Finally, a Saturday where I can have my shedule packed full of things that I want to do, and throughout the whole day from morning to night no less.
The day started at 9.30am when I woke up to the terrible itch in my head to switch on my computer monitor to check my emails and MSN. It's sort of a routine thing now, even when there is pretty much nothing to read. I washed up, got changed, grabbed a parcel which had flew in from US a couple of days before and made off the Cuiyan's flat. Oh yeah, that parcel is special. I haven't bought a plush toy for my entire life time, and I bought 2 at 1 go. At quite a cost too.
Cute heh ? The total cost also quite cute !
Oh yes, that's Cuddles from Happy Tree Friends. As far as I know, there are currently no shops in Singapore selling this. So I ordered them and had them delivered by Fedex priority global parcel service. The parcel arrived in about 3 business days, which is really fast compared to the normal 1 to 2 weeks I had experienced previously using standard parcel services for my Magic the Gathering card purchases.
Cuddles...hmmm cute rabbit
I saw this on sale on the first week of August from a mailer from happytreefriends.com. For those the sad souls who are deprived of some sadistic fun, and doesn't know what happytreefriends is, I can summarise this for you : It's a cartoon series that is disturbing funny and has entertained myself and my sisters. Here, watch some will you ? Shiyun likes the character Cuddles most, and it happens to be rabbit. So I bought 2 of the plush toy, 1 for Shiyun as a belated birthday gift and another for Cuiyan, who is a serious rabbit fanatic. Oh did I already mentioned that it's cost me .. oh well.
Anyway, I had promised to lend my help for Cuiyan's plunge into the sales world. She had got herself a spot at a flea market behind Orchard Cineleisure (1pm to 7pm) organised by Lime magazine. She had prepared a a series of colourful slippers from her Thailand purchasing trip and some accessories from a friend for sale. Her entrepreneur spirit rekindles mine as well, so I gave her my help in the form of manpower and lady bags on consignment from Jia Lun.
While making my way to the lift lobby of cuiyan's block, I met Jiemin and Xiaohui as Jiemin illegal parked his van at the rubbish chute parking bay. Jiemin had made good his promise to be our driver for the day. So nice of him. Together we made our way up to Cuiyan's flat. After the usual morning greetings, I gave Cuiyan the Cuddles plush toy (pity, she can't appreciate the gore in happytreefriends), and we proceedto load up the goods for sale into Jiemin's van.
Oue first stop was for breakfast. Since Cuiyan was giving us a treat, we gave her a chance to suggest the destination before we gave ours. So instead of abolone porriage or sharkfin noodles, we came to Macdonalds @ Bishan Junction 8. Woah, I should have guessed. Everytime you asked Cuiyan where to go or eat, without fail, she will sprout the magical words : Junction 8. What a great fan. Let's buy some Capital Reits stocks people !
Boring story cut short, fast forward to the our arrival at Orchard Cineleisure. Since none of us knew where is the unloading point, we went against the traffic at the one-way street near the entrance of Orchard Cineleisure carpark entrance, and got as close to the flea market spot as possile. We hastely unloaded the goods before a security guard came around and spotted us blocking the traffic while unloading. Jiemin quickly drove off before anything dramatic happens while the rest of us went in to locate our table position.
While setting up our spot, I took full advantage of the chaotic situation and took up more space than allocated by rearranging the tables a bit. An additional 80cm of retail space was created. Woah ! That's something a bad neighbour will do !
As noobies in a flea market, we realise that we did not have any table cloth to cover the crude wooden planks which was our table.
So we started off the day with a colourful array of slippers selling at $5 each, necklace at $3 each and kiddy looking lady bags at $8 each. Jiemin and Xiaohui bidded us farewell after a quick spin around the flea market, well not before we convinced them to come back for us at 7pm and catch the final firework competition display together after that.
The business started out slow, and the sun was firing intense infra-red rays onto the area. Soon, Cuiyan's colleague, whom I have forgotten her name (alamak, bad memory) arrived to help out at our stall.
