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.

Except that it probably wan’t meant to be part of the display. I guess the cleaning crew need to be more careful in future. Particularly since, ahem, the fingerprint would clearly identify the culprit of this misdemeanor.

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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.

I think some parties are a bit too aggressive about deployment of these cash-equivalent payment systems. EZ-Link boasts 5000 merchants, twice that of NETS. I suppose EZ-Link’s numbers include these merchants who are given the terminals but who don’t use them. Perhaps their numbers are also made up by all the SBS Transit and SMRT buses.

There are places suitable for these electronic payment modes, but they aren’t suitable for all kinds of merchants out there.

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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.

The new trolleys, which is known under the brand name Futurecart, feature a LCD screen which displays promotional information and targeted advertisements, which may depend on where the trolley is positioned within the supermarket. The technology it uses is nothing revolutionary. A small embedded computer with battery packs and LCD screen mounted in the trolley, wireless positioning sensors around the supermarket (RFID in the case of Futurecart), and possibly some wireless data networking capabilities.

I’m a little doubtful about how well these technology will pay off in its current form. I found myself sufficiently absorbed with my shopping errand to actually pay any attention to the LCD screen, apart from taking a photo and the initial interest in the new gadget as I pushed off the trolley.

Perhaps the system might be more useful if it could interact with the shopper. For example, a bar code scanner to scan prices of items. Or just to scan the item, so that the system could display more information about the item, or a list of comparable items, etc. Or how about a navigation system to help you find items in the supermarket.

Or stream Barney videos to keep the kids entertained. Vanessa, for example, was quite engrossed with what the LCD screen was showing. (She hadn’t noticed it was there initially…)

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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.

I dress quite casually to work. My work environment permits it. Casual for me means T-shirt and jeans. But occasionally it would be appropriate to dress not so casually for a particular meeting or something. In those instances, donning a casual jacket like this seems to work quite nicely. It goes well with jeans or khaki pants, so it’s easy for me to mix-and-match items to go from casual look to “smart” look.

The other item for my new year’s wardrobe is this destroyed jeans from Fox Men. It has a nice soft denim material that’s very comfortable. The “tears” in the denim look quite real and natural, and overall an excellent seasoned look. It’s my first jeans from Fox, and I think I can consider more of it for my wardrobe in future. Yes, I bought it during a sale again of course. Yeah, you might have noticed I usually don’t buy anything unless there is some sale or promotion. Many “nice” clothing are too expensive when you’ve got to pay the full retail price.

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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.

I went shopping with baby Vanessa. We went to Bugis Junction. I was thinking nowadays Bugis is probably the not-so-happening shopping place anymore. I was quite wrong. It was still overflowing with crowds. I peeked in Top Shop for a few moments before heading out again, because I saw that the queue to pay was too long. No point to start browsing, want to buy something, and then get stuck in line for eons.

The signs for recession and economic gloom is definitely not evident in the pre-Lunar New Year shopping. Or perhaps that is the sign: everyone’s shopping for the bargains during this festive sales promotions. At Samuel and Kevin, everyone (including me) was crowding around jackets that were going for just $20. They were just casual jackets, not an expensive suit of blazer, but certainly worth well more than $20.

I think, after the Lunar New Year, there’s going to be even more bargains with shops trying to clear their unsold stock. No need to buy everything before the new year. Do some of the shopping after the new year!

A funny thing about Vanessa. She doesn’t like Samuel and Kevin. She cried in the shop. She’s okay elsewhere… even in IPZone (which is the same chain eh). The first time round, she was comforted when I picked her up and headed out. I came back later, and she cried again.

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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.

Anyway, back to baby Vanessa. The photo at the top is of her recent shopping trip to Takashimaya shopping centre. She was at the baby section making her rounds to examine everything that tickles her fancy. See how she looks at people as if to say “Please can I have this?”

Then look at Vanessa eyeing the set of bowls in the next photo. Looks like she really wants the bowls eh. Must be complaining that her bowls at home are too small, cannot contain a big enough serving for her appetite.

Oh yeah, when we eat out, she needs to have her own bowl. In the past, it was because we wanted her to have her own bowl to contain a smaller serving so that hot foods can cool down faster. Nowadays, Vanessa herself wants her own bowl. When she sits down at the table, she’ll point at the empty space in front of her to signal that a bowl (or plate) and a set of utensils needs to be placed there.

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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.

The thing is that for the longest time, I hated going to these exhibitions. It’s not just the crowds in the place itself, but also all the overcrowding and congestion around the venue as well. In fact, if there is a PC show in Suntec, I am going to avoid the entire Marina area. Have you noticed that some of these events have to advertise the “width of their walkways” as an attraction? You know then that the congestion is a serious problem. But still, try as they might to broaden the walkways on the exhibition floor, the place is still congested.

Unless, I tell myself, if I have something specific in mind to buy or to check out. So like today, I did want to look for an external hard disk. Thinking Friday after lunch shouldn’t be too bad, me, my wife and baby Vanessa headed down to Suntec at about 2pm. Well, basically car parks were all full. Yah, the electronic signboards said Suntec had 29 free lots, but there was a super long queue getting into the car park anyway. The only other place with free lots was the Singapore Fyler. Too far.

