree. Nothing terribly spectacular about it, but for $20, it’s still a bargain. In fact, I found myself jostling with so many other people at the wagon that day. Everyone was rummaging through the clothes to find the right size. Yes, as you can imagine, at these sort of sales, it’s usually mostly the extreme sizes (i.e. XL or XS) that are left.

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I did quite a bit of last minute shopping in preparing for this Lunar New Year. For example, I only got my shoes one or two days before. It was a pair of Converse shoes. I also got Converse the last year. I thought the shoes look good, reasonably comfortable, and with all the promotional sales discount, where quite fairly priced too. Not sure how long I’d stick with Converse though, because all their shoes seem to be similarly styled. Oh well, pick any brand, the same is probably true too. So now and then we’ve got to brand-hop.

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Yeah, I know it is already the new year, but I’m still catching up with things I’ve been wanting to past for the last couple of weeks. Things like the big bunch of baby Vanessa photos that have stayed in my phone for too long. Can you believe it, my N95 8GB crashed while importing the photos to my Mac this morning? My phone must be protesting at all the extra work heaped on it over the festive season.

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This is the second day of Comex, and the first time in a long while since I’ve visited a computer fair of this sort. They are just too crowded for my liking. So today’s excursion to Comex was like discovery of a new shopping experience. Like a small kid going to the zoo for the first time. Oh okay, not quite the same thing.

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Another item I acquired during my pre-Comex shopping trip last weekend is this notebook cooler pad. It has two fans, is slightly elevated at the back so that it is tilted forward, and it emits a cool blue hue when it’s running. I know, these things are quite common and indeed I’ve seen them many times, but this is only the second notebook cooler pad that I’ve purchased, so it is still cool to me.

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I know Comex starts today, but I somehow ended up at Sim Lim Square last weekend and did some pre-Comex shopping. I bought a bunch of things, including this Logitech V320 cordless optical mouse to use with my notebook at home. Nowadays, everything needs to go wireless. How nice if wireless power can come soon.

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This is the start of “Week 1″. It is the second week of school at NUS because the semester started with “Week 0″. Yes, how very much like computer people to start counting from zero. Week 1 is where orientation is over and classes officially start. Week 0 at NUS wasn’t overly crowded. Today, I’m seeing congestion everywhere.

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