Bazaar is OVER!!

The 8 donations boxes I made

     I'm ba-a-a-a-ck!    The profound silence from me of late is due mostly to a Christmas Charity Bazaar that literally took over my life.  It certainly wasn't a bazaar in the sense that I'm used to--not like they have back in Japan, or even in the States.  Oh, no!  This was an "opus maximus" that filled a whole shopping center for 12 hours of actual selling and countless others in preparation and set-up.  The sense of relief now that it's over is so overwhelming, I hardly know what to do with my new-found freedom.  I feel like an Asian student, who's been focused for months, if not years, on the goal of passing entrance exams and then--bam!--suddenly the exams are over and the purpose in life is gone.   This was a killer event that took every ounce of strength I had and hours and hours of my time, too.  And I wasn't even the chairwoman of the thing, (thank goodness!)  She worked much, much harder than the rest of us, but she actually seemed to enjoy it!


    The event was held at a shopping mall--no, excuse me--we have to call Straits Quay a "retail marina" since it has expensive boats parked out back and no anchor department store, no supermarket, and no other stores that ordinary mortals might actually shop at.  It's VERY upscale, and we were given the use of the whole inside part of it for free since it was an event intended to raise money for charity.  It was good that it was held indoors, especially for me, because I decided to pay for a table (booth) and become a vendor as well as an organizer.  I sold Japanese kimono jackets (mostly) and other Japanese garments, too.  My items were fresh to this market, so I did pretty well, even though I was new at this selling game and not too good at it.  I didn't know what the market would pay, nor what they actually wanted to buy.  So, it was a shot in the dark for me, this being a vendor.

      On either side of my booth, supported by me and vice versa, there were two charity fundraiser tables also with Japanese themes and staffed by Japanese ladies from our group.  At one of them, gals could pay RM 10  (US $2.15 or Japanese yen 244) to get themselves dressed up in kimono (MY kimono, I might add!)    One older Indian gal found a bright red vintage kimono of mine and had herself all dolled up.  It was fun for them and fun for us to watch them having fun, if you know what I mean.  

            








 At our other charity fundraiser table, a former Japanese calligraphy teacher had put inspirational "kanji"  (Chinese characters) onto small white stones, paper luncheon mats and so on.  They said things like "love," "peace," "dragon," "power" and so on.  The kids really seemed to like those.


    Of course there were tons of other things that went on at this bazaar, from Santa arriving in a vintage car, to tables where local charities could make their pitches, to booths selling food and drink, ranging from durian coffee powder to homemade British chutneys and preserves.  But maybe I'll deal with them in another blog post.  Right now, I'm so tired, I could just fall asleep right here and now . . . . Z-z-z-z-z-z-z !!!