My First Gmarket Order!! [100419]

I was poisoned with this site (Gmarket) by my friend. Sucks. It's very poisonous. Highly contagious too. No known immunity discovered yet.

Lemme show you the loot first before I talk more about the site, its ordering system and stuff.


The box

A box to contain all the orders. I've an order of total 22 items.


The content

After unboxing it, the items inside were packed nicely in their own packaging too. I first opened my packages.


My rings from here. Price: SGD21.67 (KRW16530)

I ordered 3 rings. It came with 3 free girly rings. Need to find people to give them away to. Satisfied with the rings, and they fit nicely! I bought around size 22-23 as indicated on the page. Probably the only the blue one, which I was so looking forward to, was kinda disappointing. It was in a darker shade of blue, not the electric blue shown. =\


My tees from here. Price: SGD14.16 (KRW10800)

I tried ordered 2 tees to test for its quality and its size. I order size-L, and dang! Can't fit me. Ah bui too fat. I need to go 1-2 size bigger. Anyway, take note that each tee within the same shop might have different sizing. So double check, don't assume all tees share the same size. Exact measurement stated for size-L from that shop - Shoulder 43, Chest 97, Sleeves 18, Length 65. The shoulder was like a bit too small for me, and chest way too small. Anyway I got another model to wear it for me.


Front


Back

It's just nice for him, but a size bigger will be nicer. Thanks Steven for the free modeling. *applause*

End of my items. The rest I can't review much. Not my items and I can't possibly try them on.

Let's move on to Pam's stuff.


Pam's shoes from here. Price: SGD33.83 (KRW25800)

A pair of nude pink flats and a pair of black pointed heels. Glossy surface. Quality looks okay to me. Won't know until the owner tries them on. KIV.


Pam's dress from here. Price: SGD10.36 (KRW7900)

This dress is sweeeeet! And quality feels good to. *fondling with the material* No, just joking. I'm typing this in office, totally nowhere near the dress to play with it. -_-" But ya, good buy I'll say.

Now on to Anatoly's stuff. A short one.


Anatoly's dunno some kind of tights from here. Price: SGD64.38 (KRW49100) including domestic shipping.

Some dry-fit kinda tights, top and bottom. From deuters. Look good stuff. Didn't open it, scare I mess it up. He claims it's selling cheaper on Gmarket. Anyway, this shop doesn't have free domestic shipping, so you'll have to pay for it (an additional KRW2500).

Here comes the main buyer for this order, Daphne Kwan!


Dap's order #1 from here. Price: SGD12.85 (KRW9800)

She actually ordered 5 tees from here. But 3 items were cancelled. No reason was stated, though I think even if they state I also won't understand. They'll probably write in Korean. I'll just assume it's outta stock and they did refund me the money, so it's fine.


Dap's order #2 from here. Price: SGD16.65 (KRW12700)

I like the 2 grey ones, Charlie Chaplin and little red riding hood. The design is nice.


Dap's order #3 from here. Price: SGD37.24 (KRW28400)

The white one with the veil is nice too. The tutu skirt is cuteeeee. LOL! Wonder how is she going to match up for that skirt. Interesting. *pssssst* the other top was ordered wrongly by me. she said it's okay. but i still feel bad.... =(



Dap's order #4 from here . Price: SGD45.37 (KRW34600)

4x black skirts. When I took them out, I was like -_-". All of the same colour. Okay, not that bad. The 2 crumpled skirts look good. Material quality wise is pretty good too.

That's all for the loots. Shipping cost around SGD27.50 (KRW20900). Being all friend friend, and no one object, we split the shipping fee by per item. So end up each item cost around SGD1.25 for shipping. I'm surprised it's pretty cheap.

Since this is my first order, lemme share my experience, in case any of you interested in making the order yourself. Of course, you can go through me too. I should be doing an order, let's say... once a month? =\

Basic
Anyway... Basically it's like eBay. In fact, it's actually a subsidiary of eBay.
The concept is the same - sellers (shops) post up their items, you are the buyer.

It's a Korean site, so do expect lotsa Korean words. You can change to English from the top menu bar. BUT!! But... Most of the products are shown in picture files, and shop description also never translate. Your best friend while shopping there will be Google translator. Whenever I'm adding stuff to my cart, I'm practically doing figure recognition, matching the characters on the picture to the words in the list. And ya, I can recognise some of colours already, like white and black.

Price
Some shops put an extremely low price and that might be just a gimmick to bring you in. Because that price doesn't apply to all the items. That's just a base price. To calculate the right price of the item you want, you need to plus the additional cost indicated.
Look at the selected item from the list. It has a +5000 behind, so the actual price for that item is 4800 (base) + 5000 (additional). The shops usually have discounts. For the base price, take the discounted price stated. And wait! Sometimes the shops will have other special freebies or discounts stated in the picture between, which you and me couldn't understand. For me, I'll just let it be special bonus if there is. =D

Shopping cart and Checking out
Take note of this too. You can use browsers like Chrome and Firefox while looking through the shops. But when you want to add to shopping cart and check out, please use IE. Sadly, that site has problem with other browsers. Keep your purchase below 400bucks!! Heard that GST will be charged if they found out your purchase is above 400bucks.

