Just engraving a pen

We wanted to have two pens we bought for a friend, engraved with her name. So yesterday I drove down to a shop near the university offering engraving services.

Found out that engraving four letters on each pen would cost me around five pounds. I agreed but the guy (the engraver) told me that it won't show up that well on the metallic silver surface of the pen. I was OK with that as well. He then told me that it would take around an hour to do it.

One bloody hour to engrave 8 letters. "Shakes head"

That was it. I told him I couldn't wait that long and left the shop.

As I was walking to my car, I was thinking about the numerous places in Kuala Lumpur, where I could have a whole sentence engraved on almost ANYTHING (including metallic silver surfaces) for less than RM 20 (FYI, £1 = RM6.94 approx.) and it would take them less than 10 minutes.