Weekend Update

HITCH

Saw HITCH along with a couple of friends at Eng Wah Cinema @ Suntec City.

Will Smith plays a "Date Doctor" and rockz the house. Eva Mendes manages to impress everyone with her stellar performance. This romantic comedy is definitely worth a watch. NewsWeek captures the current trend of Latin American women cast opposite African-American men.

In Singapore, it is almost impossible to get a movie ticket without booking in advance (either thru phone / internet / SMS). Although we booked in advance, it was annoying to find that the crowd in the ticket collection queue (for advance booking thru phone / internet / SMS) was much longer than the queue for the current booking. Makes me wonder whether it is worth all the effort involved in making an advance booking. It takes approx 10 minutes to make the booking thru phone as there are multiple menus at each stage.......quite an irritating experience. On top of all this, they charge an additional fee for the advance booking. Why can't they allow us to print tickets online so that we don't need to queue up to collect the tickets (anyway they have already charged our Credit Card for the same).

After this hilarious movie, I had been to the loo to take a leak. I realized that Suntec City Management has been innovative enough to sell space even in their toilets. The subject matter of the ad was quite close to the theme of the movie Hitch. This is what the ad read

"If you want to watch a movie with a different date each time, log on to www.gomoviedate.com to find out more". Although I wanted to take a photo of the toilet ad to post on this blog, better sense prevailed as I was thinking about what other people in the loo would think about me.

I didn't really check whether other toilets which were further away from the movie hall also had similar ads.

MP3 MANIA @ IT SHOW 2005

I had been to the IT Show 2005 which was on at Suntec City. It looked as if entire Singapore was in Suntec for the IT Show. There were more people distributing flyers / leaflets / brochures than the visitors to the show. Needless to say that all the visitors had discarded these flyers on the floor. It would take atleast 2 days for them to clear all the garbage.

Thanks to the large crowd, I could hardly get a good view of any of the stalls. Not sure why Banks had put up stalls (at an IT Show) to sell Credit Cards. These booths were the ones with the least crowd.

Every 3rd shop was selling MP3 players. Most of these were Korean and Chinese brands. Some of the cheapest players (Easy Tech) were available for S$ 109 (INR 2,800 approx) and these could double up as Voice recorder, FM radio and FM recorders. Most of these Korean and Chinese brands had identical designs (wearable type). There were no takers for Sony's MP3 players. Olympus had just launched their new range of MP3 players (mRobe). Would anybody associate Olympus will music?

Apple's stall and Creative's stall were the most crowded. There were long queues to pay Cash at these stalls. Creative was selling its ZEN MICRO for S$299 (for the 4GB version). They had 5GB and 6GB versions as well. The iPOD Mini was being sold at S$318. iPOD shuffle was offered at S$168.

SKYPE

Made my first Skype call to a friend in the US. The call lasted an hour and the voice quality was outstanding. I am totally in awe of Skype and plan to recommend the same to most of my friends. Waiting to see if Skype will enable Video Conferencing as well.

During the IT show, I came across a Skype friendly gadget. The product, Futekfone is by a little known Japanese company. The product resembles the handset of a regular landline phone. For people who don't fancy using a headset and a microphone (If you don't want to look like a Call Center Executive or a Pilot) this Futek phone might be useful. This phone gives you a feeling that you are talking thru the traditional phone.