today was fun. okay, not in the normal sense of fun 'fun', but it was a unique experience, worthy of note. 2 words. neil gaiman. 2 more. book signing. another 2. at borders. 2 plus 2 plus 2, adds up to me being a complete fool.

the story goes as follows: i didn't plan to go. actually i probably did, but i insist i didn't. after work, i went to meet jared. at borders. and he happened to be with khairil and zhen wei (surprise surprise). expressed my shock at seeing them there (they'd been there since 4, i reached at almost 7). borders, surprisingly, was crowded. think the whole atrium ringed with people, and the line leading all the way out till the end of the road (boulevard thereabouts and beyond), and you get half the picture. in fact, i've never seen it so packed before. maybe when harry potter comes to singapore.

well, today, other than being fanboy no 1, i was also moron no 1. i went for a book signing, but i had no books (no, actually, it was all spontaneous. i meant to get him to sign my shirt, jeans and underwear). so i panicked. and went to kino to buy books to get signed. lucky thing the line was long. and slow. (note: i was at borders. i went to kino to buy a book) anyway, amazingly, kino had run out of almost all their sandman books (note: gaiman was doing his book signing there yesterday). so i grabbed a book i never intended to buy (though now that i've bought and read it, it's rather nice), it's called 'hanging with the dream king', which sounds really cool and all, but isn't written by him, there's not much hanging, and half the time (save for the front and back section) you don't even see him mentioned at all, and i went back to borders. along the way, my parents rang, i enlisted their aid in desperation, and lo and behold, the calvary arrived (with stardust, endless nights and dream hunters in tow) and the line still hadn't shifted an inch.

don't get me wrong, i'm sure mr gaiman was trying his best, but the fangirls were just too cute. (yes, i do believe there were ecstatic girls swooning with joy after getting their autographs and posing for photos...) anyway, he decided to take a break (hey, sitting down and signing stuff is hard work, and the food here's just too good to resist) so we settled down to wait for half an hour (what's 30 minutes if you've already waited 2 hours right? not that i did of course...) and the people ahead and behind me suddenly seemed very interested in the book i was holding (the book i just bought and hadn't read) and wanted to flip through it (i don't even flip through my books that violently!!!) because apparently they'd never seen such a book before (hello, it's a book. it's made of paper. it has pages. and a cover). they had funky editions of sandman as well, but you didn't see me flipping through them did you? mutter.

to cut a long story short, neil gaiman must eat pretty fast, cos he was back within 15 minutes and raring to go (as i said, signing is tough work). this time, since the queue looked neverending, the stern british council people there who were in charge (i call them the dark side) declared that to make everyone happy, they were gonna cut down the number of signed books from 3 to 2, and there wouldn't be any more photos with neil. (of course not, all the cute girls were probably gone home) and i wasn't happy. but who cares about me right. finally reached my turn after a while (i'm seriously not complaining about the wait, i effectively waited only 1 hour at most, thanks to my 2 new best friends) and got my stuff signed (without the picture of course, though i sneaked in a few shots) so i'm happy i guess.

well, that's it for my first book signing. queuing for 2 hours with interesting characters to get 2 scribbles on my books and feel pleased about it. i doubt i'll ever do something so silly again. but it was definitely an interesting experience.

some thoughts and notes. i saw a bunch of ugly Endless. i wish i hadn't. now my pristine image of Death and Dream is tainted for life. some girl brought her laptop to be autographed. how cool. i wish i'd thought of it. if i had a laptop in the first place. i think it'd be pretty cool to be neil gaiman. first off, you get girls swooning over you. secondly, you get to travel all over to sign stuff. thirdly, people come from all over to have you scribble on their clean new books and then wax lyrical over it. is that cool or what? my new ambition is to be a writer. failing that, a comic book artist. if even that falls through, i want to be rich.

so now that i know better...next time, i'll bring my laptop along