seven places and a selle
Today is Sunday - day of rest; day of relaxation; Day of the Lord.
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After doing my duty at the old, brown church opposite CHIJMES (something I actually love doing), I set off on a long, round-the-town trip.
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I went to Centrepoint to look for some model paint at Central Hobby - and found the shop gone. Well. Shows how often I actually go to town. So I went off to Funan to buy my keyboard. Of the stacks of keyboards they carried, I could not find one that was cheap, had a USB connection, and had a layout that I liked. After ten minutes, I ended up with some China-made piece of plastic which went by the name of A1pro, only because it had two out of the three prerequisites - it was cheap, and it had a USB connection.
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Well, one generally gets what one pays for. A1pro was a super-lightweight, ultra-thin, keyboard which was hardly any easier to use than my laptop keypad. Plus, it had the "Delete" and "Insert" keys in the wrong places and had an additional three keys which went by the names of "Wake Up", "Sleep" and "Power", which when accidentally pressed, would do various things, including shutting down your computer. Brilliant.
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To make things worse, the "Backspace" key was the size of a normal character key, so trying to go back on an internet page is about as difficult as using the mouse - which I don’t like either.
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On the way out of Funan, I stopped by Bata to enquire about a shoe brush. It was tiny, it was expensive, and it didn’t look fantastic, so I decided not to buy it.
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Then it was off to Art Friend. Contrary to the name, it was not very friendly. The salesman was less-than-enthusiastic to help me with my bor liao (nothing better to do) questions, which went to the tune of "How permanent is this paint?" and "Once it dries, does it mean that nothing can wash it off?"
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After pondering for a good ten minutes, I bought two bottles of paint and had to wait ten minutes for the Sunday-mood salesgirl to finish serving the Sunday-mood lady in front of me. On the way out, I asked the salesgirl the very same questions, and being the Singaporean salesgirl she was, knew absolutely nothing about the products she was selling, and proceeded to ask the very same salesman who had informed me about the paints.
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Miffed, I walked out and went to the model shop opposite Art Friend. The not-so-friendly looking owner turned out to be friendlier than he looked. He advised me on the right and wrong paints, and then happily ripped me off four bucks for a tiny bottle of car paint. At the very least he was able to tell me what was permanent and what was not.
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On the way into the MRT station, I passed by a teenage girl, all dressed up, carried out on a stretcher by four SCDF personnel. That reminded me of a bloated and blackened body (which I thought was a very large fish) carried out of the ferry terminal one night in Pulau Tekong.
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At Bishan, I met the cyclist who was selling his saddles. For forty dollars, I bought my first non-lemon of the day - a three-year-old Selle Italia black leather Flite TT. Well-used and coated with a thick layer of mud on the underside, it was definitely good leather for my ass. So I happily went off with the mud-coated saddle in my bag and forty bucks lighter.
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I then stopped by Toa Payoh to see if I would have any better luck with the shoe brush. No chance. Not a single store carried anything that remotely resembled a shoe brush. I ended up at Bata, again, whereupon I was given the same tiny brush, which looked like it had come out of China - and it probably had - costing a grand total of $S$1.95. The only difference was that this time I was made to wait another ten minutes while the salesgirl went upstairs to hunt for the brushes. The fact that she was rather cute did not make me any happier with my reluctant purchase.
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Even more pissed now (not at the salesgirl, but with the general state of rising oil prices and rapidly-falling standards of quality), I set off home.
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The first thing I did was to clean up the saddle and polish it. The second thing I did was to examine the heavy, solid-looking shoe brush I had been using for years. It said "Bata" quite loudly on the top, was made of varnished (not painted) wood, and was about two-thirds larger than the one I just purchased. The faded price tag said S$1.90. According to my mother, that brush belonged to my father, therefore making it at least fifteen years old.
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Fifteen years. How time has flown by. How things made today pale shockingly in comparison with things made fifteen years ago. I really, truly, lament the loss of quality products made in the "good old days".
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What kind of a cheap, plastic, and temporary future is our children going to have?
