If there is one thing I feel achieved this year, it is buying a concert ticket for the first time in my life. To make it better, this Coldplay concert tickets were one of the highest tickets in-demand in national history. And even better, I did not buy with my own money.

Here how it happened:

Coldplay never had a show in Malaysia so this was going to be a legendary showdown. There are many die hard fans – some flew out to neighbour countries to just catch the concert. When news spread that Coldplay was gonna play in November, my friend mentioned she’d like to catch it. With the rave, I knew it was going to be hard to get a ticket.

But since I just moved to a new apartment, I’m now equipped with a much faster and better internet connection. I offered help to queue for the tickets on the website, because it was talk of the town – and I’m not even a Coldplay fan. I just wanted to feel ‘part of the trend’, of course, not knowing what I was getting into.

My friend was happy when I offered but on one condition, “No guarantee that I will be able to get them.” I told her.

On that fine early morning, ticket sales starts at 10AM and I went in at 9:45AM. At that time, my queue number was 60,000. The color bar moved so I waited patiently…

and after 1 hour…

and another hour…

By 1PM, I saw this in the official website sent out:

PFFT.

The next day, I did the same. By now, some of my friends on Instagram are starting to talk to each other, as if we are physically queuing together to get the tickets. While I was telling my friend about my pooping incident, the color bar suddenly leaped to over 70%, not sure what happened there.

I had to update my friend in queue:

Before I could reply too many things, I got in. I called up tickets’ owner to-be. Got her ID and choose 2 random seats. Everything has to move fast or I will get kicked as time runs out.

And tadaa.

I manage to get it for her and I felt accomplished because I got it out of over 200,000 people queuing. And spending about 241.28 Euros by just one click. Literally felt like a scammer but legal. 

But I’m one of the lucky ones. For the unlucky ones, they took further actions, as usual, sign a petition as if Coldplay would hear it.

One day later, this entertainment news took to the national news that tickets scalpers took most of the tickets so they can sell at higher price up to 450 Euros per ticket. The government warned that they are going to catch these scalpers.

Meanwhile, there are also rumors that these scalpers are actually in partnership with the concert organisers. That was why we were given a long queuing time – because scalpers were taking their own sweet time to choose the best seats to sell!

Days went on, other news pile up on each other and the issue of tickets scalper slowly vanishes in headlines.

Coldplay appeared eventually. According to audience, it was one of the best shows in Malaysia’s history.