Saturday at KGP show: the Jackson supplier was sporting a new Akita pup, Shadow. I asked if it was sired by his older one, which I last saw three, four months ago, but it was not. The poor old mangy dog is dead. The new one is very cute and training early, always asleep. Edward wanted me to grab it when I went back Sunday.

I spoke with one of the booksellers there about how the show was much diminished. Tough times. Next time the producer, who is winding down his involvement with the shows, will close off more areas, to make the space smaller, make the aisles tighter, and perhaps create a “synergy” that makes these shows more appealing and tend to get buyers more in a mood to make the sellers profitable. I agreed; there is quite a difference in atmosphere when people are forced to throng.

Sunday Yen arrived, Armi in tow, and Dekong not there. It is strange to see her after so long, and only able to see her a half day before going off to Philadelphia. They come bearing a video of Din’s birthday party, and showing her singing her favorite song along with her favorite local band, Imago, in their White Plains (a gated community in the suburbs of Metro Manila) backyard.
11:51:46 PM  #  comment []

I passed some bum dressed in denim yelling catcalls at passersby. I nodded at him as I passed, to be rewarded with “Gook” once I was ten feet away. I half-turned to give him a half-assed two-finger salute, more like a tug of a forelock if I were so vain as to cultivate a forelock. Apparently he thought I gave him the finger and started cussing me out as I went into the Book Trader. Whether he saw it as insouciant acknowledgement or casual flip-off, I don’t know; as long as he was discomfited with no expenditure of evil on my part, it cheered me up immeasurably.
12:25:37 AM  #  comment []