Friday, August 04, 2006

Borders on Lygon

In an attempt to improve my marks in the oncoming final exams, I sought to find out the most condusive place to study in Melbourne. Hence from this week, there will be a review of all the nearby places that I visited to gauge it's suitability to act as a favoured place for me to revise my notes and drill the lecture materials into my ever leaking memory cells.

The place will be given a mark out of 50 acccording to the following criteria:
Ambience (25%): The general background environmentof the place, with an emphasis on general feel of the place, the noise level, the availability of music, temperature, artifacts/decor, furniture.
Chick factor (10%): The availability of eye candies to generate enough adrenaline to keep the body and mind going.
Concentration (10 %): Focuses on the availability of services or activity/item that can potentially cause distraction but can also be used to ward off boredom after two hours of study.
Cost Effectiveness (5%): The amount of price needed to pay to enjoy the facility.

The location given the honour to be my maiden review is Borders on Lygon.



Borders is a bookshop similar to MPH in Malaysia. Inside the bookshop there's Gloria Jean's Coffee which seems quite a condusive place to study.

Ambience
The place is relatively quiet, have nice soothing backgroud music and would be perfect if not of the constant irritating paging for the shop assistants over the speaker. Since it is in a bookshop, the feel of the place is great for study, but the ergonomics of the chair needs improving. It's too high relative to the table and cause me having a stiff back after 30 minutes. Hint: Sit near a wall so you can lean on it and reduce the discomfort.
Verdict: 19/25

Chick factor

For a bookshop, there were surprisingly few chicks in the place. Most of the customers are of the older generation. For the whole three hours I was there, less than 10 pass-able gals of the correct age group were spotted. Downright disappointing.
Verdict: 3/10

Concentration

For today, I spent a total of 3 and a half hour in the bookshop, with the bulk of them studying. This is quite good. There's no computers nearby to tempt me away and there are a wide array of books to read if I got tired of the materials at hand.
Verdict: 8/10

Cost Effectiveness

To 'pay' for my tenure of the table and chair, I forked out $3.95 for a Cappucino Chiller. It's a superb drink, and when calculated, it means I spent roughly 3 cents for every minute on the table. Very cheap. (Well, this does not take into account the $9.95 I paid for a book that just happened to catch my attention during one of my aimless meandering along the aisles. Put it down to occupational hazard).
Verdict: 4/5

Grand Total: 34/50
Not a bad score. Just missed out a distinction there. Will definitely go back there to study once in a while. In summary:
The main pull (+): Delicious and affordable coffee.
Major minus (-): A distinctive lack of girls to marvel at.

2 comments:

changyang1230 said...

Haha, ah phiaw, it's interesting how you write that there's no computer nearby to tempt you away, but here you are writing this fully featured review of the Borders. :)

Phiaw said...

Haha..i mean no computer in Borders.. I wrote this at home. =)