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KL Alternative Bookfest

June 25, 2012

I was invited to this event via a FB acquaintance, and seeing that last Saturday was a rare weekend where my family had nothing on, i took a drive down the Federal Highway to Central Market. It was billed as “KL Alternative Bookfest + Art for Grabs” with the catchy tagline “buku adalah sahabat manusia”, i was going there more to check out the art and maybe drop by T-square (I haven’t been there since I started oil paintings). My wife’s main reason for going was to eat in Petaling Street.

Traffic was good and we snagged a parking spot right in front of Central Market itself (great job by the Rela boys diverting traffic and stopping queue jumpers). KL city centre was all prepped with the StanChart marathon on Sunday morning.

Half of the carpark was taken up by a stage and seating area as part of an exhibition on local cartoons. Nothing really of interest here, except there was a LImKokWing counter selling old Guli-Guli comic books.

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(response not very good ar?)

Finding the Bookfest can be a little tricky if you’re not familiar with Central Market.

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Its located at the top floor of the Annexe, which is the building attached to the back of CM.

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The Annexe Gallery is basically a medium sized hall partitioned in the middle. There were a few stall selling art, but majority were selling books and crafts. My girls bought some crafts from the Orang Asli stall and the iheartbadges stall.

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There was a special photo exhibition on the Bersih 3.0, where you can see the tear gas attacks in clear HD black and white photographs.

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By and large, there were many stalls selling books seeing it a bookfest. Not just your regular books, lots of indie publishers and self published books. i was surprised to find Malay books on anti-establishment topics, socialism, communism, and self expression. It was kinda heartwarming to see not all young Malaysians are caught up with the gahmen propaganda of hate and lies. Maybe i don’t go to a lot of these things, and it only exist in a small bubble in events like these, but for a short time i felt hopeful for our country.

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We were quite fortunate to make it in time for the “What la Awards” hosted by the funny Jo Kukathas.

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I’m not into the local arts scene but Jo was in her element, taking jabs at our local politicians.

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after the bookfest i dropped by T-Square, bought a tube of Lefranc & Bourgeois Royal Blue oil paint for RM20, part of my exercise to try different brand of paints.

After that we trudged down to Petaling Street to drink air mata kuching and eat the famous Koon Kee wantan mee.

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Good trip down to the city. Until the next time, then.

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