went to Neil's first public appearance in Singapore yesterday!! it was obviously harder than usual for him to put his best face forward after having a very long flight, very little sleep/rest and having a very MUCH larger crowd than was expected by the organisers. don't know why they (organisers) didn't expect that big turn out - why, he's a rock star!

today - found out again that i'm not quite cut out to be a 'papparazzi'; 'coz when i wanted to take a photo with Neil, i was brusquely told off by Ms Huff and Ms Puff that "u can't!!", even though i had been queuing for 6 HOURS (for the book signing) AND i wasn't in the way, i actually did not kick up any fuss. Neil did say it was ok and i finally managed to get ONE photo with him.
ah well, the high price of being his fan.

i also wanted to take photos for a few nice girls just after me but was immediately "SHOO-ED" off 'ground zero' and outside the barrier they had created around him.

and no, absolutely no one was mobbing him or anything (hey, this is Singapore after all!). just the usual people gone atypically amok with 'power'.

that was the first and ONLY time i've ever actually really queued for anything, from 4pm to 10pm!! Neil did have a dinner break followed by a talk from 6.30-8.30pm, but the bookstore refused to give out queue numbers, so the poor fans had to stay "in line" (some people never get tired of flexing 'power' just for the sake of it). thank whatever gods there are that those girls immediately behind me were such a nice bunch and made the loooooooooooooong wait somewhat bearable.

which made the fact that i couldn't get good shots of them with Neil, (the 'tight security barrier' not only restricted people but views as well - couple of 'security' guys kept standing right in front of the table, not to mention also those on the left, right AND behind!!), all the more irritating. there were actually 4 'staff' to hand one's items to be signed to him!

Neil's definately getting the rock star treatment here.

just a quick note for now.
have just set up a photo album. more photos to edit and put up over the next couple of days.

more to come on Neil's last public appearance in Singapore.

wow, what an experience, sidhe when neil comes to the phil, i hope i have a couple of stories and photos to share also.

Neil is the nicest persons period and yes i have to agree on the last bookstore he signed in being unfrenly, i kinda stayed till the end but got kicked out,...

in the end, there was a lot of stretching, embracing and more signing for the British Council chaps, and seeing us outside, a friendly wave goodbye and Mr Gaiman left the building, obviously very tired from signing...

nice pics sidhe!

neil gaiman fans are also very nice too like him, strangely like he says on his blog...
actually met whole lotta nice people @signings and stuff, people i know and just kids waiting in queue with me...really surreal tt what he says on his blog is kinda true, spend hours waiting in line and u actually get to know people round you....

"so when did you start reading Mr Gaiman's comics?" kid in college uniform
"erm, i think '88 during that Midsummer's Night's Dream Sandman..." i replied
"oh...that's when i was born" kid in college uniform replied
"OMG,....I AM TOO OLD FOR THIS" i thought......after some silence "er you wana read my SKETCH magazine with his interview, it's got sketches and drawings he did"
"ok cool" kid replied

this is soooooooo unfair! all those years i waited for neil to come to singapore and here i am now living in paris, a gazillion miles away and he visits my homeland!!! i don't know whether to be happy for the rest of the singaporeans who have FINALLY managed to meet their idol or not... i think i'm going to shoot myself!

of course not!
i just can't see neil ever coming to france where no one speaks his native language! and i'm going to be here another 2 yrs yet... sob!

lucky people! you really have no idea! boohoo for me!

i am glad though, that we treated him with the renowned singaporean hospitality. looks like he enjoyed his stay despite the fatigue. here's hoping he'll be back when i'm around!

Actually, if anyone wants a reeeeeally long winded account of the day-to-day activities of Neil with the Public, you can read my blog over here, at:

http://shoelessone.blogspot.com/

Just check the entries from July 4th to July 6th, all of which are entitled "Neil-O-Palooza."

Enjoy, kids, I get fairly long winded...

replying to 'kurt'.
tell me about feeling "i am too old for this"! haha. on the 2nd day, i realised with shock that i had morphed into one of those 'tissue-carrying people'.

and it's just uncanny how many nice and interesting people are Neil Gaiman fans.

replying to Shoeless:
i enjoyed reading your blog. where is Neil's blog??

Oh, if you ever want to ask Neil a question on his blog, just scroll down to the bottom of his blog, which is this:

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp

And click on the FAQ link at the bottom.

