I was at that IT enclave in Kuala Lumpur, Low Yat Plaza, yesterday and felt like a child in a toy store. I was bedazzled by the gamut of gadgets, computers, cameras and all those IT thingies, I felt like buying everything because at that moment, I thought I needed all those cool stuff. Luckily, my Minister of Home Affairs was with me to nag and enforce a no-nonsense spending rules.
Like I’d go crazy and burst my budget, eventhough I was very, very tempted to do so. Who wouldn’t if you were a “Go Go Gadget Man” like me. I believe all men are to a certain extent, go “ga-ga” over gadgets, and some would end up buying something that would gather dust somewhere. A walkabout at Low Yat was heartbreaking. The laptop I bought a few weeks ago is no longer the state-of-the-art machine. My digital SLR, topping the semi-pro list not too long ago, is now a camera fit for entry-level photography enthusiast. This makes one wants to upgrade! Now I know why everytime I phoned up an elder brother of mine, he would either be at Low Yat or an IT centre somewhere in the city.
It was jam packed at Low Yat yesterday. Thousands of people were looking, checking out or buying something. Yours truly bought a battery pack for an old point-and-shoot camera, now inherited by the Queen of the House. I also bought yellow and cyan inks for the printer. But, I fantasized that I had bought that camera with a set of cool lenses, and that so-very-fast-and-very-sleek laptop. I imagined lugging that 54” LCD tv screen out of Low Yat…..
From the size of the crowd and their enthusiasm in everything ITs, I believed Malaysians are already there. We had arrived at IT Central, we are “geeks” in our own rights. Young and old were there at Low Yat, all sharing a common interest, wanting to be “IT geeks”, to gawk at cool stuff, to buy neat machines or just to dream…. The old were equally excited as the young ‘uns over those products. I guess the old ones were “upgrading” their IT know-how in order to catch up with the younger geeks who were already beaming themselves up into new IT spheres.
An old man caught my eyes. He was checking out a desktop computer and instantly reminded me of my father-in-law. Already 71-year-old but my father-in-law is IT savvy. He has gone digital…he blogs, e-mails and digitally tweaks his photos. How I wish my mother is into computer so that we could “Skype” her. Imagine we could video call her and even, have a tele-conference session with other members of the family.
One could sense that almost all who visit Low Yat wish to better oneself and those IT gadgets available there would help make one’s journey on the road to progress a sheer delight.
Sadly, a stone-throw away from Low Yat, a group of teenagers – male and female – was letting opportunities slipping away. With their Mohawk and punk hair-do and “I-still-don’t-get-it” fashion style, those teenagers sat on the pavement near the pedastrian crossing to the Time Square, making a nuisance of themselves. They were loud and disgusting. Sadly still, they were “my people”.
Are they a wasted generation?