* Update 17 Aug 06 * Cuiyan's colleague = Julie
And so our ladies got into high gear as I shared some tips on selling stuff to them. While it involved smiling and standing at the stall whole day round. I think they hate the standing part though.
We got our first sale, a pair of slippers at 1.45pm. I could almost see her happiness index soar when Cuiyan made her first sale. Sales picked up as the crowd grewed at about 3pm. Cuiyan's friend Julie, suggested that we should drop the price of our necklace to $1 as the opposite stall was selling at $2.50.
Surely enough, sales went up for the necklaces after the price cut. We also started selling the slippers at 2 for $8 and 3 for $10 to boost sales.
Cuiyan's JC friend, Xiao Yun amd Pong came along to visit. As a ex-SIA girl, Xiao Yun do looks better than the average Singapore girl and is pretty friendly. Afraid that our labbit fanatic would die from hunger in the middle of Orchard Road, they also bought 猪肠粉 for her.
Meifeng also popped by with her male friend. Quite Ang mo pai type. He kept stressing the fact that there he is not attached by showing his ring-free fingers and kept suaning Meifeng for the whole duration of their stay.
There was also a interesting customer who had interested in our free gift. a blue pouch for the necklace. She thought that the little pouch was for sale. We had 2 colours for that small pouch, blue and red. It reminded me of the chinese story of a precious pearl which had a special box crafted for it to enhance it's value. Instead of making the pearl more valuable, it did the opposite, the box was held in higher value than the pearl. And going back to the lady, she bought a few necklaces for her daughters and took 2 blue pouches. I think all she wanted was the blue pouches. She just didn't want to look stupid because she tried to buy a free gift.
Meifeng came around at about 5pm again. During a chat with Cuiyan, she mentioned that she did not like her male comparion's NS friend because they made a degrading comment behind her back. They said that her t***t are too b** (Censored due to sensitive nature). Boy I have never took noticed. But that's a very shallow and unfair comment to make. Those testosterone driven brains clearly didn't realise those stick figures they adore so much are the minority. Can't wait to check out their wives in 10 years' time.
Julie left at about 5pm, after a chat with MeiFeng on how sinfully short their skirts are. In order to prevent her hubby from feasting on instant mee again for dinner, she had to leave her position for home. So there goes Cuiyan's colleague.
Nearing 7pm, the free-for-all begun. Prices fell and the crowd grew. The sky grew darker as the time goes on. Nobody wanted to bring back their goods. Neither do we. So we started dumping the slippers for $3 each.
It didn't worked very well as we sold off 2(?) more pairs of slippers. It didn't help when the sky turned dark at an accelerated pace towards 7.30pm. As the flea market was operated without any modern technology, saved for Lime umbrellas, wooden tables and plastic chairs, we had to packed as fast as we could before we found ourselves blinded in the darkness. Jiemin and Xiaohui arrived just in time to help us pack up. With their help, we were walking away to his van in less than 15 minutes.
After dumping the 4 odd bags of goods in Jiemin's van, we had to make a decision on how to see the fireworks display. They pointed out that on their way to Orchard Cineleisure, the traffic was unusually heavy. This could only mean 1 thing : Everybody was rushing into the marina square area to watch millions of dollars worth of amazing pyrotechnics display.
Bus : Out of the question. The entire stretch of Orchard road was jammed as far as we could tell.
Taxi : If we wanted to spend lots of cash doing pointless things, this is an excellent way. The taxi meter would have sent out hearts racing and our brains asking ourselves why the hell are we siting on a cab when we have a van.
Train : Sounds good. 2 train stops, from Somerset to City hall. Shouldn't be too bad.
Verdict : Train. Sounds logical. So we went for it. I sponsered a fresh tab of parking coupons for the parking and we made our way to Somerset MRT station.
That's until we found out the truth. Everyone thought of the same too. The trains were arriving at 7-8 minutes intervals, and were jammed packed with sardines people. Once the train doors slided open at Somerset station, nobody stepped out of the train. The remaining small gaps were what's left over. Jiemin and Xiaohui managed to squeeze in while Cuiyan and I watched in amazement as the train left without most of the people who had waited with us for the train.
