Woo Hoo! Our church’s annual Food and Fun Fair 2006 was successfully held yesterday from 8am-3pm! My RCIA group had our own food stall selling chicken wings, corn in a cup, fish balls and sausages, hence the name Chickee Corn Stall. (well, we had planned to name it Chickee Corn Sausages and Balls haha.. but due to the implicit sexy appeal we decided to just settle with Chickee Corn :D)

what a day. I woke up at 6am and headed for church. Then we started decorating our stall while the mothers in our group get ready the food. When we first arrived, many stalls had already put up their banners, which to our horror, was really a sight! What a gross under-estimation we had, thinking we could just do it on the same day easily and effortlessly. So we scrambled to draw more cardboxes, putting up advertisement in the entrance to lure more crowd to our stall. And it was thence we realised Julianna’s flair for drawing, but only using crayons as she claims ha! Of course, we got Adrian to thank for too, especially for his height ha!

It sure was a day of fun, and loads of energy zapped up. Through this activity, we have just added more fond memories to our journey of RCIA, and I’m sure we can talk and reminisce about this day together because of this common experience that we were all involved in. And, not forgetting to give special mention to some of the hilarious moments we have among our team:

1. Besey’s forte

This gal sure can shout and she sure can sell! Decided to be pro-active, we brought along our food in nice little baskets (courtesy of Siew Bee) and went around peddling. Besey gave all her might in shouting “Fishballs, sausages, sweet corn, chicken wings … all for $1!” and she kept doing this, with me and Julianna in tow, waiting to replenish her food supply and occasionally shouting too (in pairs cos our volume when added up is equivalent to one of Besey!) Because of this, we sold quite a lot of food! Kudos to Besey, for her courage and dedication ha! (And because we did this, 3 of us, especially Besey felt that we are too “ashamed” to attend mass for at least 2 weeks :D)

I even suggested she probably deserve “The Most Hardworking Employee of The Day” medal if there’s any ha!

2. Julianna’s drawing

Boy, they are cute really! After we hung those cards she drew, it makes our entire stall looks pretty “kiddish” as her graphics are simply very cartoonish. But we all love them really. Though the cup of corn looks more like a dainty flower pot than a cup of sweet buttered corns!

3. The mothers

Siew Bee’s face was so flushed due to the heat in the car park and from standing over the fire for so many hours. While Angelina and Teresa was busying themselves with helping her and serving the customers. what would we do without these mothers in our team? For they were the ones to marinate the food, bring along all the appliances required, cut the cucumbers, and bought all the food supplies we need, with help from Steve and his friends too.

Oh, gotta mention the steamer! I guess probably the latter part of the day involves very much of the mothers saying “No it’s not warm enough” “Yes can be eaten” “No no, need to steam for a while more” to pouring and keep swaping the containers to steam the corns, due to the sudden high influx of customers wanting to buy our corns! Ha ha, it was real interesting just standing there and listen to their bantering.

4. The fathers

Due to the limitations in their talents, the fathers can only help with the pre-stall preparation like contacting the food suppliers, bringing the heavy-duty appliances and equipment to the stall, and yes, giving us moral support! Joseph came by immediately after his other church commitment too.

5. My “extortion”

If Besey is good at selling, probably I’m good at “extort”. Don’t let anyone I see whom I know pass me by, for they will surely not escape “unscathed”, without leaving a dollar or two in exchange for our food ha! Well, of course, I assume and totally agree that they did it in good spirits, though at times I do have to say things like “If you don’t buy, you’ll break your mother’s heart!”! (That’s only for certain people I can use on, eg Siew Bee’s son? *wink* *wink*)

6. My sister’s network

She didn’t peddle, she didn’t cook. She helped in decorating and serving the customers at the stall. Most worthy to mention should then be her network My sister’s friends supported us and bought our food in quite a substantial amount I must say (with one even chalking up $20 and even helping us to peddle some food after that!) That’s her contribution

7. The peddling hawkers

Ok, during the times when we were peddling the baskets around, the 3 of us (me, Besey and Julianna) had loads of entertainment cracking jokes, making fun at ourselves and also coming up with some “mean” ideas to sabotage other stalls, like when Julianna suggested Besey to shout “Sweet corns healthier than pop corns” next to the queue lining up to buy none other than pop corns! haha :D Of course, it was a harmless joke, and we didn’t do it. But we enjoyed ourselves just by laughing about it! 

Not to miss out those profitable and novel business ideas we came up, if we are going to have another stall again next year, ever.

Oh, someone even complimented we look so cute with all these little red baskets! If only we have a headscarf, that’ll make us Little Red Riding Hoods!

8. Extra help

Special thanks to Adrian for helping us decorating the stalls, and in doing market survey as we are deciding on the prices of our items

May I also present our young and so beautiful chef Angel who got her fingers blistered for buttering those corns and serving them into cups to be sold. She was so busy during one of the peak period that she was non-stop adding butter and mixing them well with the corns, cup after cup. She must have become a pro by now.

9. Chickee Corn’s identity

Yes, we were all wearing yellow t-shirts and shorts! Though in different shades, but I dare to say we are the only stall who’s wearing one uniform code. This is our identity!

All in all, it was quite a joyful ride as we all played our roles very well, independently and seamlessly as a team, as we brought out each of our talents and put them to good use. Though we were all bushed at the end but I’m certain deep in our hearts it was for a very worthwhile cause and it brought us all closer.

Side note: me and my sister had to go for a full body massage after that to relieve all the tension as our shoulders, backs and legs are almost breaking haha. (OK this is just a superbly wonderful excuse at the most appropriate time to pamper ourselves ;))

I guess the only pity is none of us brought a long a camera to capture all those moments, of us laughing, cooking, selling, ourselves burning and roasting in the heat. But this only means we’ll put more effort to imprint these images in our mind, and our hearts too, to be stored there for a very long, long time to come.

P.S Another purpose of this post is to show you the importance and power of creating joint memories and sharing experiences together as a couple and as a family, which I’ll talk about in more details in future post.