Hi My Name Is Zul, And I'm A Magazine Addict... (Part I)

Yes, it’s true. I can’t get enough of the stuff and I’m afraid there’s no real cure in sight. (Not that I’ve seriously looked for one)

It started more than 30 years ago when my parents constantly purchased for me a variety of comics, local and foreign. Can’t recall all of them, but Bujal and the Jungle Book do come to mind.

Then I moved on to pop culture and footie rags, including Weekend, URTV (yeah huh!), Shoot!, No1 and Smash Hits. Being an only child, magazines were my loyal companions, apart from my Star Wars and Majorette collection lah.

And I guess the addiction was what pushed me to start writing myself. Which then meant the mags would become my source of ideas and reference. This was during the dark days of Pre-Internet (yes, humans used to live without the Internet, believe it or not), where if you were looking for a quote, you had to literally go thru tons of mags and books, flipping each page manually with a coloured marker in hand!

And the thing is, whatever I collected, I've kept. So if you were to ask me how extensive my collection is now, I’d say it’s big enough to open up my own MAGS FOR LESS store.

And apart from the titles I’ve mentioned above, the collection also includes Guitar World, Metal Edge, Tiger Beat, Teen Set, Sports Illustrated, Match, FHM, GQ, Details, Esquire, Men’s Review, his, EM, Journal One, Monsieur, Tone, KLUE, etc, Hooters, Autocar, Entertainment Weekly, Maxim, WWE, Blender, Spin, Mojo, Writer’s Digest, Reader’s Digest, Conde Nast Traveller, Hot, OK!, People, US, Men’s Health, Time, Newsweek, Asiaweek, Far Eastern Economic Review, Wired… ah, banyak lagi lah!


So you can imagine how difficult it was for me to actually throw away some stuff during one spring-cleaning session a couple of weeks back. It was torture. It was hell. It was virtually impossible.

But somehow I did manage to throw away RM5 worth of stuff to the old newspaper guy. Although I think I cried a little. I mean, I’ve spent virtually 70% of my pocket money over the years on buying up all these mags, so it was like throwing away money for me.

And secondly, I have in my possession a number of Premiere Issues and no-longer-in print gems that I think would make me an e-bay millionaire sometime in the future…

Coming up: Part II