We Became IT Savvy Through Imbi Plaza.
Went to Imbi Plaza today. It brought back so many memories. The once bustling place faded when Low Yat Plaza replaced it as the IT hub. Imbi Plaza had so many shops selling cloned stuff then. It was also the place to go to get a replacement Thundercom 56k dial up modem when it was fried by lightning. Yes, kids. Those days were rough.
When your hypocritical foreign friends, who lectured you about IP rights, come to town, you take them there and they will load up with software worth a few thousand dollars for under RM 100. Imbi Plaza was a must stop for tourists. By now, a whole generation of millennials have probably grown up not ever experiencing it.
People used to buy MP3 music tracks there too. And who can resist those clipart compilations? Clipart is now dead, sadly. Imbi Plaza was also the place to go to get blank CDs if you want to burn copies
I bought a 17″ IBM CRT monitor then, Biggest then and weighed a ton. Almost broke my sagging Artwright 4 feet 2 tier computer table. Everybody had an Artwright 2 tier or aspire to own one then. If you own one, it meant another trip to Imbi to get a flatbed scanner and a buzzing dot matrix printer.
Either you go to Imbi Plaza or you wait for the annual PC Fair.
To its credit, Imbi didn’t handle porn. The most adult material you could get was a copy of Leisure Suit Larry. Adult films and titles were the domain of the red table cloth guys outside a 7-11 or the night market.
The sidewalk cafes next to the old coins and numismatic shops are still there. There was also a stamp (philately) shop. These are some of the non-IT shops I remember. There was a also a Pineapple shop inspired by Apple.
Today, my friend Johnny had a delicious looking beriani rice from one of the sidewalk mamaks. Not surprise to see Pakistani food such as biryani since the computer repair shops are now mostly operated by Pakistanis.
Panasonic Lumix GM-1, ISO 400, f4 1/250 sec.
#beriani #biryani #imbiplaza #rice #itmall