First G-Shock watch of mine!

And... Finally, I've got myself a G-Shock Watch since the day I'd wished one, as I remember, I was just a primary school kid, at standard 4, whose age at 10 years old.

It's really a bad experience by just using a pirated G-Shock watch bought from the pasar malam (open-air market which merchants run their business on Friday evening, once a week). The only "great" thing about the pirated G-Shock watch bought from the market was the illuminator (backlight), and it's the first and only thing I concern about when choosing the watch, and the choice was too limited, sometimes, you have no way to choose, as they just have one and the only model displayed for sales. However, at the age, I go very satisfied owning a G-Shock watch. I didn't know anything about the differences between pirated and original watch, and even worse, I didn't even know there is  thing called "pirated product". (It's my case in year 1997)

Here come the bad features about the pirated G-Shock Watch, you can't immerse it in water (zero water resistance). And it can't stand "shock"! You won't want to drop your (pirated) G-Shock even on the floor, otherwise, the number at the screen will play seek n' hide until you knock multiple times in order to get the time digit back to the time display screen.

The best part of it, it costs around RM50 (or even less), I can't state a clear price amount here as I've forgotten the exact amount. What's more? I feel nice wearing "G-Shock" watch on my hand!

Though it's just around RM50, at the age of 10 years old, the price was still considered quite a big amount for me to pay, but I did buy it on my own(for that age, I knew my parents won't buy me one).

I feel great wearing watch, and I've used to it until I can read time from my digital watch by just "peeking" it for less than (exaggerated) a second! And so, watch has been playing a very great role of my life since I was kid. No matter how much watch I've been through, G-Shock digital-analog watch is always my favourite, unfortunately, those watches are always cost higher than my affordable budget and left me can make no choice, as you can see here, how much did I wish to have a watch.

G-Factory

Finally, the day has come and thing is different now! My very first watch from G-Factory in Paradigm Mall. I was thinking about owning a limited edition G-Shock Watch as I've browsed through G-Shock Official website, and then those "Casio Pro-Trek" almost completely distracted me from those G-shock. It's a really hard time to do a final decision of which model to get, but I did choose a G-Shock watch at the end of the story.

We have not much G-Factory in Malaysia, we have just 6 stores of it in the whole country. Of course, you still can get G-Shock in the regular watch shops around, if you are lucky, you'll get limited edition from them (but the price is always higher than RRP you found on the internet), do survey the price first before buying one! I've spent hours looking around in watch shops of different shopping complex(KLCC, Paradigm Mall, Sunway Pyramid). As my budget for my new watch was RM350, I couldn't easily found one which the design looks great and cost as low as my budget.

Yes! There are not much G-Factory you can find here in Malaysia. And most of them located in Selangor/Kuala Lumpur (places I visited for the survey):

- KLCC (inside ISETAN)

- Paradigm Mall

- Sunway Pyramid (Selection is very limited here, better look around in KLCC beforehand)
- City Square (Johor Bahru)

And so, I finally went into choose between these three model. GA100-1A4, GA110 & GA200-1AR

GA100-1A4 Image grabbed from G-Shock Official Web

GA110

GA200-1AR

GA100-1A4 was then eliminated from the decision making race!
And finally, GA200-1AR was selected rather than GA110.
What made me underwent a hard time deciding which to buy was the designs of the number pointer and the smaller shiny circle of GA110. In my opinion, it become perfect match if number pointer and the smaller circle design of GA110 were designed for GA200-1AR.

However, the feel of metallic design is my all-time favourite (that's why I'm fun watching Ironman's movie too... lol). GA200-1AR is the final winner, where it costed me RM479 (around US$155). Yeah... it's true, over budget. I've been saving up for it long time ago, but it's necessity and it's what keep me company for years to come, and so... it's worth the spend!

If you're a G-Shock fan, as I was told by the warm seller who served me while I was choosing my watch, do visit to the Casio watch shop in Singapore. They have plenty of choices than you can find here in Malaysia, and I've been to a few of them (G-Shock watch store) too, it just happens to be how he described, choice is too limited here.

Zoomed view of G-Shock Model GA200-1AR

Features that attract me most:

- Shiny Metallic feel and its design (Metallic feel, yeah!)

- Anti-Magnetic Structure (Though it's not a necessity, but it means it's made from different kind of material which stands magnetic field)

- 1/1000th Stop Watch (count to milliseconds stopwatch)

- Shock Resistant (this is what we call "G-Shock"!)

- 200M Water Resistant (lol... to me, is it really a necessary?)