SP Road experience and NOT building a HTPC

Hi All,



Suzi has been doing a good job in keeping everyone updated with what is going on. I thought I should atleast get my first post out of the way.



I decided before leaving for India that I would not take my computer because it was too damn heavy. I planned on building a HomeTheater/Gaming PC from scratch again when I arrived with the assumption that it would not be too much of a problem to get parts. Well, that was a very stupid idea. I have learned the hard way that people really do not build their own PCs over here or if they do then their needs might be a little simpler. This sucks for me because I have a specific need for certain components that the average user would not need or care about.



I was encouraged however by my friend here that if I needed any computer or electronic items then I need to travel to a place called SP Road. SP Road is located pretty far from where I am staying so I had to leave work early to go there. I can honestly say that I would have rather stayed at work. It is difficult to describe SP Road. Another blogger described it as a "Diagon Alley" for computer geeks. Those who do not get the Harry Potter reference might understand SP Road better if they are aware of a place in Chicago located in the old Jewish neighborhood/town called Maxwell Street Market. (Yeah I know it goes by another name.) If you take the image of Maxwell Street Market and mix in the crowds from the Taste of Chicago and add a dash of the utter chaos seen at stores on Black Friday or even the latest PS3 launch then you have SP Road in all of its glory. For my East coast friends I guess you can imagine if Quincy Market had been affected by the Big Dig.



So with a crudely written list of various items in hand and my friend as a guide we ventured into the heart of SP Road. I will not go into details because I have repressed most of the memories. I can safely say with absolutely no hyperbole that SP Road is the worst place on Earth. Okay, I am being a little unfair. It is actually the worst place in our known universe. First, I do not like to haggle over prices. I can easily use the internet (pricewatch.com or slickdeals.net) to get extremely low prices on any computer items all while sitting comfortably in my pajamas without opening my mouth unless I need to stuff Doritos in it. Speaking of which, someone out there might be tasked to ship an obnoxious amount of Doritos and Starburst here. Indian junk food is pure JUNK but I digress. NOTHING in any of the thousands of the shops on SP Road is marked with a price so everything must be haggled over. This blows big time since haggling requires speaking which requires knowing some Hindi or Kannada. They do speak some English but it is still difficult to explain some important things.



Second, I HATE crowds. I know most of you say "I hate crowds also" but I REALLY HATE CROWDS. I define crowd as anyone other than myself. My demophobia is even worse in India because there are a billion people here and for some reason it seems like the entire billion is always standing right next to me. Also there are no concepts of queues or lines. It is usually a mass of people pushing and yelling until they get serviced (kindof like the latest PS3 launch.)



Third, the language problem is annoying like I mentioned above. You would think that geek speak would be a common language but I found that it is not entirely the case here. Trying to repeatedly explain that I need a specific motherboard and processor for overclocking and having the store person try to force the same piece-of-skit components on me over and over again like I am an idiot is a very trying experience. At least in America I can curse the person out but here they would not understand any profanity that I would use. Nothing makes me angrier than wasting a good profanity riddled tirade and it falling on deaf ears.



Finally, since I stand out as a foreigner people automatically equate that with being a mark. So I get the special rate which is usually a 50 - 100% increase in price. If they find out that I am an American then I am screwed because "all of us Americans are rich and use money as toilet paper." So now and then I drop a couple of "ehs" and "zeds" around because Canadians are less threatening and have less international baggage.



Anyway, I understand why SP Road exists. It is the same reason for the appeal of the Maxwell Street Market. Before Ebay and e-commerce exploded in the states, Maxwell Street represented an affordable one stop shop for anything you could want if you looked hard enough. I did not find "exactly" what I was looking for on SP Road but I actually could have found viable alternatives from the various stores. I guess that is the rare beauty of an open market that brick and mortar stores lack. It can be fun to hunt and haggle for the absolute best deal and then walking away knowing you accomplished something. It may not be exactly what you want but usually you can make it work.



People here really do not buy much from the web and I have yet to see any big stores that have websites for buying goods in India. Everything is brick and mortar which is okay but it would be nice to have the option of just pointing and clicking my way to a sale. Maybe it is because internet access here sucks and the average Indian probably can't afford it anyway. Maybe one day soon I will be able to buy all the stuff from here off the net but dammit I need my Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 with 2 GB of Geil PC2-6400 DDR and a Biostar TForce 965PT motherboard now!