BooksActually @ Tanjong Pagar

At the behest of Shaz, I found myself, after walking hundreds of metres in Singapore's prime queer district, up and down small hills littered with small shops and their small owners, closed eateries, stopping for a smoke occasionally and a random photograph (which, I thought, would serve to remind me of the way Tanjong Pagar can hardly hardly be experienced as anything less than kitschy, quaint and a little expensive) - we finally found ourselves at the opening of BooksActually. They sell firsthand copies of many interesting titles (I wish I'd employed the camera in this function because I've forgotten most of what I saw although I do remember it was mostly nice, if not a little limited); I liked the cover designs, they were nothing I'd seen in major bookstores like Borders or Kinokuniya. Lining the top of their shelves were rows and rows of Polaroid, lomo and film cameras. I saw Mark fiddling with a musical note sheet with punctures in the paper, and when he rolled the wheel on the side, a soft, little music filled the small space we occupied around the apparatus. I wandered over to a shelf and browsed the titles but I was immediately distracted by something that looked alarmingly like Alice. My eye briefly registered the price sticker (which said in Monotype font 8 $250.00). When I picked it up to look at it closely, I saw that in the wooden box, covered by a glass sheet, were the original illustrations of Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland folded in such a way as to make the characters appear 3-d. For a while, I marveled at the design and wondered if I could make it myself. When I decided that it was possible, I put down the box and strolled off to another shelf.

They had delicious (free!) cupcakes, though, and the decor was lovely.