Well, we tried something slightly mischievous. We headed over to Conrad for the valet parking. They had a sign “car park closed” blocking off the driveway. We told them we were going to have high tea in Oscars. Ok, they let us through. We hung around outside Oscars for a few moments to get our barang barang organized. Of course we did not have high tea. This excursion was to Comex, not to have high tea. (Okay, we did go over to Oscars for dinner in the evening. So we were indeed guests of the hotel.)

Suntec was quite expectedly very crowded. People everywhere. Comex was on levels 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6, although seriously the only thing I saw on level 1 was some Canon signages, but I have no idea what they were doing there. SingTel had their iPhone 3G thingy in the ballrooms on level 2. Sony was on level 3. The more up-market vendors were in level 4, and the more budget conscious vendors were on level 6.

I came to Comex for 2 things: USB/firewire external hard disk, and checkout StarHub to re-contract cable/broadband. I got the Maxtor One Touch 4 Plus at a pretty good price. It was $309 (or was it $319)  for the Maxtour One Tocu h4 Plus 1TB version from Sim Lim Square the last weekend, but just $239 at Comex (seen at Skylet, Challenger, and other booths).

But I was utterly disappointed with StarHub. It seems they had no deals at all for existing cable TV subscribers. I sought help from the promotors, but they confirmed that they are mainly targeting new customers in Comex.

We did end up buying something that we had not set out to do. A shiny new Nokia E66 mobile phone from M1. Quite good price too. $298 for 2-year contract (compared with $368 for the so-called “Online Exclusive” from M1 Shop).

All in all, we spent about 3+ hours, although we did break midway for an errand. This is Vanessa’s first visit to any computer fair… and she fell asleep halfway despite all the noise. I guess she’s tired, or bored.

This excursion to Comex has reaffirmed my thoughts on visiting computer fairs: Avoid, unless you really have something in mind to buy, or if you enjoy the close company of huge crowds.

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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.

I also bought a Maxtor One Touch 4 external disk drive last weekend, which I’m now regretting because it is so much cheaper at Comex. Yes, today is day 2 of Comex, and the first time in a long while since I visited a computer fair.

There was also the Logitech mouse which I mentioned previously. Yeah, I know, why did I go shopping when there is Comex coming up? Well, actually it started off having the need to replace a dying hard disk. The original plan was to buy a new hard disk, just a simple internal IDE hard disk, but I somehow ended up buying an external USB hard disk. One thing led to another.

But I still did go to Comex, which I will blog about later.

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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.

So I got this Logitech V320 mouse, I thought I’d share a few things about it. It’s cordless, but not bluetooth, so it has to pair with its own wireless receiver dongle. The dongle is a hassle. Bluetooth is nice, but not always the right thing. I was actually tempted to go for the bluetooth version, but bluetooth is a bit messy when you want to swap the mouse around between 2 or more notebooks that all happen to be on at the same time. Which notebook should the mouse talk to? I ran into this problem when I paired my Jabra JX10 with my MacBook. I thought it was cool, until it got confused when my Nokia N95 8GB (which had also been paired with it) was in range. So the dongle does have its usefulness.

The mouse has a bay to insert the dongle, so it’s not like it will be too easily misplaced anyway when not in use. When you insert the dongle into the bay, the mouse switches off. There’s also a separate on/off switch beneath the mouse.

This is a two button mouse with a scroll wheel. The scroll wheel can also be pushed left and right to do left/right scrolling. Not quite the same 360-degree scrolling that the Apple MIghty Mouse can do.

Generally the mouse has a nice feel. The sides have a rubbery touch. It’s slightly smallish (i.e. not full sized) in order to be more portable. I’d prefer a full sized mouse for extended use though. Afterall, the slightly diminished size doesn’t really make much difference in storage/carrying space.

For extended use, somehow I find that the tip of my ring finger started to get sore against the rubbery side. The tracking/accuracy of the mouse is not fantastic, but passable for general use. (Those $20 wireless mice are much worse, but of course, this one is like $60+ so it ought to be better.)

Overall, I don’t think it is fantastic enough that I’d go for it again if I wanted another wireless mouse. The Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse would be more highly recommended.

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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.

The Internal Shuttle Bus services, for example, were completely packed. The new freshmen have not yet learnt that the rear bus door does not close if there are people standing on the steps. It added to the delays as overcrowded buses were held up at the bus stops.

The first bazaar for this 2008/9 academic year was held at the forum. I’m seeing familiar stalls again (see here and here). There will definitely be more to come. There is a different kind of bazaar happening at YIH. They are selling notebooks there.

NUS has an annual notebook tender where they are able to put together relatively attractive notebook offers for students to purchase. This has been running for perhaps a decade. Nowadays, purchasing a notebook has become a given. Once upon a time, you wonder very hard if it is really necessary or beneficial to purchase a notebook. Nowadays, the question is not if, but which notebook to buy.

This is not a peculiarity with NUS, of course. It happens in universities elsewhere in the world too. You can see Apple targeting students with their back-to-school promotions.

Incidentally, some “bad news” for those buying Macs now. There is much speculation that the MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks will be refreshed end September. So now, there is also the big question of “when” to buy, if you’re looking into MacBooks or MacBook Pros.

Happy schooling.

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