London Book Fair 2015

After the Tokyo Book Fair 2014 (which I still haven't blogged about) and the New Delhi Book Fair 2015, last week, between 14 to 16 of April 2015, I managed to attend the London Book Fair 2015. Unlike the Tokyo Book Fair 2014 and the New Delhi Book Fair 2015, I properly attend the three-day event as I was given the task by the owner of Fixi, Amir Muhammad, to help him to bring Malaysian publishers to the London Book Fair in 2016. We are determine to do it without government help as we think the London Book Fair can be a springboard to a lot of Malaysian publishers to break new territory.

It was one year, in 2014, after Fixi won the Bookseller International Adult Trade Publisher Award at the International Book Industry Excellence Awards. Here is the Star newspaper coverage about Fixi win last year. It was a proud moment for Fixi and I had just joined Fixi. I now can claim to be one of Fixi's stable of writers with 2 short stories being accepted in their anthologies (Lost in Putrajaya and MF2014) and 2 Malay novels : Pinjam and Pentas. Here's my Goodreads link.

At the London Book Fair, where the business of books were conducted by business people, there were so many writers abound looking for opportunity. As you have to pay to get a badge, at GBP35, you know all that attended the London Book Fair were serious people. Unlike the other book fairs I attended, I planned to do so as well. I attended nearly most of the interesting forum, book launches, author's talk, technology briefing and pavilion's launches. Singapore have a pavilion which Amir said was getting bigger and bigger. Indonesia on account of being the guest country in October 2015's Frankfurt Book Fair 2015 (the biggest book fair in the world) had quite a big pavilion too.

Mexico was the Market Focus country for London Book Fair 2015 and had a huge pavilion. I managed to catch Elena Poniatowska, a famous Mexican writer; Chris Evans before he opened up the Club room, a frank discussion among translators from various countries about the fees they are getting paid for doing translations, a discussion by those who are bringing the Susanna Clarke's book : Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell  to television, a talk by Conchita Wurst and a few other talks which I managed to hear bits and pieces of. Some of these writers I only heard of for the first time although they looked adored by a few people.

Outside of London Book Fair, I managed to get into Amir Muhammad's good grace to be brought to meet the people from the Big Bad Wolf, a few od Indonesian filmmakers and we even had dinner with writers Tash Aw, Zen Cho and Lina Tan (a television producer). From Malaysia there were Ling Lung and his wife from Lejen Press with Syafiq, the writer for Ajaib and Awan and Fixi had Ariff Adly, the writer for Kacau and Gelap.

Needless to say, the sight, the sound and the experience at the London Book Fair 2015 left me wanting more and I hope I will be back next year.

Oh, Amir Muhammad and I did went to the British Library a day after the London Book Fair where we managed to sight the original manuscripts of Hikayat Raja Babi (will be published by Fixi at the Pesta Buku Antarabangsa Kuala Lumpur 2015) and the Magna Carta.

Are we creating a ticking bomb?

I once wrote in May after I came back from Mumbai about the need to make sure everything is equal for everyone in Malaysia, especially in the urban area. I was hoping for no one to get left behind in the modern Malaysia. People tend to forget that in order to live comfortably with nary a sign of garbage or have great food served to us, we need to have helps that we keep on complaining without any regards about their well-being or how well their livelihood is. 

In Mumbai, slum is a way of life, people get individual title to the small area they are living in and actually now become a tourist attraction. Not sure if it was due to the Slumdog Millionaire movie or it was an initiative started by Indian government long ago.

Now, we saw a city like London which seems to be the place to be by the rich around the world with so many celebrities owning property worth millions and even billions there, in a state of uprising. Then people start asking, is there a deeper meaning from the the dissatisfaction the younger generation than just the killing of a young father allegedly by the police in north London. 

One report quote a young guy going into an candy store and comes out eating ice cream and chocolate. Laughable right? What if the guy can never afford candy and ice cream? Still laughable?

Malaysia is currently planning affordable housing in a few segments around the Klang Valley. One is called the First Scheme Housing and another the affordable housing called PR1MA. In the state of Selangor, they have their own affordable housing scheme which is spearhead by their own state linked company. The governments seem to realised the need for affordable housing areas. 

However, how many fairy tales have we heard as a child about the jealousy of the poor looking at the ivory tower of the rich. While the children of the poor get the lesser opportunity of getting good education and time to play, the children of the rich grows fat and using money, get more than they deserved.

I know the intention is good but I hope the execution will not create a ticking bomb which might blow up one day. If not now, one day...

7th World Islamic Economic Forum (a post mortem)

I am now back in the office after more than a week in Kazakhstan for the 7th World Islamic Economic Forum. Imagine my surprise when most of my social media friends are interested whether the Prime Minister was really marrying off her daughter than anything about his presence at the Forum or any of the bilateral meets he was in. That's politics I guess, which I am not a part of at all unlike those few personalities like Khairy Jamaludin whom I hung out with as we were attending events at the Palace of Independence, the venue for the Forum.

