Finished my last paper last Thursday. Didn’t want to leave early hoping to write 2 more paragraphs which might make a difference. Ended up staying for 30 mins after the paper while they keep recounting and recounting.

So arranged to go shopping with Cheesecake after that - shopping at Sim Lim that is. =P Met Dan Dan at the bus stop and he decided to go get something at Sim Lim too.

But first stop was at Sim Lim Tower where I needed to get electrical components. Cheesecake looked really blur in the shop, surrounded by so many tiny little electrical stuff which she has never knew existed. Just imagine her holding the little box walking around while I find and dump components into it.

Next Panasonic miniDV tapes at $4 each from G&G, which I think it’s the lowest you can get in the market without mass order. w00t.

Walked around Sim Lim and got a 80-wire IDE cable and Dan Dan got his DVDs and BenQ 1640 burner, while my main intention is to get a stick of RAM for my laptop. Bumped into Kaifeng who asked what I was doing here. Funny thing was he was convincing me to get a memory upgrade to play WOW.

Kingston SO-DIMM RAM

The first shop (which I forgot the name) I wanted to buy from explicitly stated in signs posted all around the counter and even told me that there will be no exchange for incompatibility and that I should bring my laptop down to try before buying. Ok so I went to Video Pro which was $1 more and they said the same thing.

So I went back down on Friday with my laptop, but now there’s a catch: I will have to pay $10 for them to test out the RAM that I’m buying. If it’s not compatible then I don’t have to pay but if it is, then I’ll have to pay $10 on top of the buying price.

Now this does not make sense. What kind of flawed logic is that? Their argument is that it cost money to repackage an opened RAM package. But if that’s the case, then shouldn’t the $10 be levied if you return an incompatible stick?

Now since the sign said that there will be administrative charge for such returns, I asked how much would it be. Their reply, it depends on how you open the package and how damaged it is. So I asked what if they open it for me, in the way to incurr the least admin charges they said that’s why they’re charging $10 for their “opening” services, but free if it is found incompatiable and has too be sent for repackaging. What a shitload of bull. I wonder how many people they have conned into paying the extra $10. To hell with their “company policy” I’m leaving.

So I went down to Video Pro and said I wanted a stick and brought my laptop down to test. The guy who attended to me was making jokes which only he thinks are funny (hmm.. sounds familar) said they charge $5 for testing. Now thinking such weird policy might be store wide and that other shops are selling it at more than $5, I decided to go ahead.

So the guy opens my laptop and sees how ancient it is a joked again that it’s $5 for every year, so that’s about $15. But the nice thing was that when he keyed the final price into the POS computer and asked the boss to verify, the boss deducted $5 amd mumbled something. So the guy was like, Wah you lucky boss is in a good mood today. That’s why you should come to Video Pro.

Haha… ok I dunno if the boss was really in a good mood or it’s a marketing gimick but I had it tested and still got it for $9 cheaper than that stupid shop. Anyway more RAM is really shiok, and as Weijian says, a memory upgrade feels better than a processor upgrade.

—

On a side note, as we were leaving Sim Lim on Thursday, I pointed out the Canon XL2 on display to Cheese in one of the ground floor shops and she went, “Oh… is that one of those $700 camera?”
“Cheesecake! The XL2 cost more like around $7000!”
“Oh…”

The Canon XL2