A lot to do with standing.

(My internet’s been down for the good 5-6 days, and I’m glad that no one really thought me as dead, missing, severely incapacitated or just simply gone macadamia at the local hospital.)

I’m currently at The Book Fair thing, which is held at the PWTC for 10 days starting from the 4th to the 13th of April.


I’m having fun. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more refreshing for, well, the whole entire Industrial Training, and mostly this is because I’m more often than not so immensely busy that I barely have the time eat, and that is a good thing. I’m also learning. Loads. And publisher contacts! Somewhere closer to actually having to build your own contacts and getting the huge know-how.


Every morning now I tend to lecturers that flock in in the throngs (the theory, devised and written with much observation from both I and Asman my book-fair colleague, goes that lecturers and their respective book dealers will only enter our booth in numbers made to clog and confuse, so that we have to rush and be miserable). They will pick their books and place them on the floor, tell me which institution they belong to, writes them in a slip, and then leave me to scan the barcode which will later go into a book listing that they collect sometime later.


Mornings are hell. The pandemonium type, with lots of ducking down and saying Excuse Mes and How May I Help You Sirs and replacing books. After lunch hour things generally die down, but it can get hectic sometimes, with last-minute crowds.


All in all, I’m feeling great, albeit a little tired and sleepy.


My bosses are Melvin and Adrian (they are, to say, bosses for this particular book fair, because I was transferred from my company to a sister company and later to this one, which is a partner-company, and it’s not really confusing if I’d said it right), and they’re Singaporean. Really nice people. Melvin is the son of the company’s owner, apparently, who looks young, eager and experienced for his age. Adrian’s the senior worker who is a nice man, and generally jovial.


No Singaporean stereotyping here; these are good, able people who are good to people.


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The trouble with ending the day’s work at 7 daily is that I don’t really have the time to go explore the fair, and when I finally do I realised that I regretfully managed to bring insufficient cash to properly fulfil my book-buying needs.


There is this booth at Hall 1, Selvan Holdings, I think, which sells best-sellers novels for a price of RM15 each (old copies or prints, the type people forgot and found as overlooked stocks in dusty boxes). I was there on Day 2 or 3 and thought it was heaven; you get Sheldon and Ludlum and Cussler there, in larger numbers, but what’s best is the few hidden gems that needed some patient scanning. I’ve snagged a Stephen King novel and a Terry Pratchet on sight; I didn’t even bother looking at the title and cover until I paid and left. Now I’m the owner of a 1981 copy of Cujo by Stephen King (with an interesting cover image of a sun with a dog’s face in it, menacing on a blue SUV) and Terry Pratchet’s Thief of Time (a Discworld novel, and my first Terry Pratchet without counting Good Omens, which he wrote with Gaiman).


Next stop: Selvan’s for the few Sheldon novels and whatever gems I overlooked, and also the PayLess Books stall which I heard has a Buy-1-Free-1 offer.


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Maybe if I went to talk to her, she’d talk back.


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I predict that my internet will not persistently and relentless continue its normally good and workable service after tonight, due to reasons of self-observation, so I think it’s fair to say that I might just go back into disappearing for a few days without much word or notice.


Not that I’ll be much missed, but I figure a friendly note in regards to my (sudden, if not usual, if you’re usually here) disappearance should justify my reasons to be unavailable and very well work as to not give people impressions that I might’ve cracked and taken the quickest route to see hell.


I should be getting these darned internet fixed, as soon as internship ends and I’m back to idling life at home.


(I’ll also take this opportunity to apologise to a few people whom I’ve forgotten to contact or reply their calls/messages/texts/e-mails, and also to people whom I contact regularly but is unable to do so these days. It’s been really busy and tiring, plus with the internet acting up it’s really frustrating.)


Well, I hope everyone’s okay. If you happen to drop by the book fair, look me and Ji Lin up in Hall 4. We’re under EMO and Alkem.

Cheers, and goodnight all.