The Pseudonymous Blogger and a Memorable Saturday...

Technorati tags: Readings, Readings@Seksan's, Walski in the flesh

While Liverpool FC’s season continues with their self-destruct strategy to get into Europe next season – this time at the hands of Newcastle – Walski thought he’d better get away from the boob-tube and post this.

No point getting the adrenalin pumping and blood pressure up for no good reason. Unlike Saturday afternoon, when the obligatory stage fright took over Walski’s body, and let loose the horde of butterflies into his abdominal area.

But before we get the festivities of this blogpost further along, thanks once again to Sharon Bakar for the opportunity to read at Saturday’s Readings@Seksan’s.

And many thanks, too, to Dina Zaman for capturing an image of him for the scrapbook. Guess who forgot to assign someone to snap-snap while Walski read?

But it went well, he must say. Rather pleasantly surprised that Walski’s writing was enjoyed by the audience.

So, what did he finally decide to read? After much contemplation, Walski decided to read the only blogpost he’s written that resembles a story – Ali Baba and the Seven Dwarfs, from way back in 2006 – and another piece that’s a lot more recent.

Yes, the person you see in the picture above is the organic vessel in which Walski traverses this dimension. Not the pink guys, but the one directly in front of the mic.

All told, he didn’t do too badly, despite the damned butterflies occasionally getting in the way, fluttering around the vessel’s larynx region, colliding with the tangled vocal cords…
(no longer a Readings virgin, and more, in the full post)

Best part of the whole afternoon, though, was that some parts of what Walski wrote, and read, made a few people chuckle. Hopefully think, too. Oh, and he got reacquainted with a word he hadn’t heard in a while – faction. Fiction based on fact. Which is what the Ali Baba story was, in any case.

He did feel somewhat intimidated, he must admit, reading in the company of much more accomplished writers. But with encouragement from the Mrs, and Sharon, he decided to go ahead with it.

Walski has sure come a long way from when he first started this blog. And he reckons, that after six years of writing under a pseudonym, it was time to appear in the flesh.

Does the organic vessel ever intend to drop the pseudonym and write under his own name. One should never say never, but Walski has every intention of continuing pseudonymously. Which, by the way, is very different from “anonymously”, because unless you’re one of the ‘walking brain-dead’, it’s not really difficult to find out the vessel’s identity.

And no, you do not go to the marine registry to find out…

In any case, Saturday’s Readings was documented (apparently for the first time) by a gentleman named Leon Wing. Walski appears around time marker 9:56 thereabouts.

So yeah, Walski is no longer a Readings virgin. To him, Saturday was a rite of passage that any writer worth his or her weight in Sodium Chloride needs to go through in the Malaysian world of the written word.

And more importantly, it was fun.

Walski read last of all, by the way, preceded by four other real writers: Shahminee Selvakannu (the writer who mentioned the word “faction”, if not mistaken), Jasmine Low, Dina Zaman, and Sabah Carrim.

Tan Twan Eng, the other guy writer who was supposed to read from his new book The Garden of Evening Mists was unfortunately down with dengue, of all things. So Walski was left being the thorn among the roses. Which is kind of fitting, in a way, since he’s been a thorn in the side of a few folks along the way…

Dina Zaman read from her recently launched collection of short stories, King of The Sea, a book that Walski will definitely get one day. Once his self-imposed moratorium on book purchases is lifted, that is.

A pleasant surprise was Ms. Sabah Carrim, an author who hails from Mauritius, reading from her book, Humeirah: A story about Beauty, Existence and Wisdom. Humeirah gives us an insight into being a woman, and being Muslim, in Mauritius, which incidentally is where one of Walski’s aunt lives. So perhaps this, too, will be a book that will make it to that growing list, post-moratorium.

So there you have it, another chapter in the ever-continuing life adventures of Walski. It was a pleasure to meet and speak to those whom he met yesterday, and whom, with the right cosmic alignments, will meet again somewhere down the road of uncertainty that we call life.

In the meantime, if you can’t be good, be good at it…