Dinner, booze, and shopping, not necessarily at the same time

So I met up with a friend for dinner last night, which was fun. Did a lot of catching up. Another friend was supposed to meet up with me for drinks after, but JP Morgan got caught up in a shitstorm when China revalued the yuan, so he got stuck working late. So the two of us finished up dinner, headed over to the riverfront, and drunk ourselves into a stupor over a $100 bottle of wine, her treat. More catching up and burnt lungs followed. All in all, a pretty good night.


Today, I went off and did some window shopping at the main computer hub here in Singapore, where the more-or-less tech-savvy go to shop, haggle, and buy computer hardware and software. Kinda fell in love with the new HP Tablet PC, the Presario TC4200. Nice screen (didn't notice any color shifting weirdness even at extreme angles), fairly light, comes with an external Combodrive, Centrino 1.73ghz, half a gig of RAM, built-in Bluetooth, S-Video out, built-in SD reader. From some reviews, it can apparently hold a charge for about 4-5 hours, which is ridiculous. It's got an Intel GPU, which wasn't so hot, but it's the cheapest thing on the market, even with the relatively hefty specs. Might have to think about this one.

Anyways, Sim Lim Square, this much-ballyhooed computer shopping center, is a veritable treasure trove of electronics bargains. Four storeys of stores dedicated to computer hardware and software, and another three storeys of mixed electronics (including more computer stuff). Mind you, every one of these stores is competing with each other. Bargain city, baby. Fantastic service if you sound like an expat, to boot. I'll update this post with interesting pics when I can. I think I'll be picking up a USB Bluetooth dongle tomorrow. For S$25 (that's about US$15 for you guys).

Speaking of which. This place has such a ridiculous variety of stuff that you'll find things you've been looking for for ages, and even things you never knew you needed. Like a USB-powered vaccuum cleaner for your computer. No, I'm not kidding. I think I may just pick one of those up as well.


In unrelated news, mobile data plans here suck dogballs. And I thought Sprint was bad. S$105/month (US$65-ish) for unlimited data usage, and that's JUST for the data. Grr. The next in line is $10 for about 4MB per month, and $0.032 per kb thereafter. Yech.