Just a short walk from my hotel is a four story shopping mall dedicated to electronics. I knew what I wanted to buy, a Canon Rebel SL1, sold here as the D100. I had been disappointed in the white balance and vividness of the D4100 and most pictures required post processing. The camera also lacked autofocus in movie mode. Whatever.
I was just going to buy the camera, a UV filter and a circular polarizing filter. I ended up buying the 55-230 lens; I figured I would just regret not having it on my trip to Borneo, starting tomorrow. This is the lightest SLR on the market and has received rave reviews on its quality of pictures. I was quite pleasantly surprised to find a store at the mall that sold cameras for less than Amazon prices and that there is no sales tax or VAT in Malaysia. I also bought two UV filters and a Circular Polarizing Filter and a monopod. They threw in a bag, a screen protector, a blower bulb and brush. Then I bought a 1,500 milliamp spare battery.
Next stop, get a lightning cable for charging my phone. A standard USB cable has four wires, two for carrying current and two for data. A lightning cable shorts the data lines. In this mode the phone will charge at one amp versus 500 milliamps with a standard cable. Amazingly they wanted $20 for a $3 cable with the wires shorted. I then spotted a 17,000 milliamp external battery pack. My current one is only 850 milliamps. This beast would give my phone five charges. Really I need to have a phone at all times. As I said yesterday, google maps for taxis, track my walks, find points of interest with TripAdvisor, take pictures and yes, chat on Facebook. They wanted to sell me this lightning cable for much faster charging. I told them the cables that came with the battery pack were power only cables and I didn’t need anything else. They didn’t believe me. I downloaded three apps that show the charging rate and they all indicated 1 amp. “This device puts out 2.3 amps.” So what dude, the phone won’t draw that. I also advised them that the cable should only be used on AC adapters. I don’t know if I got through to them.
When I got back to the hotel I looked up the filters I had bought and realized that when I stopped asking questions about prices the guy went nuts. I went back to the store and told the guy I wanted to return the filters as I had been charged four times the value and showed him the prices online. He complained that online prices can’t be matched by stores. I told him that four times the price was ridiculous and that I was sure I could buy at the online prices at another store. He gave me a cash refund of a $150 and apologized profusely for having been caught.
All right, laundry is done, time to book a flight. Orangutans, coming up.
Jonathan Allen LaFleur