Chapter Two: Sore Feet, Numb Arms, and a Very Full Suitcase
Chapter Two: Sore Feet, Numb Arms, and a Very Full Suitcase
In the last chapter I said I came home from the Manila International Book Fair with more books than I needed. That was an understatement. Let me tell you the whole story.
The busiest day
We went on the second day, a Saturday. If you've ever been to a book fair on a Saturday, you already know where this is going.
It turned out to be the most crowded day of the entire fair, with more than 78,000 people. Walking down an aisle took strategy. Browsing a shelf took patience. And every line, whether for a signing, a booth, or the cashier, seemed to curve around a corner and keep going.
Honestly? I didn't mind. There's something special about being surrounded by that many people who all chose to spend their Saturday among books.
Meeting the authors
There were a lot of authors there, but two encounters stayed with me.
The first was Prof. Ambeth Ocampo. For anyone who loves Philippine history, meeting him up close is a little surreal. His writing has a way of making history feel human instead of like something to memorize for an exam, and seeing him in person made it feel even more real.
The second one caught me off guard in the best way. I met Lio Mangubat, who used to be an editor at K-Zone. When I told him I grew up reading K-Zone and was a regular at KHQ, he lit up. It's not every day you get to tell someone that the thing they worked on was part of your childhood, and it's even rarer to see how much it means to them to hear it.
That moment alone was worth the crowds.
The books (all of them)
I won't list everything I bought, mostly because I'd be here all day. A big part of my haul was history, picked up from the National Historical Commission of the Philippines booth. My fiancée did her share of damage too, and between the two of us, we were not exactly practicing restraint.
We paid for that later. At the airport, our check-in luggage was overloaded. Apparently books are heavy. Who knew?
The one regret
If I could go back, I'd change exactly one thing: I'd bring a small trolley or a bag with wheels.
By the end of the day, our feet were burning from hours of standing and walking, and our hands and arms had gone numb from carrying bags full of books. At some point I stopped feeling my fingers and started questioning every hardbound purchase I'd made.
Would I do it again? Without a doubt. Just with wheels next time.
Why this one's worth bookmarking
Looking back, it wasn't only the books. It was the reminder that stories, whether history, comics, or a magazine you read as a kid, connect people across years. One conversation with a former K-Zone editor took me straight back to being a kid flipping through those pages.
And somewhere in all that, between the crowds and the numb arms, I remembered how much I wanted to write again.
So here we are.