The next train arrived and the same thing happened again. There was nobody stepping out of the train and everyone else couldn't get on. Not giving up, we walked to the last carriage and found a measy gap to squeeze in. Depsite taking more space than the ideal male chinese, I managed to get on the train. Unfortunately, because of my height, I had to make do with a armpit near me.
The lucky part was that the tall guy next to me didn't have BO and nobody farted in train. It would be the most interesting scene should any of the above happened. It would be a very great PR disaster for the poor guilty soul. Anyway, please ignore my overactive simulations of the extremes. The 2 stations trip took us almost 30 minutes to complete. The only time that city hall MRT station was so packed was Christmas eve and New year's eve.
While making our way up from basement 3 of the station (South-East platforms)to the basement 1 (control station), I noticed a red spot on Cuiyan's left shoulder. It could mean only 1 thing : She got nailed by a female mosquito ! It really pays to have more attractive human beings around me as the chances of giving a meal to a female pregnant mosquito goes down dramstically. The least I could do is to give her my thanks for taking the bullet for me, at the risk of another dengue infection. So noble of her !
Fast forward story >> We (Cuiyan and I)reunited with Jiemin and Xiaohui. Since nobody could come up with a battle better plan on how to get to see the fireworks, I came up with one.
City hall -> Funan -> KFC take-away -> Padang -> Sit and watch
It's better than trying to walk through city link -> Esplanade -> Die trying to reach there. Almost everyone was doing it. There was no way to reach before 9pm, with take-away dinner and a good spot to watch from. And so my approved plan went through and we ended up 15 minutes early siting on the grass on the Padang. Heng ah, it did not rain earlier and the grass wasn't wet. So it's a KFC pinic dinner @ the Padang, quite special huh?
Some quick facts about the Singapore Fireworks Festival 2006
- 5 August 2006, 2100 hours - Italy (Dynamic City)
- 8 August 2006, 2100 hours - Singapore (Our City of Colours)
- 11 August 2006, 2100 hours - New Caledonia (Nature & Mystique / Truly Malanesian)
- 12 August 2006, 2100 hours - France (Celebration of Life)
As the silence came after the last bangs of the fireworks went, the smoke from the fireworks flooded the sky. I say that the PSI level should be around 150-200 at that point of time. That mean's it's time to zao. Hey wait, we have a situation. In order to leave the area, we needed transportation and every mode of public transport was jammed packed.
Xiaohui saved the day by suggesting that we should walk back to somerset. That's a good one I must admit. Since I had no problem walking from Orchard MRT to City hall to Suntec to Bugis, this wouldn't be a problem for me. Well, that's me. And I thought it's a good idea. It would be a no sweat event, burning off the fats off our KFC dinner sounded like a very good idea. So we went for it.
Starting point = The Padang
Destination = Carpark opposite Cineleisure
Ending point = Park Mall ?!!?!
Total distance to be covered = 2.3km
Actual distance covered = 1.25km
What happened ?!?!
Well, after standing for 1/2 a day, Cuiyan's legs couldn't take any more abuse. The first part of the 2.3km hike covered 1.25km, was too exhausting to our ladies. Considering Xiahui's who was similarly turn off by the prospects of walking the remaining distance, we took a break at Olio Dome cafe. Air-conditioning had never felt better ! Ah, the wonders of modern science.
Fast forward the story again >> After drowning our drinks, we took a bus to the destination : The open air carpark opposite Orchard Cineleisure. Jiemin dropped us at our place. Good job ! Thanks Ahmad Jiemin ! That concludes the day.
The statistics
1/50 Bags sold - Many people look look see see but never buy. Sigh.
40/100 Slippers sold - Not too bad but we are out of size for some designs.
??/50 Necklaces sold - Also ok but don't make much from these.
If only we could sell drinks and food. We would have make it rich ! But the organiser's aren't that stupid though.
This concludes the longest blog entry ever on this blog : Bad guys win ! The organiser made the most $$$ by renting the tables, chairs and umbrellas to us.
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