toasted dine, fruitless find

After going our seperate ways, Tommy and I decided to re-enact our own version of the Amazing Race. Our first pit-stop of the day, a t-shirt printer based in Jelutong. This guy is a popular source of t-shirts among school societies and clubs, so hopefully he will be of help.

The address given turned out to be the one to a single story house, smack in the middle of a housing estate. The porch area was tacked high with loads of t-shirts and cloth. Unfortunately the quantity of shirts there did not match the number of staff around. The only living human was an Indonesian maid, who promptly informed us that everyone else was at the 'office'. When asked on where exactly is the 'office', she could only give us a sheepish smile and a shrug of the shoulders.

Faced with this road block, we took the only option open to us. We called one of the numbers on the business card, which incidently bore only the name of the company, not even the name of the owner/proprietor/whatever. After speaking to the guy on the other end of the line, we still couldn't get the address of the other 'office'. No matter, since he promised to swing by the house in 10 minutes time. So, for all aspiring entrepreneurs out there, when in doubt, phone.

Having resigned ourselves to waiting outside the gates until the owner arrives, we were pleasantly surprised when the maid ushered us in. The owner kept his word too, and we didn't have to wait long. Right off the bat, we enquired about the availability of polyester as a material for our jersey and singlet, only to be told that they make only t-shirts. There goes item number 1 on our list then. We proceeded to thrash out details about the pricing and material of the t-shirts before leaving for our next stop.

Actually, there was no next stop, since the only other card we have states the address of the company as somewhere in Bukit Mertajam. So again we did the increasingly common next best thing, call. As per standard business procedure, Tommy addressed the other person in English. What followed had us in stitches. The lady obviously wasn't proficient in English, and she was only too eager when Tommy finally offered to use Chinese. But it was probably a no deal though, since the minimum size of an order for this company is too big for us.

The Amazing Race for a T-shirt over, Tommy had to fulfill his other obligations to his college mates. Off we were then to TAR college. After dropping two of them off at the jetty, it was time for me to complete the final part of today's task, checking out whether there were any t-shirt making businesses based in Gurney Plaza. It was ultimately a futile search, and I had to abandon it due to the arctic air-conditioning.

With stomach rumbling and cellphone ringing( from mum), I trudged back home.