A Failed Adventure At The 38th Manila International Book Fair



"There is no friend as loyal as a book."
                                             Ernest Hemingway

      A sense of gloom quickly pervaded inside our car while we were approaching the parking area in front of SMX Convention Center in MOA yesterday, 16th of September,2017—we could see a throng and seemingly endless queues (yup, that’s plural) of people in front of the convention center, all trying to get inside, eager to be part of Manila International Book Fair. We were there for the book fair, too.

      We walked towards the convention center, we already had some complimentary tickets with us, it was already a little past two in the afternoon, and trying to find the start of of a queue was already an arduous task. Still, we found it and we lined up. But after thirty minutes, two of my companions complained of getting dizzied by the crowd and the thought of encountering a larger mob inside (we didn’t expect it to be that huge; didn’t they say it’s the era of e-books now?), so we gave up (temporarily). (We sometimes suffer from enochlophobia.) We called my sister who was on her way (together with her two-year old son and seven-year old daughter (who was eager to buy books) and told them to just turn back and go home.  Then, we went inside the mall (which was quite crowded, too), entered a restaurant and ate.
  
      We tried to enter the book fair again at six PM, the seemingly endless queues were still there, and when the lady in front of us complained about the queue not moving for an hour and the guards admitting they couldn't do anything about it, we gave up again and decided to just go home.

      “Ano ba meron diyan (sa book fair), ba`t ang daming tao?”  we heard one of the guards commenting as we were walking away. 

      Wisdom, I thought. We went home empty-handed, but I was quite happy with the thought that a lot of people still wanted to read books. I hope they (the younger crowd) weren’t just there out of curiosity and were just looking for something to post on their Facebook accounts (“Look, I was at the MIBF, I’m a bookworm and I’m smart!’). I noticed that many people coming out of the fair held nothing in their hands as they walked out.

      Anyway, we got home, and I slept and dreamt of the books (and those Game of Thrones action figures I saw posted on Facebook) I could have had bought.

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