F1 Sepang ’06: Day 2

Things went wrong early in the morning when Kean Leong, who went separately, told us that the bus had already left at 6.15am. We expected it to leave at 7.15am like yesterday, as we weren’t informed of the different times beforehand. Supposedly it was in the paper distributed during the briefing, but I wasn’t there, and Daniel prolly didn’t read it, so… >_>

Dad had to drive us all the way to Dengkil rest area (to meet up with the bus) which is on the way to the KLIA. My entire family was up early in the morning to do the Qing Ming ceremony thingy, which is very out of the way. Oh well.

Our colleagues from the previous day ‘betrayed’ us and formed their own group. The three of us, Kean Leong, Ding and I, had troubles recruiting others into our own since they already have their own cliques. -.- Die.

We moved far away from our bosses when they asked for people to volunteer for the ‘next booth’, which is the hell-raising Booth 6. It’s a taboo booth, as I mentioned before in the previous post, so no one in their sound and right mind (except for the newbies) will want to work there.

After Booth 6’s position has been taken up by our previous colleagues (haha, like, serves you right <_<), we immediately signed up for the next booth which requires only 3 people. We fit the bill for Booth 7, and apparently they opened up three new booths which we have no idea where the are situated, so we took the risk (like we had any choice).

“Walk right from the main entrance, and go straight all the way until you see a booth,” our boss Nicolas told us. And boy, the ‘until you see a booth’ was right because you have to walk like almost a kilometre to see the damn blue booth. It’s so completely isolated.

This picture is taken from near our booth, and the white roof in the centre of this pic is the main entrance - at least I think it is. Being located at an isolated place, this pic shows the same peaceful scenery as it is up till 11am or so.

We had to wait 30 minutes for our bosses to bring us the Official Programme magazines, so we sat around waiting.

If you wondered why we waited outside the booth, that’s because our booth was infested with giant red ants. And I do mean giant. We took our bags outside, and after debating among ourselves, we decided that we being Goliaths could easily thrash away tiny Davids, we kill ‘em by stomping on them.

From our booth, we can easily see the KLIA with their fleet of airplanes taking off periodically.

One of the airplanes.

This pic is taken when we had yet to kill the ants. We took it to ourselves to sell the books that way, but such ‘low-class’ business ways will put a dent into our sales. Macam jual VCD cotak rompak nia. They’re covering their eyes ‘cause they tak nak kena cam.

There were barely any cars passing by us, what more people, in the morning. So we had an entire morning to laze away. Come afternoon however, scenario changed when the sun shone directly on us and the booth became a sauna.

We made friends with the abangs taking care of the gates near our booth (K1b and K2), and we were then told we could enter anytime we like, especially since there’s a guideline pasted on the fence nearby stating that those with the right passes and wristband could enter the stands.

So we did!

The Japanese kid had a Sarawak flag for some reason. And the Japanese auntie differs a whole lot than our own Malaysian aunties that look like complete ah sams.

We watched a bit of the F1 and Porsche racing, which I thought was a bit bland and pointless since you’re making tens of laps and you can barely watch a single car from more than several seconds from where you’re seated at. Of course with the F1 racing, the noise was deafening and bordered on ear-splitting and eardrum-defeating levels, especially when you’re inside the stands.

There were food sold at the stands, such as the measly Beef Burger Set that looked like they were using Ramli burger materials which were sold at RM25 each. Same goes to the French Fries Set and whatever ridiculously priced meals they have.

We were extremely lazy, so we only made several trips to the stands and merely stood around our booth until it got really hot. We caught the annoying kid (as mentioned in my previous entry) actually sitting down among the hundreds of foreigners watching the F1 race. Bloody lazy fuck; at least we were still selling the books even though we weren’t doing it in the stands. -_____-

In the end we sold only 62 books, which given the location of the isolated booth where only a handful of people pass by compared to the main entrance, coupled with our lazyness, isn’t exactly too bad. Our job stopped at about 3.30pm after our boss, Paul Butler, gave the green light to go. We later noticed that the people from other booths were still working, hohoho.

Sorry for the lack of pics for today’s job, but if you were in my shoes standing in the hothothot sun, you won’t be snapping pictures.

Our bus arrived at 5.15pm which was so much earlier than yesterday, and he stopped us at somewhere near Summit at about 6pm.

I reached home, and had this urge to pee but I couldn’t. It was horribly frustrating, but thought drinking lots of water would do it and that did the trick. Went to the doc anyhow, and with my sunburnt hands and neck coupled with that peeing prob, I was having mild symptoms of heatstroke, medically known as hyperthermia.

Aih, nothing to worry about, just dehydrated and shit like that, when you’re exposed to blatant outrageous heat in the cursed Sepang where the rain never falls despite being forecasted to do so. Bloody.

At least it wasn’t as bad as last year’s experience.