"Aiyah, darling....take both the luggage-lar"..... This is one of the line I heard in the early morning at the car park of Mines Convention Centre where Big Bad Wolf Book Sale 2012 was held. Mind you, the lady had a big luggage while the man was having two trolley luggages in tow. What a frightening site,man! They looked like people on fire or on war, man! The only thing missing were probably the army fatigues and the painted war paint for guerrilla warfare! Boy, it is just so ridiculously funny! Here I was with my family and friends in two cars thinking that we are the craziest bunch of people to drive all the way from Melaka as early as 5.20am so that we could get some good books. However, we were pleasantly surprised to know that when we do get there at about 6.15am, there are even far more crazier people who would go the extra mile just for this Big Bad Wolf Book Fair. As my good friend, Errol and his family together with my family inched from our cars to the exhibition centre, you can see the people taking big steps and one eye eyeballing your every step. I find this ridiculously funny as we too took our steps as fast as possible to the hall. I guess, in a crazy way, we were getting the "Wolf" frenzy!
The insane thing is this : It is a little over 6.25am, still dark outside there and here we are lining up with over 150 people waiting to get into the hall. In the midst of our slow pace to join the line, I could see big travelling luggages whizzed passed me as we moved along the zig-zag line. Some had two enormous travelling trolley bags while some had grocery shopping bags ranging from IKEA to Tesco to AEON! What a sight indeed! I find it outrageously funny that people would actually do that. Well, not to be outdone, I have brought my TESCO shopping bag to put in my loot of books today. So, I am officially into the "kiasu" group as well! Seriously , I couldn't help laughing every time I see people with big bags and luggages. It just makes me wonder how many books are you going to get, man! I guess, there is just no limit to what people will do to get a good bargain especially books. Earlier, my sister-in-law, Jade had forewarned us of this luggage frenzy thing and we just laughed it off. yeah, she had a preview pass to the book fair and she bought books for her children. So, in a way, we were pre-warned but never took it seriously coz' what could possibly happen at 6.30am, right? BTW, when we told Jade that we are heading out from Melaka at 5.30am, she laughed her head off and that was the first sign that we are really crazy bunch of people!
Anyway, when the hall is finally opened for the people to get to the books, we also inched our way into the hall. Luckily, there was no stampede but rather civil crowd of people which I find surprising indeed but the luggages kept coming, I tell you. When I finally made it into the hall, I marvelled at the seas of books neatly stacked on tables and it was a sight to behold. We then split up and it was time for us to get our books. I headed out to the "Religion Section" first and started browsing through the books when suddenly this smartly dressed gentleman, his wife and his daughter came along side me, opened up one of their luggages and picked out all the titles available under the "Chicken Soup" heading and swooped them into the luggage! There must be at least 50 individual titles and then zipped up and moved on to the next tittles. Boy! That was fast indeed! That's easily RM 500 worth of books in that luggage! Anyway, I picked out m books slowly and steadily. It was an amazing spread of books indeed from cooking to coffee table pieces.
I think, the most expensive book I saw was RM 65 which was really worth the money especially with the quality of photos, gloss paper and boxed special while the cheapest book ( not magazine ) was RM 5. I got plenty of books in the range of RM 5 and RM 10. As I browsed through books and moved along the various sections, I could see the women folks going gaga over the hard cover books of Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver , Gordon Ramsey and the rest of the cook book authors plus the children books.
It was a sight to behold when women go nuts and ballistics over children books - dishevelled hairs, hands, elbows, legs and bodies crushing and reaching out for the children books! It was really fun. So what happened to the civil crowd, you may asked, right? Well, they left their civility at the lining lines, I guess! I was just joking,actually. One thing that amazed me about the early morning crowd is that there seemed to be greater respect for the books. There weren't any throwing of books here and there. Yes, there were adrenaline rush for books and all that but everyone seemed to put books at their place if they didn't want it. I find that fascinatingly interesting. I guess, the early morning crowd are people who just loves to read. At every nook and corner, there is always someone who has their hands on a book and reading.
As the crowd thickens , as the hours passed by, I felt it was time to go. The stomach growlings can be quite a nuisance. I didn't get as many books as I would have liked that day but I am satisfied with what I had. It was fun spending time with Errol and his family and it was fun being able to read/browse books that I could only see at the bookstores. It was truly great fun. A big THANK YOU to the organisers, Big Bad Wolf and Bookxcess for bringing this wonderful book fair to the public. Truly a great and applaudable effort in cultivating reading habits!
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