The MP110 Canon

yesterday was a quirky day.

breakfast was at a little coffeeshop at jalan besar, really old and rundown. it only had 3 stalls open, including the drink stall itself. the other was a 24-hour prawn mee stall, and a chicken rice stall selling chicken rice balls and dishes served kway chap style.

interesting.

anyway chun and i had a really nice old-school breakfast. i had prawn mee. and we shared old-school kaya toast and half boiled eggs along with teh-c for me and kopi-o for her. damn long never had such a breakfast liaoz. those of you from my generation should remember that our papas used to teach us to pour our hot tea into the saucer where we ate our half-boiled eggs and drink off the saucer. that's right, our father's all went to the same father training camp to teach their kids these kinda cool things. no wonder ya kun so popular.

breakfast was nice cuz we were dry and everyone coming into the coffeeshop wuz wet since it was raining jialat jialat outside. would've been even better if i had the sunday times with me. but an enjoyment nonetheless.

when the rain stopped we walked over to sim lim square. only 5min walk. super alot of people. and we started our search for a new printer. we actually had our eyes fixed on the canon mp110 model liaoz which was retailing for $229(no free gifts) in courts that we saw the day before.

so like super aunties in a bargain store, both of us went straight to the top floor and worked our way down. i think they had computer products all the way down to the 4th floor. so wherever we saw that canon model we would ask for a price and bargain abit first to 'test water'. of course we also took note of other similar models by other brands - canon mp110 was a low-end 3-in-1 printer - pretending to compare the epson x-smtg3500 and another hp version as well.

after combing the 4 levels, our search narrowed to a store that quoted us $205(haven't bargain for free gifts, no usb cable), one that quoted $199(no free gifts/usb cable, if want free gifts, $219) and one that quoted $210(free gifts + usb cable). the free gifts were a simcard back-up reader and a 128mb thumbdrive.

we decided to go back and whack the $205 to see if we could get all the gifts and cables, else we will buy from the $210 one. the guy at the $205 one was an old man and he drives a really hard bargain. i mean i really think i'm not bad a bargaining(quite good in fact!), when me and chun powers combine all uncles(chun+) and aunties(me+) sure die jialat jialat wan. but the old man killed both of us with his sob story.

he started by saying he was an honest man and would not charge us any more than what he should(everyone says that), but then we said if he threw in the usb cable for free then we would buy it straightaway. but cannot! the usb cable is originally $5 but he will give us $3 since we drive a hard bargain. wah piangz but when we asked him to give free again he this time sprang his killer story.

he told us he really was earning very little commission liaoz and he was juggling 2 jobs besides this one. on weekends he works in sim lim, weekdays he works in bras basah selling sports equipment and at night he works as security guard.

why?

cuz his son is studying in australia, daughter going to ntu this year, and one more kid in sec 2 only. need to earn lotsa money to support all his kids and wife.

xianz.

lose liao.

chun and i look at eash other. i look at her. she look at me.

lose liao.

to add oil to his fire power, he gave me his name card.

on the front is his name with his bras basah cmpny name and logo.

on the back is his name with his sim lim cmpny name and logo.

nothing to say.

so it ended just like that. no more bargaining. final price for the canon mp110, $208 + simcard back-up reader + 128mb thumb drive + usb cable. the uncle still very nice. say if we need badminton racquets or even badminton lessons, go look him up at bras basah.

he will give us discount.

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okie so uncle won. but then me and chun also quite gan yuan to let him make our sale. anyway it was the best deal too, and at the end of the day it was only a coupla dollars difference just to satiate the ego. after listening to his power pitch, i wouldn't even mind paying a few more dollars if it all went into his commission.

anyway...

so we were dandy and happy at the good printer deal and the free gifts and all. now the problem was in collecting the free gift. we had to go to canon's head retail office at funan, formerly the it mall, now the digitalife mall.

so we decided to walk to funan since there wasn't a straight bus there. and it was quite near. taxi wuz hard to get.

and there we were, two super aunties lugging the humongous box all the way to funan. as the box had two handles on each end, chun carried one end while i held on to the other, walking abreast along the pavements.

i think alot of people were staring at us as though we were advertising for canon, cuz people had to avoid us when we were coming through.

haha.

the printer wasn't THAT heavy, just that is was quite large and came in a gigantic box thats all.

by the time we reached funan we were so glad for the aircon man!

the canon retail shop looked like they were expecting us. however, the 128mb thumbdrive was temporarily out of stock! :( so i had to fill in my address and they would mail it to me in 2 weeks. then i was also entitled to a sure-win scratch draw which i won some crap photo paper, but also got chance to win car leh! dun pray pray!.

so that was that.

after it all, we lugged the printer to the busstop and took the no36 home.

the printer works great! and now its sitting pretty in my room!!!

and thats the end of my quirky story.