DS Lite Delight

Some background info:

I love Pokemon! I have collected the entire TV episodes
(Seasons 1 to 8, all complete) on DVD, and have got almost all the
movies. I say almost, because I haven't see 2 of the titles here
yet, so maybe they're not available locally. I also used to play
Pokemon on my brother's GameBoy and I am hooked on it.

Prelude:

On my last evening in Bangkok, I was in Platium Fashion Mall, having
my last Thai dinner. There were only 30minutes left before the
mall closes, so I thought I would hang with some officemates who were
with me at the time.

Beside the table where we had dinner, there was this little booth
selling game cartridges for GBA (GameBoy Advance), Nintendo DS, PSP,
etc. It turns out that one of my officemates is a regular buyer
there, because after he finished his dinner, he got up to have a look
at some games he could pick up for his kid. Mind you, I have been
going to Platinum almost everyday during my stay in BKK since it was
across my hotel, but I've never bothered to have a look at this
booth. Anyway, I got up to join him.

The price range for the games are around THB400 to THB900 for
regular games... P500-or-less of course. ;) While some
268games-in-1 sell around THB2200. Not interested.

Then I saw the Pokemon games... THB800 each.

After a bit of price haggling... okay, a LOT of price haggling, I
was able to get 5 Pokemon GBA cartridges for THB300 each (about
PHP430). I just had one teensy weensy tiny little problem.

I don't have a Gameboy unit.

Okay, so it's a problem.

I didn't buy the unit in BKK for a couple of reasons... the mall was
closing, it was my last night in BKK, and I since I had no original
intention to buy GBA cartridges, I certainly didn't canvass to know how
to compare the prices of the GB units in BKK and back home in the
Philippines.

I came back to the Philippines on Dec22, but decided not to mesh
with the last-minute mall crowd in the malls, so I went home.

December 23 and 24 was used up determining which unit I wanted to
buy (GBA, GBA SP, Nintendo DS or Nintendo DS Lite) and canvassing from
friends how much the price ranges were. I finally decided on the
Nintendo DS Lite... mostly because I found out that Pokemon Pearl and Pokemon
Diamond (both games made for Nintendo DS), will be available in
April 2007. :)

The purchase:

I decided to shop for my DS Lite in Greenhills (known to have the
most competitive prices for Gadgets in the market) on December
26. Bad move and right move at the same time.

It was a bad move, since I arrived in GH at 2:10pm and discovered I
had stumbled upon the post-Christmas-I-have-money-from-angpao/aguinaldo
mall crowd. There were so many people in Greenhills! And
mostly in the gaming shops too, bummer! I started my canvassing
at 3pm, going back and forth from VirraMall and Theater Mall through
the damned crowded "tiangge", and by 430pm, the black and white DSLites
unit at 1 store had disappeared from the shelves already!!! Most,
if not all the game shops I went to were hot and overcrowded with
people, kids and adults alike.

I wanted to get the converted unit in order to play all the games
available-- as per my brother and cousins anyway, since I don't know a
thing about Nintendo DS Lites except that I wanted one! By 5pm, I
finally decided to buy from an uncrowded store in VirraMall. The
price was P8500. While not the best value for money in
Greenhills, it had the least crowd inside the store, so I didn't have
to battle my way to the counter. However, they only had the pink
unit. Ugh. The other 2 stores who sold the converted unit
for P8500 also had only the pink DS lite left.

Since I aboslutely HAD TO HAVE my DS Lite that day, I decided to get
an unconverted unit and just get it converted later on-- one store I
asked could convert a DS Lite for only P500 while-I-wait. I
braved my way back to Theater Mall and picked the store with the best
referrals from friends and had the cheapest price for the unconverted
units. I had to wait awhile to complete the transaction, since 4
out of 5 black-colored DS Lites we tested had a single broken pixel in
either the top screen or the bottom one. Bummer.

When I finally asked the saleslady if we could pop in a game for
testing-- lo and behold, she popped in a P500-or-less cartridge and it
worked!!! I thought you needed a converted DS Lite to play
those??? Needless to say, I bought that one. I also bought
a polycarbonate case with silicon inserts for my new toy, as well as a
screen protector.

Finally D(S)e-LITE-ed: <-- you gotta read
this aloud really fast to understand it! Silent S!

Ta-da! My new toy! *wub wub wub*

I've been playing Pokemon Emerald on my DS Lite now. I can
hardly bring myself to put it down, it's just so... pretty!
:D You can tell from the picture, cantcha?