A forest of electronics

July 18th, 2007 by lynnylchan under My Life

I think I can safely assume that none of my readers need to be told what or where Sim Lim Square is. “Sim Lim”, according to the Chinese characters on the sign, means “forest”. That’s a pretty appropriate name for this place that overwhelms the uninitiated with the sheer number of shops and variety of electronic goods available.

I was there to buy an external hard disk, my D: partition having surrendered to my ravenous appetite for movies and TV sitcoms. An online comparison with Low Yat Plaza in KL indicated that the item I wanted would actually be cheaper back home, but unfortunately I had just left home. Yeah, really good planning on my part. Nevertheless, I decided to use the KL price as a benchmark for my budget.

A quick check showed that I’d either have to bargain the price waaaaay down, adjust my budget or buy something cheaper, as none of the shops could meet my price. I know the situation for the SLS tenants - their rental is pretty high, for a place that would be seedy if it wasn’t also the mecca for gadget geeks - and they operate on a very slim profit margin, so I knew there was no point bargaining. Plan B was to increase my budget, but I was reluctant to do that, knowing I would always have paid a significant amount less back home. Plan C it was then. I abandoned the idea of getting a Western Digital Passport, which was what I was originally after, and thought about getting a Samsung that sat very comfortably within budget with room to spare.

In the end, I went the DIY route and bought my hard disk and casing separately. I came in just under budget, with a pretty case (as opposed to the rather bland ones I was offered as a bundle) that was a bit larger than I wanted, but that’s because I got a 160GB HDD and the slim ones couldn’t handle that capacity. I got them from Bell Systems on the 5th floor. The sales staff were very friendly, they didn’t try to play this little girl for a fool, the way some shop at Lucky Plaza did. They answered my silly questions on casings and why some weren’t compatible with certain HDDs. I suppose I came off looking fine, because there was a kid in the shop with her dad, and she was loud and childishly obnoxious. I got the impression she was the one doing all the loud bargaining, I couldn’t hear her dad at all. Not that I was very the expert either - I didn’t realise the HDD had to be formatted, but that’s why the service was very good. The staff knew what had to be done, even if I didn’t. Better than me having to do it on my own, and I got to see Vista in action as well.

On my walk back to Little India MRT station, I went past a group of Indian workers having dinner while seated in a circle on the cement floor outside their shop. I wonder if their dinner was prepared communally, rather than being a packed meal from somewhere. One thing about the roads in Little India - I noticed a Kerbau Road and a Buffalo Road. In Malay, “kerbau” means “buffalo” anyway. And on the walkway along the road, an elderly man on a blue bike called out “kring kring kring” and punctuated this with a honk of his horn as he rode past. He turned to have a look at me, probably to settle whether I was a boy or a girl. Under normal circumstances I’d have labeled him a dirty old man, but he seemed harmless enough and I was in a good mood, so I just figured he was confused by my appearance. Happens often enough nowadays.

The last time I went to Sim Lim Square was maybe 5 years ago… I remember buying my Diablo Battle Chest there. It hasn’t changed at all, except maybe for toilet renovations or something like that. Low Yat Plaza should take a lesson from SLS - Low Yat’s toilets are horrible, even by Malaysian standards. And they have the cheek to charge for entry! I had dinner at the food court, which had the usual variety and wasn’t crowded at all even though it was peak hour - 7pm. The seafood porridge I had from the Hor Fun stall wasn’t bad, even if I thought it might have been a wee bit overpriced. To justify that, though, the cuttlefish was good, and the prawn was large and fresh - it’s very sad to have only one prawn and to have it be a mushy, frozen-too-long specimen. All in all, a very pleasing day spent in the labyrinth of SLS.