Misspent lunch going from aggravation to aggravation, each aggravation being different from the next, but also the same. The fundamental problem is that Singapore has a tiny little retail monoculture.
Go to Sim Lim Square, the giant six-story mall of computer and peripheral shops. Spend thirty minutes trying to find a VIA EPIA mini-itx motherboard (cheap, tiny motherboards) going from one monkey-nut shop to the next. No one knows anything about it, and point like deaf mutes to the same Gigabyte and Asus motherboards the last sixteen stores also sold. Finally find an obscure store that looks more like a wholesaler. Guy does know what I'm talking about, says people have been looking for these boards, but they can't get them from VIA, because VIA demands a huge order. It just could never be absorbed in Singapore.
Disgusted with what was just a hobby project, I give up and decide to go to Funan IT mall and check out these Sharp LCD monitors. (Fine point: I actually tried to check them out at Sim Lim, but the Sharp shop doesn't even display their flagship 10-bit gamma corrected monitors there...) Show up, don't see the LL-1820, don't see the LL-T2020. Just see a lot of chaff. Guy comes over, I ask him, he says they don't import the 1820, only the 2020, and it's $3000SGD! (it's a 1500$USD monitor... ie. fucking rip-off) Come to find, they really only sell Sharp monitors manufactured in Thailand (except for the T2020). So I can't get anything good.
Very irritated, I abandoned the monitor browsing to go find a strong cup of coffee at Spinelli's.
"Short black coffee."
See the barrista reach for the espresso machine.
"No. Brewed, not americano [the most hated of all preperations]"
"No stock."
"What do you mean, 'no stock'" [as I look to the semi-dismantled coffee brewer]
"We're not making it today"
"Why?"
"Doesn't sell well."
"Then forget it."
Leave.
Sick and tired of this fucking place.
It's too small to make it easy to sell anything but the absolute middle-road product lines. The store owners are too lazy, stupid, and uncreative to try to find any specialty niches. Instead they're astonishingly content to try their hand hosting a store identical to sixty other stores in the exact same building. Consequently you find nothing here but the absolutely mediocre: Asus motherboards, Thai LCDs, and foul americano coffees.