World Book Fair - Day 3 - another 10 hours, total 20

Having been already confirmed for full 10 hours shifts until the end of the fair, I believe Aunty Alice and co are nice enough to keep me possibly for my positive attitude. Maybe I won't get axed even if i didn't manage to clinch those deals.

Day 3 starts with manual labour. I arrived at the booth earlier than any of the other promoters and Aunty Alice and see lian were doing facelift for the booth. The tables have been rearranged and after i put my bag in the corner i got down to helping them move stuff around. The real manual work came when see lian had to rearrange the stock. Had to carry and move heavy boxes while bent from the waist. Bad for posture... but maybe as a warm up for the coming day of standing straight up.

A new girl arrives, she's called Joanne. Petite little thing, probably very young.. younger than the other girls already here.

CJJ came to the book fair and I spotted him 1st as he approached our booth. The day gets off surprisingly fast. Before long it's 1 pm already, and some of the promoters have gone to have their lunch. I'm still hanging out at the booth with clara and joanne. Then after awhile more it's 3 pm, shanice tells me and joanne to go for our lunch.. albeit a late lunch.

Found out more about joanne as the hours went by, she's just graduated from VJ too, going to Dentistry. Then over lunch got to know that Aunty Alice is a family friend of hers and she's been helping Aunty Alice almost every holiday and she lives along Frankel too. She started work today only bcos she just got back from Adelaide last night. She did manage to unpack first.

After returning from a quick lunch, nothing much goes on.. entertained a little girl with the DMM qn on this whiteboard set-up at the booth. The christmas tree was drawn up and this gutsy little girl actually cleaned up half of it with a tissue paper when she left with her mum! MY CHRISTMAS TREE!

Nevermind.. I redrew the circles and thought for awhile what new picture I can come up with. Then I drew one of those cottage houses we drew back in our childhood days. Got some commends of creativity from the girls in general. One particular girl, she looks pretty dao most of the time, ting, called my xmas tree childish but she caught herself with a 'just right for the little children'.

clara played nanny for the day.. she's been entertaining the little ones non-stop. She says everytime she stops with the little ones, she sees that we're all busy with the adults and nobody was left for her.. she only managed to approach 1 parent before the presentation time.

Presentation time, me and joanne were left behind to slack around. Wonder if it was just as fun at the presentation today as yesterday was. Talked a little more with joanne, found out that her mandarin was poor. Seems she a typical Frankel Avenue-VJC-chiak kantang kind of girl.

This is were my luck really shows its defiance against me. Halfway through the presentation, these 2 Indian men, really well dressed in shirt jacket all come and I approached them. They came from the presentation and were obviously so eager to get their hands on our manuals before the rest of the crowd came back to the booth.

I showed them the manuals and in the end they didn't buy. It wasn't my fault, one of them commended that I did a good job showing them the material but something screwed up and I forgot what.. damned..

Then when the presentation was almost over, this important looking man came to the booth. I went up to him and he was obviously interested in the manuals. He even enquired and showed interest in the Parents' workshop. Clearly a man who wanted the best for his children. He flipped a keypad off the front of his Motorola 3G handphone (Rich too!) and checked his calendar against the date for the parents' workshop. Uh-oh... he wasn't going to be in the country on the date.. Damnit.. I think he said something about going back to discuss with his wife and left.

Continued to serve the crowd that came from the presentation. At around 7 pm, the crowd had already dissipated, many sales were clinched, once again by Ron. A lady walked towards the booth staring at our displays, I approached her and she would sit down to hear me introduce the manuals. She didn't go to the presentation just now but she patiently listened to me. I had to teach her the method, go through several questions for each set and it was tough.. the step by step guided solution wasnt availiable and understanding the complete solution and explaining on the fly really took a chunk of my energy.

She also wanted to see the DMM for her younger one, so I showed her. She wondered how as mummy was she going to teach her young one how to do these number quizzes. Good thing I know how to tell her for the earlier problems, I explained to her the patterns to recognise and the logic to apply and some personal discoveries for some puzzles. Then we went out to uncharted waters of the DMM, the later puzzles that I haven't had time to check out for myself. Stumbled a little, but luckily she was mentally tired too so she asked something else and the DMM was left to lie.

All's good and well and she is ready to confirm her purchase. Then I realised I have to check availiblity of stock. To my horror HOW that she wanted, is out of stock already, cleaned out by the earlier crowd. She then said this was not really acceptable bcos she couldn't make time to come to the book fair again to collect the manuals later when in stock bcos she can't secure leave. Then after shanice returned from the ladies, she asked if other arrangements were possible but none worked out for her. And so then she just made do with shanice's handphone number and said she would call on thurs to check for stock. She commended me for a good job in showing her the material and she was gone.

I'm really busted now. I check the watch and it is almost 8. I spent 1 hour showing the manuals to the lady and she left without a purchase. I also haven't had my dinner, although I had lunch at 3 I was quite drained and hungry from the exertion. I then asked if I could leave early, using the 1 hour dinner break I have to cover for leaving early, and I was allowed to go.

Yah I'm also going to style my hair punked tmr.. I told the girls maybe it's Ron's punked hairstyle that's getting him all the deals. His punked can't fight with my punked.. I'll show him who's the rainmaker tomorrow!

Pangy was pricked and bled at 11:03 PM