Cheap gadgets

Went out on Sunday with my sec sch mates to celebrate Weiming's 21st birthday. Bernard, Fuli and i went hunting for his present in the morning. David couldn't make it on sun as he was having a chess competition. We went to Far East Plaza to find any suitable t-shirts or bags for him but most of the shops were not open yet. We then walked along Orchard Road discussing what other presents we can get for Weiming. I suggested HMV or movie vouchers as his general interests are music and movies. We decided to think of other ideas while keeping the vouchers suggestion as a last resort if we couldn't think of other stuff to buy. After some deliberating, we decided on the vouchers and a cake. We then headed to Taka food section where there are quite a lot of stalls selling cakes. We took note of the price, flavour and design before heading to other places with cake shops. Shops like Bread Talk have cakes that were generally more expensive and we decided on the shop selling cheesecakes in Taka. We then went to buy the vouchers before buying the cake as we didn't want it to get warm. After getting a $20 HMV voucher, we went cathay cineplex to buy 2 movies passes. Then went back to Taka to buy a $15 cookies and cream cheesecake and Cold Storage for a lighter.

We were thinking of where to cut the cake and i suggested level 4 at Centrepoint as few people hang out there and there are benches there as well. We arrived there at 1.15 pm as we expected Weiming to be late as usual. He was indeed late by 45 mins. We put the candles, lit them up and sang him a soft birthday song as we do not want to embarrass him in the public place. Took a photo as well.
The birthday boy is on the left.
We then headed to NYDC at Wheelock Place for lunch as Weiming is giving us a treat. I told him not to splurge his money but he insisted on giving us a treat. We ordered the set lunches and had a rather nice time eating and chatting. The total bill came up to $59.

We played pool at Le Meridian afterwards as we couldn't think of any other things to do. Fuli left at around 5.45 pm as he need to book in at night. The 3 of us continued our game and played for another hour before going to the IT fair at Suntec. After around 30 mins of walking, we reached the human-packed exhibition hall. We forced ourselves into the hall which has brochures and flyers dumped all over the area. David joined us after his competition soon after we arrived. Bernard was interested in digital cameras and he had been wanting to get one since last year. We went to the Sony booth and i was telling him this and that about digital cameras. The cameras were rather expensive and we went to Nikon booth. The cameras were relatively cheap but the model that Bernard wanted was sold out. We went to Olympus, Konica Minolta, Canon and Pentax booths next and Bernard had his eye on a $399 Pentax Optio S50 which has 5 megapixels and 3 times optical zoom. It was the cheapest 5 mp digicam around but the bad things are that it had only 1.8 inch lcd screen, the digital zoom was only 2.8 times and the camera was not very user friendly. Bernard decided to buy it but he have to collect it at Sim Lim Square 3 days later as there was already no stock for the camera.

We then went to the Creative booth as Weiming was interested in mp3 players since his discman was spolit. The Creative Zen Micro was really cheap and the 4 gb was only selling for $299. The 5 gb was selling at $399 and 6 gb at $429. However, the charger and extra lithium battery was not included for the 4 & 6 gb version. They were giving out $20 vouchers for the 5 gb version and Weiming decided to buy it. Only red, orange and purple zen micro are left and he got a red one. I saw a poster at Akira counter selling cheap flash memory mp3 players and i decided to get one for Yew Hua, my JC classmate, as his birthday present since most of the guys are sharing. The 256 mb player comes with an in-built fm tuner & recorder with 1 year warranty and a good price for it.

Went to Suntec food court to have our late dinner before going home.