Tuesday, September 25, 2007 . 7:00 PM
Okaaaay....The past few days have been rather interesting....I managed to get a small temporary job with Eureka Campaign Consultants as a stagehand/mascot on Saturday and Sunday.The events were about Mid Autumn Festival celebrations and I picked Saturday's location at Gek Poh Shopping Centre near Boon Lay MRT. One and a half hour bus ride from my house. Typically, I Zzzzz-ed all the way there and reported for work at 4pm sharp. The event coordinator was a young chap who was pretty friendly. It was a small event with a puny stage so there was only the coordinator, DJ, Emcee and myself there to operate the whole thing till 9pm. By the way, Gek Poh Shopping Centre has a lot of balls calling itself a shopping center. The building was about as big as a small Community Centre, with a pathetic ground floor with outlets selling cheapo slippers, a hair salon and a maid agency. Don't even get me started on the second floor.
It was pretty fun and interesting being a stage hand. Moving all the equipment and handing out the occasional prize was all very educational for me since I've always wanted to work in staged events.
So, all went well until the last 30 mins where I was made to put on a thick, fat, smelly, fat-suit mascot costume and paraded around for half an hour entertaining the simple minded aunties, grandmas and kids. I walked around the whole shopping centre sweating like I was being cooked alive in an oven. My face was literally wet with drops of sweat getting into my eyes and the heat was freakishly impossible to describe.
When my torture was finally allowed to end, and the Emcee helped me get the suit off, he was like "WHOA!!!". I was dripping with sweat everywhere. I now understood why the coordinator gave me a company t-shirt to wear before starting work.
Sunday was slightly better as I had picked Dawson Place Shopping Center (another pathetic place) at Queenstown MRT. The event was indoors in the air con so it wasn't that bad this time. Everything went okay until I had to put on a different mascot costume. This time, the costume reeked of sweat smell from the last person to wear it. I was staring at my coordinator in horror and all she could do was give me a sympathetic smile.
My second parade wasn't helped by the fact that this costume design was poor and it the head didn't fit the body so the chin strap inside the head was choking me the whole time. I grimaced as I duly performed by job to the best of my ability and tried not to yell at the kids who saw me as a cute, walking punching bag.
I didn't sweat as much this time though. Probably because of being in the air con. Thank God.
Anyway, a man's got to do what a man's got to do: Earn $100 to grab that $150 Linkin Park ticket.
Summer school's started for me since Monday. I'm retaking my Engineering Maths and so far its been pretty good. By far the best lecturer I've had.
Gotta go for dinner now...but before I forget to mention: During the two days of events, they had hired two La Selle student singers from China for each day. And both days one of the two singers were pretty/hot. Didn't look like China girls at all until they spoke to me with their freakish accent. I don't have to tell you how I responded.
(Bryant squeaks out some Chinese sounding words which probably didn't make sense at all.)
