festival | Insanity at its best!

I recently volunteered for the Emirates Literature Festival in Dubai where all volunteers were supposed to wear standard-issue T-shirts. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any to fit my bulky frame. I decided to keep the one I got as a souvenir and turn it into something priceless; click on one of the images below for a closer look!

This bad boy has autographs from authors, poets and illustrators, including John Julius Norwich, Rachel Hamilton, A.F. Harrold, Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Dobbs, Garth Nix, Anthony Horowitz, Ian Rankin, Brandon Sanderson, David Crystal, Ben Crystal, Hillary Crystal, David Melling, Jenny Colgan, Alexander McNabb, Marcia Williams, John McHugo, John Man, Sean Fay Wolfe, Gill Lewis, Jo Simpson, Maitha Al Khayat, Lauren St. John, Chris Carter, Shukri Al Mabkhout, Korky Paul, Darren Shan, Anchee Min, Lisa Faulkner, Sebastian Fitzek, Rachel Billington, Susan Abulhawa, Antony Beevor, Jonathan Meres, Justin Marozzi, Chris Haughton, Diana Darke, Susan Casey, Peter Horacek, Christopher Edge, David Allen, Tim Specter, Chris Cleave, Imtiaz Dharkar, Curtis Jobling, Chris Cleave, Gavin Mortimer, Marco Misiroli and Harry Baker. This is one precious heirloom that I’m sure to pass on to my children.

NOTE: In case you were wondering, I did have a tough time mapping forty-nine names to their signatures two months after the festival. Fortunately, Microsoft Paint came to the rescue – hope I haven’t missed any names! 🙂

2015 is supposed to be a year of change for me; I had stayed holed up in my comfort zone for far too long and it was high-time I ventured outdoors to follow my passions. Volunteering at the Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature 2015 seemed like a perfect opportunity to awaken the literary beast within me from a long hibernation. Plus, it gave me the ideal opportunity to inaugurate my new Nikon D7100. Words would be wasted on the awesome experience that was the EAFOL, so without further ado, here’s a look at the essence of the festival through my lens.