Transient Me

I just read Neil Gaiman’s blog and he already wrote an entry about the Manila “gathering”. I truly admire his writer’s tenacity. His account of his experience in my homeland may not be detailed and long, but his vignettes are interesting. (Thank goodness, he is also one avid blogger.)

He described the Filipino audience as a very enthusiastic crowd. Yup, we do tend to show our appreciation not just by politely clapping our hands together, we also have to shout, whistle, and stomp our feet. Heck, we could even do the wave to express how we feel. We are, after all, an action-oriented people. Hehe.

There was also that bit about Neil’s hotel “pseudonym”…hmmmm…I wonder what name he used or what the British Council has given to the hotel. Mr. Shadow? Mr. Anansi? Mr. Morpheus? He said some of the hotel staff were calling him by his real name, but when he came up to the front desk, he was addressed with a different one. I thought that was really funny. The attempt to hide his true identity seemed mildly futile.

Another thing that I admire about Neil Gaiman is that every time he does his book signings, he makes sure that everyone in line gets their stuffs signed. And I mean everyone, even if it was already way past midnight.

The signing in Manila ended at 1:25am! This is no surprise to me given the number of people who showed up (about 3,000 according to Gaiman’s blog). When he did a talk here in San Jose, the hubby and I had our books signed at around 12mn, and we were not the last in line. There were still a lot of people behind us. So I think that signing also ended around 1 or 2 am.

Neil wrote in his blog that people who are sending him messages of thanks should thank the British Council. This organization, after all, is the one that could bring him back to Manila again. So thanks British Council and thanks Neil Gaiman.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 9th, 2005 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Bookmonger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.