GUiT News #3,952

Since touchdown on this sacred soil life has been one big whirl for GUiT, Kak Teh and me: GUiT was launched at the Singapore Writers Festival last week, we’ve been to two weddings (with 2 more in the pipeline), and a modest get-together is planned in Kuala Terengganu.

But let me first tell you about the pizza delivery man. Pizza delivery man was uneasy about the sluggish way GUiT was being handled by the bookshops here, especially in Kuala Terengganu and Kuala Lumpur, so he contacted me to ask for the source of supply, stocked his main bookshop in Kuala Terengganu, and then, in Kuala Lumpur, he passed word around by SMS and email that he’d deliver GUiT to any address within the capital free of charge. He even sent one to Penang (courier charges extra) as a birthday present for someone. When I met Karim a few days ago he said he’d already delivered some 50 books, and he had 4 more orders even as we were talking. But why? I asked, surely Sami Vellu charges and petrol costs would eat up most of his profits? “Yes, I make a little,” he said, “but I do enjoy seeing the look on their faces when they receive the book. And many wanted me to stay so they could regale me with more tales of Awang Goneng and Trengganu!”

So a round of applause please to Karim Omar, the man who sold GUiT like hot, home-delivered pizzas.

And Kak Teh too has been doing her bit: so if you see MPH bookstores now well-stocked with GUiT, you’ll have to thank her and her persuasive ways.

Let me just go back to Karim and his pizza delivery style because earlier, I mentioned his main bookshop in Kuala Terengganu. In Singapore I said that GUiT’s spiritual home is the Abdullah Al Yunani bookshop, and I’d be happy to see a fisherman or a farmer launch my book there as GUiT is actually a book by and for the common people. Well, as happens, Karim is married into the Al-Yunani family, and the Abdullah al Yunani is the Keda Pök Löh Yunang that I’ve been telling you about here and everywhere. So we’ve both sat down and planned something there — God-willing, GUiT will be launched at the Keda Pök Löh Yunang in Kuala Terengganu (Trengganu as was) on Christmas Day, this 25th December 2007. It will be a very modest event with a cup of tea probably to cheer everyone up, and a book-signing and reading (maybe) for afters. I suggested to Karim that we’ll start the day by reading a little prayer for almarhum Pök Löh but no, he counter-suggested, we’ll read a little prayer for everyone mentioned in GUiT who’re now no longer with us; and I think it’s a capital idea. So, if you’re footloose and fancy free, and at a loose end on top of that on Christmas Day, please do call at the Alam Akademik book shop in Kedai Payang in Kuala Terengganu and be with us. You may not want to buy the book, but please do come for a cup of tea, and as it’s seasonal, we’ll call it the MONSOON CUPPA, a people’s festival of book and banter. But please watch this space for up-to-date news.

For me personally, GUiT has come alive in more ways than two. GUiT’s launch in Singapore was its official birth, and then the books are now in the shops without further hiccups. What’s more amazing is that I met a person who told me that his friend is the daughter of ‘my cousin Dah’ (rf. GUiT, ‘Fish On A Bicylce’), and another wrote to me to say that Pak Minggu mentioned in GUiT a propos Panggong Capitol was a friend’s father, and when I was doing a book signing in London someone prompted me to talk about Tuan Haji Salleh (Misbaha), Trengganu’s famous amateur historian. I did, and then the prompter came back: “That’s his son standing there behind you!” And as one thing leads to another, I find that I’m related to Karim Omar, the pizza delivery man, by links matrimonial.

I can tell you many more stories like that but you have things to do, and the flood water’s rising in Terengganu, and the kettle’s on the boil.

Thanks are also due to my re-discovered seafaring friend Jaflam for arranging tea time at the coffee shop in Kinokuniya last Sunday. You may want to read about it and see the photos at Elviza’s. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who attended, and to young Luqman Zain, my newly found young friend who, I hope, will grow up lawyering like her charming mother, or, at the very least, take up pen and paper and turn himself into a great writer.

I am humbled by the unexpected success of GUiT, and my sincere thanks to you all!