My tita and I spent the day together in Makati.



After an early lunch at A Veneto, we headed off to Hotel Intercon to attend the Read or Die convention. It's the first convention of its kind in town (that I know of). We attended two of the many scheduled talks for the day. The first one was on Philippine folklore by the UP Folklorists organization, where my Tita got asked to read a sample of a tanaga out loud. Hehe. It was an interesting talk and I figured maybe I should learn more about our local folklore, our epics and our myths. I already like what I know if it. As a kid, I used to devour it with the same appetite as any other legend from elsewhere. If I can find a decent book about it when I go back today, I'll get a copy.

The New Worlds Alliance (an alliance of scifi and fantasy groups in the Philippines) hosted its own talk in another room. Unfortunately, it was around the same time as the Philippine folklore talk, so I missed our own discussion. I did slip in to take a few shots, and I was glad to see that it had a good size audience.



After the folklore talk, we looked at the book merchants area. It doesn't compare to the Philippine Book Fair, of course, which happens yearly. This was a much smaller affair, with just a handful of book stores, distributors and publishers in attendance.

There were also small book clubs with tables and a nice collection of pre-owned books for sale. Our own geek cirlce had a table which accepted sign-ups for membership.

And as the costuming folks will sieze any opportunity to wear their costumes, you can be sure that there were enough Trekkies and Jedi walking around. Today, Sunday, the Imperials will have their turn. So, there'll be armored Stormtroopers browsing the aisles of books with you if you're going today.

While I was walking around the book hall, I overheard the lady from the Goethe Institut informing a guest about the forum they were hosting and it turned out it was about The Brothers Grimm and the fairy tales they collected. I fetched my Tita from wandering the book hall and we headed to the room. I enjoyed that talk immensely. Incidentally, I had just been discussing and researching about the Grimms the night before! It's interesting how the later versions of their tales had been sanitized for mainstream reading. Just check out this side-by-side comparison of the 1812 and 1857 versions of Rapunzel. I was able to participate in the talk haha, it reminded me of school. But, I don't remember attending a class as fun as this fairy tale class.

It was a good day at the convention.

We left the con to go shopping in Glorietta and I got me new shoes. This is significant because I bought non-opentoed shoes which I rarely do. Aside from my running shoes and cleats, I have only one other pair of shoes. And I've worn it four times since I got them last summer. I like my footwear nice and open. And if I get away with it, I'd wear flipflops every single day. But, my new shoes are cute. So, we'll see how we get along.



Imagine that. I walked away from the convention without purchasing a single book! Hurrah!

But, today might be a different matter. =)

Labels: books