Buying manga is not so straight forward

So many things which happened lately, yet somehow I don't have the mood to put them into words.

The past two weeks have been really hectic, work-wise. Attended two days of seminar last Monday and Tuesday. The day after that, I met up with Silentside, Louis and his boyfriend.

And on Thursday, I met up with Silentside again.

Pretty draining to go meet them after a tiring day at work. Still, it was fun to meet Louis and the boyfriend for the first time. They bought some stuff at Bodynits, just like Xavier did not too long ago.

I didn't know this brand has quite a large gay customer base. ;P

We had dinner at Marina Square and then got lost trying to find our way out to the Esplanade.

I tell you, Marina Square is the most confusing shopping mall ever. The layout is not user-friendly and the design and layout of the floors are not the same from one portion to the other.

Even my Singaporean friend took a good 20 minutes to find a restaurant there which he has been to before.

At the Esplanade, Silentside recounted for the hundredth time his dilemma. I hope you have got as many opinions as you can and finally decided on something.

Or not. Things may just get solved by themselves sometimes.

As I was meeting Silentside at Orchard, I decided to go get some not-easily-available manga for CF from Kinokuniya.

Censored material stuff, in other words.

I tried looking for the two titles. The map says that one was on shelf 26-H, but there is no such shelf. The shelf stopped at 26-A.

For the other book, the instruction said to seek the staff's assistance.

So I have to ask the staff for help.

First thing she asked was, "Is this for your own personal reading, sir?"

"Yes, they are."

"Please wait a moment. I'll check for the availability. If we have them, you have to show identification that you're eligible to buy them as these are conditional release titles."

Sheesh. The way this was happening, it almost seemed like I was buying hard core porn or something.

Or those which involve animals.

And so she went off to look for the books. They were stacked behind the counter. There were quite a number of other manga titles too.

After the titles were found and I showed my ID to prove my age, she handed over the books to me. Just as I was about to walk away, she turned around and asked her colleague nearby ...

"Do I need to escort him to the cashier?"

WTF? It's not like I was buying weapons or drugs or something dangerous .... Hmmm, what has CF gotten me into?

These titles had better be good and worth all the discomfort I was going through. Hmmm ... I wonder how hard core these titles are? The drawings on the cover seem to be quite mild ... but there is the word yaoi printed ...

Fortunately, her colleague replied no.

And I didn't get any strange looks from the cashier.

Or did I detect a hint of surpressed snigger?

Finally, the plastic was unwrapped and I got to see what all the fuss it's about.

There's nothing even remotely explicit in them, just cartoon porn artistically drawn comics with some homosexual hint ... not even an inch of exposed rendered skin ...

How disappointing! Anyway, it was to be expected. My sweet and mild-mannered boyfriend is just well ... sweet and mild mannered.

And hard core free.