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BookFest Singapore 2009


My wife and I visited BookFest@Singapore 2009 at Suntec City convention and exhibition hall last Saturday. This event, held from 11 Dec 09 to 20 Dec 09, is a mega sales of myriad of books, stationary and computer paraphernalia, with a sprinkling of stalls selling snacks, hair loss treatments and more.

You would be forgiven if you thought you have entered a concert as you step into the exhibition hall as there is a plethora of seminars, stage performances and songs belted out by popular artistes throughout the duration of the event. For us, we noticed a large audience, constituted mainly of men below the stage, watching and perhaps ogling at the sexily dressed Taiwanese singer,

Wen Lan, as she sashayed and imparted her dancing skills to a male audience chosen to join her to play a game on stage. She is here on Singapore to promote her album, which befits her costume, titled “Dancing Queen”.

It was books galore at the event with an equal mix of both English and Chinese books. It was reminiscence as I took sight of the slew of colourful and appealing assessment books for primary school and secondary school kids. The cover of each assessment book is brilliantly designed such that it is really appealing to an adult like me, much so for the kids I believe. It makes good marketing sense to design assessment books so appealing as such. How lucky the kids of today are, their assessment books are so attractive unlike the drab designs I had. I hope this factor will proved to be a consolation for them doing their assessment books.

I still recall the days when I was in primary school. For very minor offences like spelling mistakes, I would be punished quite severely: being slapped on the face, being slapped on the hand by the teacher’s ruler, even more ‘heinous’: being knocked painfully on the knuckles by the ruler and also being pulled on the ‘sideburns’ of the hair by the teacher!

Do not be mistaken. I was not a bad student. In fact, I had exemplary behaviour, it was just that this was the common punishment teachers meted out to students in the grand old days of my times. How times have changed now! The teachers today are much younger than their predecessors and if a teacher is to even scold students, he or she may be inundated by the parents’ complaints!
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