*Blog update for Tuesday, 12th June 07*

This was supposed to be a blog post for yesterday, but I couldn’t post it up because Mom was using the internet.

Anyway, yesterday, Wen Pin aka Bryan See and me went jalan-jalan to downtown KL. And this feels so weird. We call ourselves KL boys (ok Klang Valley if you are that particular, but I was born in KL though) but haven’t really roamed the streets of KL.

Not as though we haven’t really walked around KL before in our life, but we hardly do it. I guess it’s the same for most of us Klang Valley kids. We tell foreigners we come from KL, but how many times have we visited (or ever visited) our national landmarks aka places of interests like the Tugu Negara, National Library, Dataran Merdeka etc? We always go to the shopping malls, but shopping malls are just shopping malls and shopping malls are almost identical all over the world; nothing so special.

Anyway, the two of us went down by bus (another KL thingie, how many of you KL-ites actually use public buses?) to Central Market. We had this ‘Eat and Sleep’ brand that we want to promote and we are thinking of producing some T-shirts for sale. Thinking that Central Market being the hive of all artistes, there will be cut-throat competition; hence prices of custom made T-shirts will be much cheaper.

But we are proven wrong. The prices of T-shirts are much expensive than our current supplier. I sense some monopolistic or agreement sort of thing between the sellers there. And I’m not wrong. One shopkeeper actually told us he didn’t want to go below a certain price because he didn’t want to ‘spoil’ the market.

By the way, Bryan had already made an initial supply of ‘Eat and Sleep’ T-shirts of 20 pieces and sales had been brisk. I like the ‘Eat and Sleep’ branding and foresee a big potential here. I sell my idea of marketing this brand to Bryan and he seems interested. I’m writing a business plan for this venture and hopefully this venture will be a successful one after the failed 69Tribe plan.

More details about this venture soon. I’ll keep all of you updated on the new T-shirt designs once it’s out.

Now, once we are done with Central Market, we made our way to Petaling Street. We didn’t know it was walking distance till we saw some signboards. We were also within walking distance of Dataran Merdeka, but we chose to head right towards Petaling Street instead of Dataran Merdeka. I guess that’s a blessing in disguise cause if we had headed to Dataran Merdeka, we would have seen the mess that KL was in after the flash floods 2 days back. The Dataran Merdeka carpark was still flooded as of yesterday and it will definitely be a sight if we had gone there.

We walked around Petaling Street in the afternoon, but it’s quite empty and quiet. Perhaps it’s much more vibrant at night. By the way, it’s KL’s Chinatown right? But I see many shopkeepers being foreigners. Ironic. Anyway, we didn’t buy anything, just thought it would be nice to roam around.

Oh yeah, and another observation. We saw some DBKL council officers walking around Petaling Street. And it stopped at the Rolex watch shop….Hahaha….can’t stop smiling at the sight of corruption that might just be happening right under our noses.

And the weird part is, there are 2 police stations within walking distance of Petaling Street. The whole street is selling pirated, fake goods. But the enforcement officers are really turning a blind eye. The traders must have greased the officers with lots of bribes. And I guess they get a free flow of fake goods supply too?

We made our way to Low Yat Plaza next. We found out from the chestnut trader that there’s a monorail near Petaling Street. It’s the Maharajalela station. And Petaling Street is near Stadium Merdeka. Gosh, we are so damn blur about KL’s geography.

We walked around Times Square and both of us agreed that the girls clothing at Times Square are really Lala-ish. And Times Square is really empty especially at the top floors.

We header to Low Yat Plaza next and I bought my mom a Kingston 1GB Flash drive and another 1GB MP3 Player. She gave me some money to buy it. The Flash drive cost me RM35 while the MP3 player RM95.

I was also looking to buy some PC games – Battlefield to be exact. But surprise, surprise….there’s no longer any shops selling pirated CDs openly. I remembered my last trip to Low Yat; CDs were displayed on walls offering all the latest softwares, games, movies. The whole floor that has the CDs seems like it has vanished.

Crap, no more pirated CDs to be bought at Low Yat. On second thought, I remembered some small shops displaying movie VCDs/DVDs….And not as openly as last time….Perhaps some enforcement was done recently? Or not enough bribe offered? Or a change in the police head? Never know the reasons…..

Oh and lastly, sorry no pixs over here. Scared to bring down camera phone to KL….Scared kena rompak…

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