As a delegate of the 7th WIEF, what did I managed to garner? Some will say attending forums like this are a waste of time and will cost you a bomb. Some forums could be said to have caused me a dent but this one is considered the lesser of all those other forums. My real cost was the flight tickets I had to forked out. It would have been cheaper if not for the late confirmation by other Malaysian delegates which would have gotten us a cheaper deal for the flight tickets from Air Astana (the only Kazakhstan's national carrier). As for my accommodation, let just say I knew a few persons who allowed me to bunk-in with them. The fee of USD500 which are charged on any delegates

The 7th WIEF consisted of 3 days. On Day 1, it was the Young Leaders Network Forum and the Women Entrepreneurs Forum together with the Marketplace. The Young Leaders Network Forum targets those who wants to connect and meet with all those Muslims who have made it as CEOs and have been contributing to Muslims growth worldwide. We have speakers from Malaysia, Kazakhstan, banks, corporations, individuals, artistes, coordinators and NGOs. The Women Entrepreneurs Forum did the same but the issues are skewed towards women. These two forums finished in the afternoon at 5pm but most of the delegates stayed for the whole 3 days.

As for the Marketplace, showcase by visual artistes and performance are shown. Here are some of those performance :

Day 2 : Grand Opening by President of Kazakhstan, keynote speeches by Prime Minister of Malaysia, Vice President of Indonesia, President of Djibouti, Prime Minister of Azerbaijan and President of Islamic Development Bank. It was chaired by Tun Musa Hitam, the Chairman of World Islamic Economic Forum. Then the forums started in the afternoon and you had to make a choice of either going to two plenary sessions with regards to various topics or go to see more performances and talks about arts.

Day 3 : There were only plenary sessions which included one topic close to my heart as an Islamic finance practitioner entitled 'Islamic Banking : Raising the Bar'. They also had some scientific discussion about food safety, food security, halal industry and a few others. 

What I managed to gain :

1) Contacts from those who travel from Malaysia with me as we are stuck in the same airplanes, airports, hotels and conference halls;

2) Meet and greet with personalities I can only imagine trying to meet in Malaysia like ex-Prime Ministers, Ministers, television personalities, singers and such;

3) Meeting foreign delegates whom I either managed to garner businesses from or connect with clients of mine who were also there at the same time;

4) Promoting my books either among delegates or dignitaries;

5) To a lesser extent, manage to get to know new culture (and food);

6) Actually had a mini-reunion with a few of my schoolmates who have now become Malaysia foreign service officers;

Was it worth? Short answer : Yes. Long answer : Depends on what I do with all the contacts I have found there.

Here's the link to my book fanpage to see whom I have given my book to :

Malaysian personalities and my book

Hope nobody is left behind in future Malaysia

I just came back from Mumbai, a city amazing in its culture and history. Not that India is far off from Malaysia. It gained its independence just 10 years before us in 1947. So, in terms of being ruled by its own people, they are nearly the same as Malaysia. However, although people like to think otherwise, economically, they are far ahead of us. More than a few richest people in the world are actually from India or of Indian origin. Here is one of the most expensive home (although it looks more like a high-rise building than a home) which is located in Mumbai. Owned by one Mr. Ambani, owner of Reliance group of India and the 4th richest man in India :

Let us not make an apple to apple comparison but let us look at the disparity between the rich and the poor there. Yes, what people said about Indian slum is true. You can see it everywhere. However, the most expensive real estate stretch in the world is also in Mumbai. Marine Drive is a 3 kilometer long coastal road full with colonial and art-deco building. Price of per square feet can be between RM1,500 to RM3,000. And that is just for a normal apartment. 5-star hotels and well-known business are there in Mumbai.

Malaysia now is in the threshold of moving forward to be a developed economy. A report by Asian Development Bank (ADB) says that Malaysia can be one of the 7 countries to kickstart the Asian Century. Being lumped with China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea, powerhouses in their own right (some I think are so advanced that we dwarf by comparison), I think we need to slow down a bit and look back. I think some in certain institutions should pause and think whether we have all the basis covered before rejoicing about being one of the seven countries.

As I was pointing out in a few of the links I posted in my legal firm Facebook page and my book Facebook page, just look at the articles in major online news site for the past few weeks. Some are saying good things about our credit outlook with bank loan growth being in tandem with economic growth. However, some are warning about uncurbed spending by the people especially with easy credit. I know our Central Bank is dishing out major changes to ensure people are not spending more than they can chew but some of these people are already living from foot to mouth.

As for housing (which comes back to what is happening in India), houses are getting ridiculously expensive and major town are growing farther and farther away from the main artery where people are working. How far should we move further away so that we can go to work and find that we have enough to pay for the basic necessity? Conversation that I had with people of Mumbai revolved around them just surviving there to ensure their parents/children living in their village to have a better life.

That First House Scheme is good but a house without furniture is or basic necessity is just like a 10' by 10' slum area in Mumbai. People will always strive to have a better life and what is life if you go around day in day out living just to put some food on the table for your family? I know government is working on it but let us also hope, there will be no one being left behind....