Wirklich?

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Now really. Is he popular because he is Angkasawan OR because he is a hunky Angkasawan? In any case, I was shoved and pushed and I almost fainted in the midst of maddening crowd, just because Astronaut Sheikh Muzaphar Shukor was barely 3 metres in front of me, and the best part of it, I was not even trying to snap a photo of him! I was trying to get to the MPH booth behind him. I am a book geek, not a groupie– I felt like yelling. Would he have garnered such a cult of fans of mostly dreamy eyed girls if he had not been good-looking? I wonder..

So we braved the Saturday afternoon ( mad ) crowd to attend the KL International Book Festival. For teachers and anyone in the education field, parents and academicians, the fair was a fantastic place to be in. So many resources I wish I could buy the whole lot of them back home. But for any other serious readers, it is not as international as we had hoped for it to be– with other countries represented by the ASEAN publications, Singapore, Brunei, Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia and international publishers like Mc Grawhill etc. But it was not too bad either.

After the nightmarish encounter of getting to the MPH booth dampened my mood to really bask in the huge fair, I decided to have a focused and thematic approach today. I know ourselves too well that we would be back several times before the fair is over. So today I looked for Malay literary works–only.

My first loot was two works by the angkasawan sasterawan from my hometown, Isa Kamari. He won the SEA Write Award in 2006. Honestly, other than Suratman Markasan and Peter Augustin Goh, I am not very familiar with the literary works of contemporary Malay writers from my hometown. Of late, I became more aware of his presence after he had become quite active in one online forum I have been patronizing for about 5 years. So I got 2 of his works–Atas Nama Cinta. It’s about the story of Nadra Hertogh,the Dutch girl who became the centre of a racial riot in my hometown sometimes in December of 1950. The 2nd one is Tawassul. I’ve read some parts of it and this I feel deserve another blog entry altogether.

Then off to Brunei I went–well the booth at least. I have never touched any work from Brunei other than some blogs by Bruneians who were my uni mates I met back in my Toowoomba days. From there, I got myself the works of their angkasawan (arrrghh not again! ) sasterawan negara, Muslim Burmat who wrote ‘Ntaidu. This work is supposed to excavate deep into the history of the origin and race of the people of Brunei Darussalam. I thought I would give it a go– so that I can finally stop associating Brunei with cheap oil, rich Sultan who married singer Marzuin back in the 80s, SHELL petroleum and uni mates who speak funny Malay.

Finally, I met the hero. Not the angkasawan though ( he’s hunky yes, but I’m married ho ho ho ).

Image taken from here.

Pak Samad was there sitting on a comfy couch at his tastefully decorated booth Wira Bukit. From him we got Cinta Fansuri, Ilham di Tepi Tasik and Bulan Tak Bermadu Di Fatehpur Sikri. All autographed by himself and I managed to make it known to his wife that I struggled with SALINA at A Levels. She grinned knowingly. Something tells me I’m not the only one who have told her that.

When my husband asked what I would want for my coming birthday next week, I told him I want to be back here. He said he had hoped I would ask for that. But then I told him I want to buy the whole festival with all of its contents, he said he had hoped I wouldn’t ask for that.

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