Or just click on this:

http://www.neilgaiman.com/faq/faq.asp

And you'll see a window where you can ask Neil questions and if you're lucky he'll answer them. But he claims he reads everything, even if he doesn't answer, and lie or not, I choose to believe it.

thanks Shoeless!

replying to psyche:
hey, u fans in Phil have SUCH a more interesting event schedule than here in Singapore! i'm looking a bit like the She-Hulk right now. it would seem that the bureaucrats here think that most Singaporeans are narrow-minded and live in a square box! a fan says in another discussion that they had initially only scheduled half an hr (!!!) for signing. while i believe that's an exaggeration, i do think they only scheduled an hour at most. i couldn't, and still can't, believe they would think that Neil Gaiman have that few fans here.

i mean the Phil schedule is fantastic! there's a raffle where it seems the winner gets dinner (maybe with him?!!), and an art competition too!! arrghh!! here it was only reading and signings, and a short screening of MirrorMask, which was chargeable, and we didn't even get to see the trailer, just a few short 'making of' clips.

but oh well, i really shouldn't complain. at least they finally got him here in Sg.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sidhe,

sidhe you dont look so old
anyway obviously the only people vaguely aware of the people who would be descending wern't the organisers and least of all the bookstores although they did their best or some of them tried to...
i actually called the contact person at the British Council and told her that many fans would be descending from Indonesia and Malaysia since he aint stopping there and they did their best to gauge by taking down no.s for their talks
but if they were really smart would have booked more cinemas and/or a bigger space

anyway the screening of mirromask, you actually just paid for the hiring of the cinema theatres, there was no shuffling of money to any middle person, British COuncil brought him in but it's up to the stores to organise and prepare themselves and with the exception of comicsmart wern't really ready for him at all or the sheer no. of fans...

shoeless
i hope you reconsider whether you want to come back here to do a signing when your book gets released...
not all of us are philistines or i hope i wasn't the one to have removed all doubt from your mind...
and i apologise for making you seem more popular then you see yourself to be at the screening, i was quite beside myself the entire 3 days and thought chatting with you after the press conference over coffee pretty interesting...

i'm glad you managed to get your questions answered, i only managed to ask him mine during the press conference and was a blitheing idiot the rest of his tour...hopefully i'll win that writing competition and can choose to go that writing convention at vancouver where he'll be to lurk round him some more...

i've put up pics and stuff on mr Gaiman's visit here, check it out...

http://www.sgcollect.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=40371&st=180&#entry670687

alientango
your turn will come, when Neil was giving the angels readings and talk in Portland in 2000 i was in Corvallis 130 miles south, i thought that that was my one and only chance to ever ever meet the man but i couldn't go because i was working and would have to drive up 130miles north and i was in the same state...so there i was gnashing my teeth since for 5 years thinking that was my one and only chance...until last Monday...
so you time will come...

quote:

Originally posted by kurt:
shoeless
i hope you reconsider whether you want to come back here to do a signing when your book gets released...

Thanks Kurt. (I still have only the vaguest idea of who you are, by the way)

That's is obviously a long, long ways off, so it's probably not even worth considering at this point, but after seeing how people genuinely knew and liked Neil (Rather than glommng onto him simply because he was famous in some way) that was generally encouraging.

quote:

and i apologise for making you seem more popular then you see yourself to be at the screening, i was quite beside myself the entire 3 days and thought chatting with you after the press conference over coffee pretty interesting...

Yes, coffee, that does ring a very soft bell. Though it wasn't just you, over the last few days quite a few people have seemed to suddenly remember me though it's usually for more embarrassing things like "You were the Makansutra guy!" or "You were that guy on the Starhub commercial!"

Bleah...

quote:

hopefully i'll win that writing competition and can choose to go that writing convention at vancouver where he'll be to lurk round him some more...

What writing competition is this?

Maybe I'll see you in Vancouver some day, I plan on relocating back there, so I can stalk William Gibson and Sarah McLachlan...

quote:

Originally posted by sidhe:
replying to psyche:
a fan says in another discussion that they had initially only scheduled half an hr (!!!) for signing. while i believe that's an exaggeration, i do think they only scheduled an hour at most. i couldn't, and still can't, believe they would think that Neil Gaiman have that few fans here.

i mean the Phil schedule is fantastic! there's a raffle where it seems the winner gets dinner (maybe with him?!!), and an art competition too!! arrghh!! here it was only reading and signings, and a short screening of MirrorMask, which was chargeable, and we didn't even get to see the trailer, just a few short 'making of' clips.

No... The signing schedule was never just 30 minutes. Remember, Kino and Borders know exactly how much Gaiman material they sell.

And Singapore had a raffle too for lunch with Neil. You just had to buy Mirrormask.

I was there for the lunch. He's great to talk to one-on-one, and can tell a lot of things about some of the other fantastic authors out there like Pratchett (since they're friends).