title: Emacs repeat string n times
body: <p>I'm learning the basics of navigating/editing in Emacs and I'm curious how one could accomplish the following task:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Repeat the string 'bla ' n times in normal text editing mode.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Let's say I want to repeat it five times to generate 'bla bla bla bla bla '. I tried...</p>
  
  <pre><code>C-u 5 bla
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>...but the command executes after the 'b' is entered, and I only get 'bbbbb'.</p>
  
  <p>I'm sure there's some basic command that can help me here...would somebody be kind enough to enlighten me :)?</p>