This author is currently on hiatus for the ignoble cause of mugging. The public is advised to remain calm, as this routine protocol has been shown to have no effect on one's violent tendencies in 96% of cases.
| Friday, May 02, 2008 |
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OBJECTION! This pair of jeans in nary worth 80 bucks... OBJECTION! It's worth every cent, look at the brand - "Ema Garde", this is branded stuff, if you have such a low budget go... OBJECTION! How do you explain the childish blue stars on the cloth the pockets are made of? And the obviously poor quality! If you're not lowering your price I'm not buying... HOLD IT! Wait, come back! Ok, I give you price of 150, best offer!... ... In case you haven't realised, Phoenix Wright has NO RELEVANCE at all to bargaining, other than the fact that you get lots of both here in Beijing. Yes, ive been playing Ace Attorney on a DS Emulator to pass time when i can't/don't feel like (urk...) blogging, and the constant cries of "Objection!" has kinda gotten to my head i guess. xD It's a pretty fun game, and one of the only few out there that actually requires you to THINK. Good for RAM-deprived laptops in a faraway place. (And if you want to think even further, Wei Qi has actually done a philosophical analysis of the game on his blog, too. Check out the post on Thursday, May 1. :o) We just had our first taste of real bargaining in China yesterday. Since it was Labour Day, we went down to 秀水街 for shopping, and hooooboi was it crazy. Lots of crowds, lots of ang mohs, lots of shouting, and most of all lots of haggling. Thankfully we were told beforehand that the shopkeepers could jack up prices to up to 5 times higher than the original, so armed with our amateurish bargaining skills we were prepared to slash 'em mercilessly down to 20-30%. ...Or so we hoped. Sometimes we succeeded, but often we failed. Boo. :( Still, we got the stuff at relatively cheap prices compared to the goods back home, so i suppose we were pretty satisfied with our purchases. As a rough price guide, shirts (whether they have "Billabong" imprinted all over them or not) go for ¥35 (that's around SG$5), while other clothes usually don't go above ¥100. (Not forgotting the fact that nearly all of the stuff there is counterfeit anyway. Adidas belts anyone?) I must say I was pretty impressed by the grasp of English (and a smattering of other languages) of the shopkeepers, and also the Chinese mastery of the ang mohs there. Shows just how sly them shopkeepers can get in such a competitive marketplace. DOn't be fooled. Best deal of the day: A pair of jeans for ¥90. Initial offer: 600, which was actually the serial number stuck on the tag, but which the shopkeeper passed off as the price anyway. Then again, it was my only purchase that day. Worst deal: A pack of "magic cards" and a fake thumb/red cloth set for ¥80. Inital offer: ¥160. Bought after we all acted as English-speaking only, in theorising that we could get better prices that way. Conclusion: Whenever you buy anything in China, you'll definitely get scammed; it's just a matter of how much you're cheated of. <_< |
'Twas teh winnar at 3:54 pm.
