Calligraphic Experience

I brought daughter to the Chinatown of Sg, so she would see its other facet, other than Singapore being very  cosmopolitan. Right away she noticed that it was a lot cleaner and more organize than the Chinatown in our country. I totally agreed with her when she said that there are more goods to buy thu' in our own Chinatown.




Lots of touristy souvenirs are being sold. One of them is this "Chinese calligraphy" which took daughter's fancy. She had thought of buying one for her sister left at home.




So it was Sg$10 for a calligraphic engraved stone necklace.




It's about P360 in our local currency.




The vendor asked us to choose the stone. There were lots, so I asked him back if everything was priced for $10. He replied yes. We chose the black rectangle one (previous photo above).




He instructed us to write in a paper the name to be written. Then the vendor did the engraving. .




We were surprise when he handed to us the engraved stone. .with English alphabet name. We thought he's selling Chinese calligraphy? And told him so. He said it was okey he would do the calligraphy at the back. No additional charge.




He then handed to us a dictionary so we could look for my daughter's name in Chinese.

The search was easy. We decided to not include her second name anymore.

Pay time. I was giving him $10 bucks and he said no. It's $20. Huh??? How come? He pointed me to the box of stone where I got our purchase. Already there was a price tag of $20. Whathefff?? I swore it wasn't there when we were picking few minutes ago. He insisted that it's $20 cos it's a big stone. Hadn't I asked beforehand if everything was at $10?? He clearly said yes. Otherwise, we would have chosen stone at $10 cos it wouldn't make any difference to us anyway. I had no time for more confrontation so in the end I paid $20. Not worth it but I just charged it to experience.




So this cost me like P720. Nevermind. The best thing is the receiver (my youngest girl) was quite happy with the necklace. Aside from the ipod & sling bag which completed her "pasalubong' bag.