The book fair this year was a disappointment again. Half of the exhibition hall was dedicated to booths selling stationery and some other non-book related stuff. And i'm not even gonna mention the annoying children singing competition that was held on stage and broadcasted loudly in the hall.
Actually, even the fair last year wasn't as what i had expected, but i still bought quite some books, which i haven't finished reading yet. This time, i didn't buy any books at all. 贝 did buy a few, but most of his money was spent on Chinese tea. He bough about RM2k worth of pu-er from the pu-er trade show that was held at the same venue.
My trip to KL wasn't wasted though. We went shopping on Sunday and Monday. I bought a few outfits for my new job. Well, you know, new image for the new job. My first day of work coincides with the official opening of our office and the big shots from the UK will be here for the ceremony. This probably mean that my seating area should be ready and i don't have to sit in the conference room while the office was still under renovation.
Oh, and about the riot in KL, it so happened that 贝's sister is staying at Ampang and we were putting up at her place. On Sunday morning, at around 10.30+, we were driving towards the city and the traffic was terribly congested. We saw from afar that the road ahead was blocked and many police cars had the siren on and were rushing towards the area where it was blocked.
As we moved slowly towards the road block, we saw a lot of Indians standing by the road. Then when we finally got to see the blocked area, we realized that the demonstration was taking place there. We saw a lot of Indians (they came in buses), normal policemen, and army of riot police all armoured up. Even though the riot hadn't started yet, the sight was scary.
We drove pass the area and decided to stay in the malls until evening, since we couldn't be sure when the demonstration would end. Then in the night, we read the newspaper that a riot took place with some policemen injured. Luckily we went out early and weren't caught in the action.
Seriously, merely seeing the gathering and confrontation between the people and policemen, i could almost feel how frightening it must have been back in the old days when the political climate was unsettling and there was curfew and all. It's fortunate that we are living in a peaceful era and do not have to go through those difficult times.
Labels: life
