The Curve

I continued my exploration of KL today, by paying a visit to the shopping area in Mutiara Damansara. This included a visit to The Curve, Ikano and Cineleisure. I felt that I should just blog about experiences and observations. Don’t worry, this is not a review about the shopping malls or the shops.

I took the LDP there and parked inside The Curve. It was very curious to me because all the signs in the basement car park area were in English except for Keluar (Exit). Surprisingly, it also took me quite a while to locate a lot, even on an Tuesday afternoon. As I was already hungry, I immediately chose a place to have lunch – at Waroeng Penyet.

I chose the place because it had a cute name – Penyet (flat). However, there weren’t enough seats and I had to share a table with an old uncle. Since we were sitting together anyway, I decided to strike up a conversation. What my friend said is true – in Malaysia, everyone is separated by 2-degrees of separation. It turns out that we both know one particular person. He was a civil engineer and he ended up giving me a lot of worldly advice on working in Malaysia. He agrees with me that it is much better to work in Malaysia than overseas because there is more money to be made here than elsewhere.

After lunch, I went off shopping for stuff. I know that even 1U or MidValley would be packed full with people on a Tuesday afternoon. However, The Curve was strangely quiet. I found some things to buy for myself and my car. Then, it was time to cross the road over to Ikano and that was when I encountered another strange incident.

I was in Harvey Norman looking at random electronics when I overheard an argument between a woman and the shop manager. Seemed like the woman wanted to return something that she bought and the shop manager was trying to explain their ‘no refunds’ policy. Then the woman whipped out her mobile phone and mentioned that she would like to call her lawyer to check to see if the manager could do that. Finally, the manager gave in and gave her a refund. Now, the drama didn’t end there.

Then, the woman decided to go off shopping elsewhere and told the sales assistants to watch her son who was probably around 7. This was where it got interesting. Obviously, the sales assistants didn’t care at all that the poor kid ended up crying from being abandoned by his mother. I then overheard the mother saying to her friend that she needed to teach her son a lesson. The sales assistants were also joking among themselves at this kid’s expense.

All this time, I was thinking to myself that this is a terrible mother. Yes, you may need to discipline your child from time to time but this is not the right way to do it. Abandoning your child at a shopping centre is not right. I’m sure that the lawyers would have something to say about that as well, if she had bothered to give them a call.

After that, I met up with my friend who was shopping at the Japanese store there. Everything in the store sells for RM5. That is the gimmick. Most people would think that RM5 is not very much money and start buying stuff. Then, before you know it, there would already be RM100 worth of junk in the basket. This almost happened to my friend and she ended up sorting through the stuff and dumping some of it before buying the rest. After having tea together, we bade each other farewell and I decided to come home.

It was quite nice that they charged only RM2 per-entry for parking on a weekday and only RM3 on a weekend. Curiously though, the parking machines displayed two prices – one in Ringgit and the other in Euros. I doubt that the machine accepts Euros but it is curiousity anyway.

On my way back, I decided to try a different route. I paid RM2 for the privilege of using the Penchala Link and then another RM1.50 for using the Kerinchi Link before ending up on the Federal Highway and taking the normal road home. In the end, although it was smooth traffic all the way back, it still took a similar amount of time as the route was much further.