Hunting Season
Every time you visit this place you must come prepared, especially if you don't exactly know where you're headed. Yet, thanks to almost a decade long experience of walking through this big concrete maze, I now know my ways around it, but every now and then it still manages to take me by surprise.
Sadly, this time the task in hand wasn't any of my own. A close friend of mine needed to get a new phone, so I really couldn't "prepare" myself for this little adventure, because he would be the one taking the lead.
He called me up in the afternoon when I was in a meeting at the office, quickly letting me know that he'd be around the mall at 6PM, asking me to join him in this little phone hunt of his. Just when I thought that I'd head home from work and get some rest, I had another little journey that I had to sing up for.
Even though I thought it wouldn't take much time for us to finish up with our little phone hunt, in the end we actually ended up spending 3 hours looking for a good shop and a good deal. And within those 3 hours we walked for 3 to 4 kilometers at least, starting from the outer grounds of the mall's premises to the food court on the top floor.
It surely hunting season right now, especially for the most hyped up phones, like the new iPhones and Google Pixel lineup.
Every store you visit, you'll at least find one buyer who has bought a new iPhone from that shop on that exact day. People don't even mind paying a premium for these phones, nor do they mind an unnecessary upgrade from just the previous generation, it's crazy how over-hyped some of these phones are.
However, my friend's story is a bit different; the guy is sort of like me when it comes to upgrades or just getting a newer device, he'd rather get a proper device every 3 to 5 years and use it for as long as it lasts. He's currently still using his iPhone X, which was released back in 2017, and that surely is impressive, a phone that lasted for 5 years straight.
He has been eyeing the new iPhone 14 Pro for quite a while now, waiting for the prices to drop, so that he can lock in a solid deal. And after almost 2 months following the release of the new iPhone, we finally headed out on this day to hunt for some good deals. The prices now are quite fair, according to our country's pricing and standards that is. I myself prefer a cleaner Android experience over iOS and the iPhones, and that experience right now is only offered by Google and their Pixel devices, we used to have HTC and OnePlus on that list as well, but now they're a thing of the past. Yet, no matter how much I try to convince the guy to get a Pixel or any other Android device, he just keeps talking about Apple and all their devices. Sigh...
After a lot of searching we ended up finding a shop that offered us quite the deal; also guaranteeing that their prices were simply unbeatable, while challenging any other shop to offer a lower price and better after-sales services.
They surely did seem quite confident, and that is why we decided not bargain that much, the deal was in our expected price region, so went ahead and booked an iPhone 14 Pro 256GB E-Sim version, which is for the US region. They wanted some time to manage that exact device, because it was selling like hotcakes and wasn't in stock at the moment.
We were there in that shop for about an hour, and within that hour at least 3 or more phones were sold. So you surely can guess how hyped up and in demand these devices are right now.
Also, the time was closing in towards 8PM, which was the mall's closing time, as you can see in the last image above. So, we decided that we'd book one device for now and my friend would come and collect and setup the device on the next day.
After sealing the deal we were badly in need of some food, thanks to all the hunting and walking we did. We barely even had much time before the mall closes, thinking soon enough they might even decide to kick us out haha. So we rushed towards the food court, quickly browsing through the available restaurants, in the end choosing the OG BFC for a "little" snack. You can never go wrong with BFC, yes sometimes they can be a bit inconsistent with their food and service, but they surely manage to get it right 8 out of 10 times.
We went with the usual choice of Supreme Friend Chicken Burger with cheese and a large Pepsi, nowadays Pepsi tastes better than Coca Cola for some reason, Pepsi is available in most restaurants too compared to Coke. We chomped on our burgers as fast as we could, while also sipping on some Pepsi, like it was some kind of an eating competition lol. When were done eating we just decided to take our drinks and head towards the exit.
The staff were already on the mic telling people that it was nearing their closing time, at this point we didn't wanna get kicked out, so we rushed towards the escalator and started speed walking haha. That night my back started hurting so bad, thanks to a very long day of work at the office, siting around and talking for long hours, and then we had this little hunt of ours.
Yet, soon enough we were free and out of that concrete maze, what a relief. Finally! The day was over, and we were on our way home. 🌆🚶
Looks an impressive mall
I was tempted to switch from iPhone for either the pixel or Samsung S22, but I have a few apple products and family is all apple so stuck with apple
Thanks for joining the Wednesday Walk
It surely is, one hell of a task going around this thing haha.
That's the main issue with Apple, people who are very familiar with its ecosystem cannot switch so easily. Apple holds its consumers because of the software experience, more than the hardware and all their gimmicks and marketing. One does have to agree that some of Apple's software features are top of the line, especially in terms of security, so you really can't blame most of the users. I wanted to switch to Apple this time, but the Pixel 6 line up was just too good to miss out on. So far the Pixel 6 experience has been getting better with every little update, really glad that I went with the Pixel.