03022: PICOF 2026 Day 2

The second day of PICOF 2026 was definitely better than the first day, given that it was a Saturday and the weather was much better today. I feel like the event had a pretty good turnout, and we certainly had a lot of visitors at the booth - so much so that we didn't have a lot of idle time. Tobie sold more than double the books he did yesterday, and that doesn't factor in books sold at the main Komiket publisher booth. And I recognize that it's not exactly a cheap book to buy. The fact that complete strangers are picking up the book speaks to the strength of its premise and the general market's willingness to support local creators in this manner. 

Tobie also had a timeslot to talk about his book, and he came up with this whole Rule of Three framework for his discussion. As he has done many times before, he cited that one of the big pushes for Diliman continuing was us getting together. I concede that I did push him to finish his original comic after he had quasi-abandoned it for a number of years. But isn't that the sort of thing that any partner should do for their partner? Tobie and I have always done our best to support one another in this manner ever since we got together. I guess you could go as far as saying it's one of the defining aspects of our relationship. 

That doesn't change the fact that I'm so proud of Tobie and happy that he has this new book out - his first graphic novel in print. It's 240 pages of his unique storytelling approach brought to life as an actual book that you can hold in your hands. And this is only the first of three volumes, so we're going to go through this particular rollercoaster a few times more over the next few years. Whew!

As a bit of a reward after a long event day, we had a nice dinner at Ramen Nagi, even if we ignored the Ramen Day promotion that had made us go there in the first place in favor of our usual Black Kings order. We also wanted dessert, but couldn't find anything of interest at Ayala Malls The 30th, and ended up just driving through McDonald's back in Sucat. It's a good enough end to the day, although a massage would be AWESOME right now. But we'll be on our feet again tomorrow, so it's prudent to save the massage for next week.