Yes we were amongst the few hundred muggles at Kino KLCC on the morning of 21 July 2007 buying Deathly Hallows. Had a marathon read of the book on the day itself, but my daughter beat me to finishing the book. I had guests and interruptions from the younger ones..what do you expect!On the eve of 21st Khadijah, Yusof and I watched John Q over TV3 and it ended like 1 am. Managed to finally retire at about half one and the alarm woke me up at quarter to four. Yusof decided to tag along as he was rather curious why Khadijah and I were overly excited over this final installation. I usually ask my brother in law to buy the previous books as he is a staff of one of the bookstores and gets discounts! This time we decided to witness ourselves the first day of sale of the ultimate installation.
Arrived at KLCC at half four and the car park wasn't open yet. Parked by the roadside and saw at least 300 people were already queueing. We had decided that we would not be fighting for the fisrt 13 free books! It's the ambience of excitemnet and anticipation which we were so looking forward to! Imagine at the same time around millions of people around the globe were camping outside bookstores waiting for the simultaneous sale of the book!
The crowd was a bit rowdy...mostly teenagers. There was this group of teenagers with hijab (veil) and black abaya (long dress) were all ready to run - they had running shoes on! The wait seemed like ages for us! At least 20 people got ejected by the security guards for hiding within the building. Apparently these people hid in toilets and obscure places within the complex! Once ejected the crowd clapped and shouted "nice try"!
Once the doors were open....the crowd rushed, ran and banged the glass doors and some even pushed others completely compromising their own security! Yusof was one of the victims - squashed and trampled on. Luckily I was right behind him to pull him out of the mound of fallen muggles!
Once in the queue we realised that we had like another 2 hours to kill. We decided to abandon our spots and made our way to KLCC mosque to perform dawn prayers as the surau within the complex would only be open at 1 pm.
We came back at about half six and we were amongst the last in the queue and the crowd had swelled to double the size than before. Whilst in the queue superwoman texted me to say that she was at Ca***f*** queueing for the book! I asked he to get another one for Khadijah so that we wouldn't be fighting over the book. Apparently there were only about 70 of them there! We finally managed to purchase the limited edition at about 8 a.m. We bought other books too! I am now reading "Confessions of an Old Boy" by Kam Raslan.
Free quibbling quill (real peacock feather) came with our purchase
Yusof and me with the Fat Lady before entering "Gryffindor common room"
The queue snaking on fourth floor
This was about quarter past five in the morning!
Some decided to sit
Whilst in the queue, majestic sight of the Twin Towers.
One of the adverts
"Violet" ain't it?
One of Gryffindor's students queueing
The entrance of Kinokuniya drssed up as the entrance to Gryffindor's common room complete with the Fat Lady
Th lady before us who did not know the password; Fat Lady seen here prompting her! "Gillyweed Violet", by the way!
