F1 Sepang ’06: Day 3

Woke up at 5am, Ding’s mum fetched us to Kean Leong’s house, whose father then fetched us to Pyramid to wait for the bus due to arrive at 6.30am.

We arrived at F1 Sepang at about 7am plus or so, the earliest among the three days. We initially wanted to work at other booths, but with choices left only between Booths 6 and 7 (as explained in the previous two entries), we chose to return to our previous booth instead.

Eating early morning breakfast outside our booth.

Another look of our booth near Gate K2, which is the Hillstand, and the cheapest place available at only RM50.

Gate K1b on the right of our booth.

The morning was lovely and cooling, and simply cloudy throughout the entire day, even though the sun managed to sneak out occasionally. It didn’t rain at all, as forecasted, since that’s as worse as it can get thanks to its yearly bomoh curse.

Nothing much to say actually, since it was almost the same as yesterday’s except that the weather made it so much more bearable. I took a small nap worth several minutes, ate the mihun we tapau-ed from behind my house twice throughout the day, lazed around, etc. Time passed by rather quickly.

We lazed around.

Oh, and whom did we see but…

Sharon and Ruby! They walked past our booth immediately after snapping the above picture using self-timer, and apparently they’re working at the circuit too, although we didn’t get the details what they’re working as.

Of course, being at an isolated booth means we’ll get less customers, which is what our bosses failed to fathom. Having barely sold more than three stacks of the Programmes yesterday, they gave us FIFTEEN stacks today. Their logical reasoning is to be doubted.

We also had a spot of ant problems with our booth again, this time attacked by tiny black ants that kept coming to my Coleman containing 2 litres of 100 Plus, and the plastic bag that contained our rubbish.

We soon realised that selling barely a stack of Programmes sounds entirely bad, so we went to the main entrance where many people alighted from shuttle buses and try to rampas business from Booths 2 and 3. Obviously we had no choice, especially when they sell ten times the amount we did.

We also got to go up to the stands freely, on the pretext of selling the Official Programmes, and watched several minutes worth of racing, from the Porsche race to the F1 itself. The crowd was very amusing too, as they did the Mexican Wave spontaneously; and trust me, being there itself watching hundreds of people doing said wave sportingly is simply amazing. They did that several times and cheered to themselves.

Paul came to our booth at 3pm to collect the money and the unfinished Programmes, and asked, “How come you sold so little?” Like, you gave us a booth near the RM50 Hillstand gate that even a lady commented to her boyfriend, “Baby, the price of that book is as expensive as your ticket itself!”

The huge queue near our booth at about 3pm when the race had begun. They are mostly Malaysians, and we know how punctual they are.

After 3pm, we were given up to 5pm to sell off ten Programmes each (some of them chose 5 instead). After switching about locations, I finally settled for somewhere between Gate 5 and Booth 5 while waiting for the crowd to appear to buy the outrageously-priced books.

I am annoyed by people asking, “Can give discount?”, “Why no discount, it’s already after the race” and the most infamous “Free ah?”.

In the end though, the three of us, Ding, Kean Leong and I managed to sell 10 books each, with a commission of RM5 per book. You do the math, it’s not too bad despite being hard to sell in the beginning. :)

This cute guy’s wearing a Schumacher outfit, haha.

Marlboro girls! The girl on the right - whom I really fancied - I christened her as ‘Choy May’, due to her slight resemblance to the VJ twins Choy Wan and May Wan.

Daniel and I bought this limited edition cigaratte packet, complete with a special lighter for only RM16. It’s cheap, and my commission’s sufficient enough to cover it after I felt like splurging my newly-gained money over something.

We got a free copy of the Official Programme too, as expected, after everything’s finally over.

The bus took 2 hours to return to PJ Hilton after all the traffic jam and rain. I initially thought it was the mad rush that caused the huge jam, but in the end it was because of a huge accident when a single Proton Saga rammed into the side of the barrier, causing the entire Saga to be completely smashed up.

And the worst part is, we saw the body. The dead body. Covered up by a black sheet. Poor soul. Wanted to snap a pic of the accident (since a picture is worth a thousand words), but I’m kinda paranoid after watching all these horror movies last time. <_< Seeing an actual death in real life can leave a slightly raw taste on your tongue.

Kean Leong’s parents picked us up after Ding and KL dined for a bit at KFC. We went for dinner at somewhere near SJMC which the parents treated us - “Eat more! Eat more!” till I couldn’t eat anymore. Finally reached home at about 9 something.

I’m fairly happy with the job since it’s a hundred times easier and better than last year (after I stress this repeatedly in previous entries). And my laptop is slowly materialising.

I’m tired, sunburnt and tired, so I apologise for any yawn this entry may induce.