International Shipping
When shopping, make sure that the shop does international shipping too.
Just check for the either of the 2 highlighted areas. This is the indication if they do international shipping or not. You can actually first filter for shops with international shipping when you looking for shops.

After you check out, you'll be prompted to fill in forms for the shipping. For shipping to Singapore, there are 2 services to choose from - EMS and DPD service. For this order, I tried DPD. It's slightly cheaper. The parcel left Gmarket central warehouse on 24th April, touched down in Singapore on 25th April, reach my house on 28th April. Maybe I should try EMS the next time, see if there's any improvement on the delivery time.

Payment
Payment can be made through Paypal or credit cards. But to use credit cards, I think there are some admin process to go through first. This is what I've gathered, not too sure how accurate is it. You have to scan your credit card and send it to Gmarket for verification first. Once they have verified and approved, you may start to use that card for payment. It's an one-time process, you'll only need to do it once. But since I already have a Paypal account, so I'll just use it.

But I realised I was charged as USD instead of KRW. Wondering if I could choose KRW instead or not. I felt like I lost some money through 2x conversion - KRW -> USD -> SGD. I'll figure that out again during my next purchase. Never mind for now.

That's about all. I might be conducting another order next week I think. Someone is pestering me to do it ASAP already. =|

Mayday Concert Aftermath Part 1

Last Saturday I just went for Mayday Concert. It's my first paid-concert that I've attended. Interesting and fun I would have to say. Though I was seated far far away from the stage, man, the concert was still pretty high.

Anyway, let's hit some Mayday songs, dude!

五月天 笑忘歌 MV


五月天 我心中尚未崩坏的地方 MV


五月天 突然好想你 MV


五月天 春天的吶喊 MV

All along I thought I heard a certain part of the lyrics wrongly. Until just now when I went to check the lyrics then I realized they were really trying to put vulgarity in. LOL! "看羚羊草枝摆"


Enjoy!

Reading...

Recently I'm back to reading books. I've been wanting to read the Percy Jackson series ever since I've watched Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief



The show might be a bit lousy. But why I like it so much? IT'S GREEK MYTHOLOGY! I'm a total sucker for that. Actually I prefer Percy Jackson to Clash of the Titans. Clash of the Titans is based on the classic and rewrite. Percy Jackson is a new story with ideas based on the classic. See the difference?

Anyway, ya, the story book is better than the show. The show was kinda shallow in the plot, but better in the story book.



It's a 5-books series - Lightning Thief, Sea of Monsters, Titan's Curse, Battle of Labyrinth and Last Olympian. It's books for teenager anyway. You'll probably finish 1 book in a couple of hours or so. I think Hairy Potty books are thicker.

Having finished that series, I thought I might try another story book series. So I tried Twilight last night. Regrets man, I tell you. It's like a girly kind of story. I think my tolerance lasted only until the part Edward took Bella out for hiking, then confession here confession there. It's as if the entire chapter is about them talking about love and nothing else. Yucks! Definitely not my type of story.

Now I need to look for another story book to read. Anyone has any recommendation?

Love: Sci-Fi (non-futuristic type, think Michael Crichton), Fantasy, Comedy, Mystery, Thriller.
Hate: Too much romance, Sci-Fi (futuristic, think Star Trek), Classics.

A PhD Taxi Driver

Was doing some random surfing just now and chanced upon this blog of a taxi driver. Apparently he's some researcher with PhD but got laid off and ended up being a taxi driver. He blogged down interesting happenings from his daily rides. Yup, worth reading if you can spare some time.

http://taxidiary.blogspot.com
"Probably the only taxi driver in this world with a PhD from Stanford and a proven track record of scientific accomplishments, I have been forced out of my research job at the height of my scientific career, and unable to find another one, for reasons I can only describe as something "uniquely Singapore". As a result, I am driving taxi to make a living and writing these real life stories just to make the dull job a little more interesting. I hope that these stories are interesting to you too."

My Uncle

My uncle just passed away last Monday. Thanks everyone for being with me. I'm pretty alright now. Really.

It's scary to think that the people, who are with you for so many years, can just disappear.. just like that. During that cremation day, while on the bus back, I was trying hard to accept the fact that I will never be able to see my uncle anymore. You know so many years, almost for as long as I've been conscious of my life, if I just go down my block during mid-noon timing, he will definitely be there caring for his plants and stuff. However, during that day, I realized that that will never happen anymore. Sometimes, you just take things for granted, assuming they will be around all the time.

Damn. Shouldn't be writing this kind of emo post in office. Could have gone home first then proceed with writing this. Luckily now in office, only few people left behind nia.

On the 出殡 day, there was a live band playing. The first song was already an atmosphere-damping song - 父子情深. My sisters and I clearly remembered that this song was often played (from CD/cassette) by my uncle in his house. We actually got to know this song from him. That song has a nice and touching lyrics too. Yaaa... in fact, most of my interaction with hokkien songs were because of him. Another song that I remembered was 拢是为着你啦. Another favourite song that he would play too.






*breathe in* *breathe out* *calm down*

Anyway, ya... Cherish all that are around you now, before you realize you are losing them.