FATIGUED FEET

Oh my poor feet! Last Saturday, I was on my feet a lot and also I had to walk unusually long distances. After sitting on my butt for about 3 hours at the Veteran's meeting, I decided to give the PC Fair a visit.
I left my car at home and decided to take a taxi to KLCC. Getting a taxi at lunch time, Saturday involves walking to the gate which is about 600 yards from my parking lot. I got a taxi but when I jumped in, the taxi driver advised me to take the LRT. He drove me to the LRT station just down the road and refused to take any fare.
The train was full. The sardine cliche immediately came to mind. A bit of the smell came to the nose too. I stood and hung to the strap until KLCC station. There was an unusually large number of people at KLCC. I surmised that PC Fair was one of the reasons. I decided to eat first and trudged up to Chilli's. Chilli's is one of those places where you have to wait to be seated. I saw a lot of Middle Eastern families ahead of me and some of them were on the only sofa reserved for people waiting for their table. I had to be on my feet again until my name was called.
I walked to the KL Convention Centre using the surface (park) way. There is a tunnel connecting Suria KLCC and the KL Convention Centre but I wanted to smoke after my lunch.
On my way to the entrance, I saw a lot of people on their way back carrying boxes of printers, scanners, pc speaker systems and also laptops. PC Fair did a roaring business. It is always a cash and carry business and looking at these people carrying all these stuffs, a lot of cash has been carried.
Getting to the new KL Convention Centre did not end my walking. I had to walk some more to the escalator because the entrance was on the 3rd Level. You start at the top and go through all the 4 exhibition halls. They made sure that you can't skip any.
There were a few things that I noticed in this edition of PC Fair. To my eyes, the female promoters were not as pretty as the previous fairs. Probably this is because the PC Fair was also held at another place at the same time and there was another Expo in PWTC. There were more people though. So many that there were traffic jams in the halls. Booths without "negotiating tables" had people in front of their booths impeding traffic flow. I wish they made the traffic "one way" so we didn't have to take contorting evasive actions to avoid on-rushing mobs with heavy boxes and/or shopping bags. They were not many "new technologies" at the fair. I did see a new "one -piece" pc where the cpu and everything else is inside the monitor casing. Looks new because Apple had this concept for a long time already. There was a new version of the graphic tablet and an electric clock displaying messages that you can write yourself.
As with previous PC Fairs, there were bargains everywhere.There wasn't anything that would merit the use of the word "Fair"- I mean, there were no clowns, no candy floss and no festivities but there were bargains. I nearly reached for my wallet when I saw the Monochrome Laser Printer from Konica Minolta. It was going for under RM300. Vicom at Wilayah Complex wanted RM450 to fix my old HP 4L Laser. I didn't buy the printer because I found out that the toner would cost me more than the printer. Still, you would get a lot for your money at the fair. Just do not get thirsty. I stopped at the watering hole inside the exhibition hall and found out that a small bottle of mineral water cost RM3.50. House brand. It has the KL Convention Centre logo on the label. The water was not from the French Alps or even the Australian Alps. It came from the same place as the RM1.20 mineral water. It came from Lenggeng, Negeri Sembilan.
After traversing the exhibition hall which is as long as 4 football fields (that's what the guy at the ink cartridge booth told me) I found the exit. There was a guy selling computer games. He would have made more money selling foot rollers or setting up a foot massage service.