On the up: Book fairs!
On the down: The heat

Here we are in Singapore!

It was a "preliminary" day of setting up the booth at the book fair today. I've never been so many books in my life man!

The kiam siap Singaporeans didn't turn on any fans or airconditioners in the whole hall, so we had to go lugging round stacks of books and boxes of DVDs and shift posters all over the place without any bloody ventilation.

Like gee, does it cost so much to give us some FAN!

It was nonstop chaos for about 3 hours. I mean, the booth is only 3m x 3m and already we were about to kill each other. There were booths there that are about 10 times the size and I swear they only had about 2 people working there. We're like, hooooow?!

I think there must have been about 10 of us there at some stage and it was as disordered as it was fun. I mean, you don't think putting up a booth can be fun - but it is! (even for posh dollies who don't like manual labour!)

I looked over at Joe, and I swear, for once, he wasn't all peace and calm and radiating-joy. He really, really, really looked like he was going to burst a vein and he kept almost-screaming at Shin (Joe never screams, he just sounds visibly strung). Poor Joe.

Here we are looking like vagabonds in the middle of a corridor, sticking labels on DVDs.




Susan goes, "Oh my god, I gave up working in Intel to stick stickers on DVDs man."
I said, "Yah man. I'm giving up being an associate editor to stick stickers on DVDs."
We both agreed this was much more fun though.

And look! Our name up in big bold letters that you can see far, far away!



The arrangements were a nightmare. All these things kept falling behind the shelves. And everytime it did that, we'd have to move everything out, fish out the book/DVD and start all over again with the arrangments.

FINALLY, we got everything up So Very Nicely and then A Very Stupid Dolly managed to drop something down the gap between two drawers. Again.

I screamed very loudly, "FUCK" which probably made stressed Joe's blood pressure go up even higher.

Sharon was all, in her very lovely, proper British way, "Oh, is that coming from the Buddhist corner?!" before collapsing all over the place laughing.

We're in a section that's allocated to religious publishers and everyone is Very Virtuous so by default, we already look like deviants. The loud swearing, I suppose, does not help. Can you just see it already? All the evil whispering stuffy naysayers tutting, "What did I tell you about those Kechara people...."

Anyway, we finally 100% got everything up and it's sooooooo pretty!



Look how absorbed our first Very Interested Customer looks! (Okay, so it's just Susan, and she's only posing for the photo because I told her to but pfftttt)

I said to Sharon that we looked waaaaaay more gorgeous than the booth next to us.

Sharon goes, "Yah, but errr, they have heaps more books than us."

Like, oh yah. Really, it was heaps more.

But never mind, we totally kick enlightened butts for our amazing display (thank you lovely Ben, Joe and Shin for conceptualising and organising). And just you watch while we become an enormous publisher with one of them enormous booths!

Next year. Really!