Throughout my life, I shall encounter many new experiences that will train me to be more mature. What a coincident as well! Something happened today too. My dad has made a whole new revolution that changed his career. It’s a new beginning towards the competitive business world for him. Therefore, let us give a big applause for my dad for he is now officially a businessman. Next time, you will see his company listed in the stock market. A few years later, he will be listed as the world’s top 10 of the richest man. Then, everyone including the sultans shall bow before us and thou shall heed our commands. MMWWAAAAHAHAHAHAA!!!! OK, OK, may be I exaggerated a little or a lot. It started a month ago when a new neighbour decide to sell fried kuay teows at night markets for a living. Another of our neighbour also started doing the same thing and they made an enormous profit every month. Before I continue, I wish to give all of you an advice. Don’t judge a book by its cover. You might imagine someone living in a small flat as poverty-stricken but actually they are extremely rich. My closest neighbour sells ais kacang at a food court and now he drives a Mercedes and a Pajero!!! The one selling fried kuay teow also owns two cars. He also has a Mercedes and a Honda Civic while my father only drives a second-hand Proton Saga which was about 10 years old. Envying of their luxuries lives, he decided to follow their footsteps but in a slightly different way. They sell foods while my dad sells traditional herbal beverages which consist of Chrysanthemum tea and “Lo Hon Ko”. In order to cope with the youngsters taste nowadays, he also bought a few cartons of different soft drinks such as 100 Plus, Pepsi and Mirinda. He opens his stall at various night markets everyday excluding Tuesday. He will have to wake up early in the morning to prepare all the beverages before 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I shall have to help him out with the housework too such as mopping the floor, wiping the windows, fans, and other household items, cleaning the dishes, drying the clothes, warming up the meals, boiling the water and helping him to prepare the beverages.
Our school also organized a Carnival Day to raise funds to allocate money for the welfare of the school as well as the students. Those money will be used completely to improve the quality and the service of the education system by upgrading the building, repairing the toilet, and replacing the damaged fluorescent tubes and the ceiling fans. These are the promises made by the Teachers and Parents Committee but as most of you know it, promises will always be kept as promises. After a few days, weeks or months, may be at least 50% of the money will suddenly vanish into thin air or kept in the account until a massive dust accumulated on it. Later on, they will say that the school doesn’t have enough money and will just keep on postponing any projects that need a lot of money. Every class had been given an order to establish a plan to raise money either by selling stuffs or organizing an interesting and exhilarating activity to attract visitors not only from our school but outsiders as well. In order to motivate us to perform better, the school offered attractive hampers for the class which made the most profit and bought the most coupons. In collaboration with the Carnival Day, we divided our class into three groups. One will make a ghost house; the other will sell food while the last one will sell beverages. Lychee, Goat, Durian and I chose to sell beverages because it is the easiest task of all the choices. As usual, we elected Durian as the leader because of his leadership and wisdom. We decided to sell lychee flavoured drinks, syrup and soft drinks. The ghost house was the most troublesome activity but the most profitable one. It does not require any capital but only a humongous effort and energy are needed to make the preparations. It was not that difficult until that idiot Cikgu Mustapha forbid us to use the new tables which were in the class and told us to use the old plastic tables and wooden tables from the classes above. We have to painstakingly move 300+ tables from the top floor to our ghost house at the ground floor. Then, we have to use newspapers and cardboards to cover up the entire light source in the class. It was damn tiring. It would be much easier if he would let us use the new tables. When the day arrived, we came at 7.15a.m to set up our stall. Business was quite good as we were out of cups before the day even reached noon. We also have to restock using our own money when our soft drinks almost went out of stock. Most of the customers preferred Pepsi. It was estimated that we sold at least 6 bottles of 1.5 litres of Pepsi. However, the profits that we made can’t be compared to the ghost house as their queuing up customers was as long as an army of ants. I think they made a net profit of at least RM500 and above while we just made around RM50 and above. That was 10 times our amount. We closed our stall at 12.45p.m and started helping Madam Lim to clean the mess made by the scumbags and imbeciles who don’t seemed to understand what the use of rubbish bin and hygiene is. They are either pig-brained, deaf, or stupid since they can’t hear or understand the repeated announcement “Jangan membuang sampah merata-rata, sila buang samaph di dalam tong sampah yang disediakan” and still litter everywhere. We spent 3 hours sweeping the floor, picking up rubbish, transferring the rubbish in the rubbish bins into polystyrene bags and throwing them into the MPAJ dumpsite. It was so backbreaking that we didn’t even have the energy to walk after we have done our jobs. The good thing was we got a RM5.00 coupon each and a RM5.00 note from the school as a reward for our contributions for the school. The carnival ended at 4.00p.m. Everyone packed their things and went home except for our ghost house. It was impossible for us to clean the place and put back the 300+ tables as we were fatigued after 8 hours of work. So, we just leave it there and went home. I was quite disappointed too as I didn’t have the chance to chat with Pei Wen. To tell you the truth, I was imagining of taking the opportunity to hold her hand if we have the chance to go into the ghost house as it was completely dark and scary inside. ~Sigh~, what a waste!!! It seems that I will have to wait for the next opportunity to hold her hands.
