USA, here I come!

My visa interview was for 10.00am. I had picked that time slot to avoid the rush hour, which I did, but took  a wrong turn and went into KLCC instead. But my GPS guided me back. So it was  9.45 by the time I got to the guardhouse to the 'forbidden city', which is what most people I have asked consider the US Embassy on Jalan Tun Razak to be.

Before I could join a visible short queue, the guard on duty, Clement, asked, "What time is your interview, sir?"

"Ten."

"You can go to the counter with your documents, then," he smiled.

"Don't I have to queue?"

"For you special, sir," he grinned. I learned that the queue I saw from a distance was for entering the premises, which was after showing the guard my appointment letter.

It was a short wait before I was allowed in for security clearance: remove shoes, belt, wallet, empty pockets, etc, etc. But, again, the guards were all scrupulously polite. Then, I put them all back on and stepped into the empty courtyard of the Temple of Doom where there were chairs for me to sit on to tie my shoe laces.

I'm almost there! One more large door, and I saw another burly guard on the left, outside another door.

"Ambil nombor disini ke?" I asked redundantly to break the silence, seeing the queuematic machine.

"Ya, ya. Tekan butang merah," the guard smiled, before pointing me to the opposite side. "Ada tempat duduk disana. Sini sudah penuh." I opened the door to see a room full of people. I had seen more smiley faces at wakes and funerals!

What is it about the US Embassy that terrorises people so?! It was as if the people in the room, mostly Malaysians with a smattering of foreigners, were all uniformly afraid to even breathe in case they made too much noise and their visas were denied for that reason, or make eye contact with anyone. A man who was chatty while we were queuing outside the main gate, suddenly seemed to have turned to ice inside that room. It was the same look on all the faces, one of dread. Like in 1984, the Apple commercial. "Oh no, they're going to reject my application. They're going to reject my application." Come on people, you're going to America. Smile! Look happy!

I thought the application process was quite painless, with good instructions and a relatively easy to use website. Everyone seemed to be going out of the way to be polite and helpful, starting with Clement at the main gate. Well, almost everyone. When my number was called promptly at ten to present my documents at the main hall, the woman at the counter looked like she had had too many sour lemons for breakfast. But she was not rude, only unfriendly. Oh, people have their 'off' days, I thought to myself as I walked back to my first waiting lounge.

Not much of a lounge, actually. A large American flag behind a glass, a soundless television playing a western that nobody was watching, dull posters on the wall and a stack of magazines -- Newsweek, The Economist, The Circular, The Statesman, etc -- that were probably too old for a dentist's waiting room. I used the men's room, came back and found an empty seat. Why don't I write a story about this, I thought, and started to scribble. Then I looked up, suddenly. Do they have CCTV cameras in here? What if they ask me what I'm writing? Mild panic. Oh, what the hell.

My number was called again at a quarter to eleven for finger printing. The gentleman attending to me was sufficiently polite and professional, even if he didn't quite have the customary Malaysian friendliness we are used too. I found a seat and decide to wait in this second lounge with the, almost apologetic, framed photos of Obama, Biden and Kerry in a corner near the door, for my actual interview. Here again was the same nervousness. Everyone looked around very careful, turning slowly, making no sudden movements, not smiling, speaking in whispers -- I wanted to laugh. Oh no, what if they reject my visa?! I heard someone shush an over exuberant child behind me. "If we don't get our visa today, it will be your fault," I imagine the man scolding the boy.

My interview was at 11.15. Again it was painless, with even a small joke at the end. My visa was approved in less than two minutes, with a promise of delivery within two days to the address specified. I was smiling when I left. I saw Clement outside in the hall and we exchanged smiles. "You're here now," I said, again redundantly. "Yes, sir, no more queue outside."

Ordinarily, people like Clement would make all the difference to your experience at an new place. I have been to many embassies and high commissions, where some of the staff have been outright rude, but nowhere have I felt intimidated. The smiley security guard or the receptionist usually makes everything all right, anyway. Meet Americans outside on the streets, and they are perfectly friendly, sometimes annoyingly so, as if they feel they need to make up some perceived 'bad behaviour' by their  government. (Hey, we have heck of a lot more to apologise for our in own government, okay! We are a boob-a-day country.)

So why is the US Embassy so forbidding? I thought my visa application was sufficiently well handled. The people I met in person were professionally pleasant, a far cry from ten years ago. So why this anxiety? Is it us, or is it them? Do they know this is how the rest of us feel?

