For a moment I felt like a sardine in a school thrown about in the rolling waves; I could hardly steer myself on course. This happens all the time when a throng of crowd react to the opening of any exhibition at the main entrance. I was lucky to be alone else I would have to report a lost companion. Then again, maybe I wouldn't go to all that trouble..
It was a Building and Construction exhibition on a grand scale that was long awaited for us who were anticipating the opening for almost a month. I was then at college back in 1981 taking up Architectural Draughtsmanship course and this event was told to us by our lecturer to visit. With a friend’s help I was able to secure a room in Brickfields and was glad to have moved out of Tayton View, Cheras. Going to the exhibition in KL was only 7-minute bus ride to Klang bus stand and from thereon another 10 minute walk to the exhibition centre.
Booths were everywhere and bodies moving (and sliding) all over the floor, milling from booth to booth and getting their hands on every leafets and any colorful catalogues they could managed. Latest innovations from glazed tiles to Spandek roofing were tops in their adverts while non-construction sales were pitched on new security systems to Gypsum ceiling boards, and here I was busy spotting glossy catalogues and freebie pamphlets. Events filled with throngs of professionals and lay people like myself can make one’s objective turned upside-down. Such was the case with me when I walked out of the centre mustering all my strength to balance several plastic bags filled with non-relevant catalogues and useless information printed on expensive pamphlets, while carrying several loose catalogues in the other free hand. Talk about impulsive shopper!
With regards to those glossy catalogues with bedroom sets on my other hand, I honestly have no memory whatsoever as to why I collected them all, but I cannot deny the salesgirl was pretty hot! Spending 25 minutes next to the beauty pageant listening to her boken Enggris was hardly my everyday leisure.
It only took me 15 minutes to reach Klang bus stand, after discreetly discarding 2 bags full of worthless information into a public dumpster along the way, while retaining the bedroom sets catalogue, for the purpose of which I hoped would be revealed to me in due and appropriate time, which I predict, would be revealed to you readers imminently.
It was almost 5pm when I reached the designated bus lane and blue collars were starting to join me after having secretly clocked out before their bosses even had the chance to throw last minute assignments at them. This was the only time when people of all races would synchronise the heads every time a bus came into view, straining their necks up. Local vampires would love the gesture.
Being among crowds at bus stands was something I was quite used to but that afternoon it made me see it in a different perspective. From my peripheral vision I could sense there was something about the stranger behind me, like a feeling that my privacy was gradually being encroached upon. Not that he was doing anything to my back.. Turning my head around was one wrong choice too late as my gesture was misconstrued as an invitation, not to a friendship, but a relationship. Oh yes! A relationship that might have been an answer to his quest! That was when I’d wished I hadn’t spoken about a lost companion earlier with apathy.
He was like twice my size, some local guy with crops of hair struggling to survive around the sides. You could call him bald and I wouldn’t even be offended. The only thing we both had in common was height. When our eyes were visually locked (glad to say they weren’t locked in tight embrace) he was wearing a distasteful grin with locked jaw when suddenly, as if I was caught offguard, something came out of his mouth! At that same moment his mouth was moving with upper and lower lips parting and closing, and this was repeated over and over again, before I realized he was pointing to my wristwatch and asking me what the time was! And he was still grinning..
To be continued..
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