Submitting to The Wolf…

I’m a bit of bibliophile. I love books; I love reading and so it was a no-brainer that when the Big Bad Wolf sale was announced, with books going for 75 to 90% discounts, that I was going to be there, thank you very much. With a promise of 1.5 million books, I was a bit apprehensive of going there to find like 4 x 375000 Twilight books or something equally horrifying… but the true purpose of this isn’t to talk about the books – of which they were plenty in variety and category – nor my haul of 90 books for only RM 719 (230 USD).

Instead, on both my visits, I observed something; first in the customers, second in the providers.

The hall that houses the sale is huge, but so is the space needed to house the books. Thus, the aisles are wide enough to allow people to pass through comfortably, but not wide enough that you wouldn’t bump into someone’s box (those that didn’t bring their own bags were given boxes) or into some body part. However, the majority of the people were apologetic and considerate, and whenever someone was blocking another, an ‘excuse me’ was said, followed by a sorry and thank you. Despite the competitiveness of getting ‘all the best books ever’, people tended to give each other way, and were generally nice. And thus, I came to a premature and perhaps somewhat bias conclusion that people who read have amassed a certain amount of understanding of the world, or at least, can appreciate basic etiquette.

The second part comes directly from today. After shopping for several hours, I came out to a very cloudy sky. Just was my mum, sister and I were about to walk to the car, it started raining cats & dogs. It became very quickly apparent that the floor structure of the site was not built well… water was collecting and flooding the area where everyone was queueing – both to go into the hall and to board the trams back to the car parks – and everything was quickly becoming a mess. Thank goodness the organizers had put tents outside at the queue area, but there was a gap from that area to the actual entrance. That was Problem 1.

Problem 2 arose because the roads were slippery for the trams to go up and down, plus the fact that a lot of people did not have an umbrella with them and thus were stranded between the drop off point and their car as it was an open carpark. As a result, a lot of people were waiting to go back but unable to lest they took a bath in the rain. The good bit was that people were patient and understanding and did not cause unnecessary drama while waiting for the rain to subside. The second bit was the excellent customer service provided, in which staff sourced umbrellas to build a chain-line to enable people to remain dry while they made their way into the building – ignoring the fact that the staffs got drenched themselves. They ferried people whenever someone needed help, remained calm and professional, and gave patient explanations to all who asked the repeated question of “what is going on?”. I was duly impressed, given that this was in all technicalities, a warehouse sale.

And lastly, I was so incredibly happy to see the amount of people that attended (despite that slightly selfish feeling of “oh my goodness, I’m going to have to battle so many people away to get my treasures!”) that included all races and ages. Children running around excitedly going “Mummy, mummy, I found it, I found it!” while brandishing a story book, or teenagers poring excitedly through the stacks of Twilight books (okay, a regrettable choice of literature but they will learn…) or the adults all searching determinedly for that one business book that would make them rich. It made me feel hopeful again, considering there was a study that stated that Malaysians read an average of ONE book a YEAR (while the data is probably true given the population and the different socio-economic status, etc, seeing people that broke that was heartening).

And so what was supposed to be a simple book sale has turned into an experience of humanity and a balm of hope to the soul. It is, after all, the little things in life that make it whole.

With that said, I sign out with pictures of my haul. Happy reading!

P/S – If you’re interested, it is in MAEPS, Mardi, Serdang. A 20 minute drive from Subang Jaya, and tomorrow, 10 am to 9 pm, 16th of October 2011, is the last day. If that doesn’t interest you, come down to Taylor’s University Lakeside Campus to participate in the packing of food for World Food Day, from 10 am to 3 pm. The objective is to pack 1,000,000 meals that will be distributed to hunger-stricken areas around the world. Will post more about that tomorrow, after the event. Cheers!

Haul number 1, 62 books for RM 518.

Haul 2, 28 books for RM 201.

Website: http://bigbadwolfbooks.com/

Facebook: /bbwbooks

*Disclaimer: This post is not an advertisement, just the excited ramblings of a happy bibliophile.

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