15 years of Silverfishing

"May you live in interesting times," goes the Chinese curse, and 2014 has certainly been anything but boring. The year opened with the raid by Jais on the Bible Society of Malaysia in Petaling Jaya who took off with 321 copies of the Alkitab, 10 copies of the Iban Bible -  Bup Kudus and 20 copies of Luke's Gospel in Malay, causing much indignance, belligerence and confusion in equal measure. Was this an act of high-handedness by a bunch of pocket Napoleons, or something much more sinister -- a well thought out political-chess play. Then, a deputy minister gets walloped in public. And forgives the assailant!

Then, on what I though was the bright side, the new year opened with three motorists stopping for me at a pedestrian crossing! This was in Bangsar Baru. And another lady driver let my car pass at the Maybank junction instead of creating a grid-lock. Wow, wow, wow! Then it all came to end quite abruptly when three barbarians tried to run me over at the zebra crossing 10 yards from the Bangsar Baru Police Station. (Where else?) In one case, I was already halfway across when a white car stopped and waved me on, when one of Attila the Hun's peasant sister in a red Myvi saw me crossing and immediately floored her gas peddle and sped past me! In the other two cases, too, I was already halfway across. It's no wonder that Singaporeans see us as a frontier country. (By the way, many of these barbarians are mat salleh, not just local.)

The real reason for this piece is that Silverfish Books will be celebrating our 15th anniversary this year in June. I knew it June last, of course, but it didn't hit me like a tsunami then. Approaching December it did, though. 15 years! WTF have I been doing for 15 years?!

When we opened our doors in Desa Seri Hartamas in 1999, it was probably at the worst time possible. It was just after the Asian currency crisis and the country was in deep recession. And, here I was concerned about books! I used to get my books from the UK through the Good Book Guide, or from Skoob Books. (MPH Bangsar Baru had a section labelled "For Mature Readers" -- one shelf of Penguin Popular Classics. That's how pathetic the book scene in KL was.)

Then, another tsunami struck: the mega-bookstore madness. Remember those days? There were more bookstore space in Klang Valley than in the whole of Singapore, a city of English readers with twice the population. It was a recipe for disaster. What were the bookshop owners thinking? What were the banks thinking? Only Kinokuniya played it sensibly. The rest is history.

Silverfish Books too would have been collateral damage, if we hadn't been quick on our feet. We moved into publishing, and focused our efforts on Malaysian titles in English (which, surprisingly, the chain stores  neglected). So, many of the decisions we made were based on circumstances. We were certainly affected business-wise. Like hell, we were, and we had to do some major ikat perut and managed to keep our heads above water.

In terms of retail we have a decent following of regulars (in the country and overseas -- amongst individuals, universities and libraries) for our Malaysian books in English. No other shop in the country has our collection (at least, not our back lists). Yes, we tend to be looked at as 'intellectual', but these are the people we want to engage anyway. In publishing, we dare say we're world class, with five of our books appearing on international short and long lists since 2009, and selling foreign language translation rights for a book we have not even published yet!

What happens now? We could carry on as we have in the past, plodding along. You know, after you ikat perut so long, your appetite lessens somewhat. But on the other hand, we have dreams. Our Malaysian English collection is nowhere near what we'd like to be, and we'd also like to add Malay, Chinese and Tamil books to it. So, one dream is for a truly Malaysian bookshop with a curated selection of books in all the major languages, which would attract knowledgeable customers and scholars from around the country and the world. (We are already doing that now, but it could be better organised. And probably move to a swanky shop-space.) Included in the collection would be books from other Southeast Asian countries (I prefer not to use ASEAN, because it really is a failure. All they have done so far it pose for group photographs in silly shirts.) And of course world books, meaning from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.

All this means work. When you work 12 hours a day, and you are a shopkeeper-cum-publisher who translates, edits, critiques, writes, runs workshops, administers and manages a business, is the IT technician, the webmaster, and the plumber who fixes the toilets, time is often short. Still, I have never been afraid to dream. When I wanted to organise the first KL International Literary Festival in 2004, everyone else around me had palpitations, but not me. (It was scary how steely I was.) What do you have to lose from a dream, anyway? Besides the dream itself? Such journeys are always lonely, although sometimes when you meet a fantastic co-traveller, it would be like ... what? ... the Beatles at the Ed Sullivan Show?!

So, here's to, at least, another ten years of Silverfishing!!!