Charity Run and Carnival 2007

Yesterday, my uni held a charity run and carnival in conjunction with its 15th anniversary to raise funds for ruman shalom, santa jerome and kg rumah orang asli. Besides that, the event served as a means of publicity for our uni now has a new building and the old building has been refurbished to accomodate to the expanding population of students (and also new courses e.g. dentistry, biotechnology, psychology, chemical analysis).


Since participation in the 7km run would contribute points for the annual 'my uni' (can't quote the name coz my blog will be easily googled) cup (if the runner completes the run in 1 hour 30 mins the most), most students signed up for it. Quoted from the commitee online bulletin: 'So far over 850 participants have signed up. Over 400 are not 'our uni' staff or students! It's way beyond our expectations as we had originally targeted 500 runners.'


I reached uni at 6.30 a.m. with elizabeth to set up our drinks booth. Amidst carrying our goods up the slope and from the student affairs department, we saw the runners warming up to the rhythm of some catchy music with 3 muscular guys from california fitness centre.


As I was involved in the drinks booth whole day, the description of the event will be based from that viewpoint. There were many activities that I missed (e.g. performance by the orchestra, dunking booth where PPP, our professor, was dunked).

Hui Ling, one of the committee members, with ee fen at the back helping out in selling soft drinks and floats.

Chia Woon, Shin Yee and Hui Xin helping out in making bubble milk tea, the BEST-SELLER of our booth with all the 5 flavours (original, mocha, chocolate, yam and honeydew) sold out well before the carnival ended. I would never have guessed that the favourite was HONEYDEW coz the colour is the fakest of all. Lol. I am an advocator of natural stuff-my personal favourite is always the original flavour.

See the pearls in the cup that Hui Xin was holding? That required Si Wei, Hui Ling, Jacinta (Another mpharm girl who helped us out)and I to wake up at 4a.m. in the morning to boil them. There is specific Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) that we had to follow to boil the pearls, made from potato starch. The uncooked pearls are brown and will crumble if u squeeze them. Once cooked (in the right method), the pearls turn black and are sticky upon touching.

The ice-blended team, supervised by Si Wei the ice-blended sifu. From left: Elizabeth, Bavani, Grace, and Wei Yin. The ice-blended drinks available were coffee, milo and mango. These series were also a hit with the crowd.

Me, Hui Xin and Chia Woon after exiting the Haunted House; I went in though the entrance fee was RM5 instead of the RM3 that Nick told me. I must say it would be scary for people who went in alone because the unexpected is always scary. However, 3 of us held hands and had 3 other people in front of us; so we could see what was coming in a way and avoided the 'surprise' (e.g. at one point, a hand would come out and start grapping the visitors' legs.) Most of the time, we started screaming when we heard the girls in front of us screamed. I must praise Nick and his team for putting up great effort in the haunted house; the sound effect was good and I really ponder how they made the mechanism of a flying ghost.

It was towards the end of the carnival and we were doing crazy sales led by Hoon Hing, our batch rep. They teamed up with the nursing booth and sold soft drinks and the sponsored Yeo's packet drinks by giving out free ice-creams provided by the nursing booth. It was funny looking at how the guys made offer to the crowd in pasar malam style.

That's Wei Yin with Grace at the back. There are helpers who weren't features in photos (Michele, Jascinta, Terry etc) coz I was too busy initially to use the camera. In fact. the whole place was flooded with water coz there was no drainage for the water!! We had to wash the shakers in between orders (there wre 5 flavours of bubble milk tea and we didn't want customers to taste chocolate when they ordered honeydew flavour). Basically, we were all working in a 'fish market', I had to fold up my yoga pants at first coz I was all sticky and wet. Later on, I went to change into shorts.

Me, Si Wei and Hui Ling with the backdrop against us while waiting for the entire commitee to get ready for the photoshooting session. The leader of food commitee, Wai Chiat, was not in the picture.

While we were busy making the drinks, one of my friends said we really made our drinks based on our instincts-how much syrup to put, how many teaspoons of coffee powder to put e.t.c. 'We don't follow CGMP (Current Good Manufacturing Practice) and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).' And at THAT instant inself, we saw Dr. P (our pharmaceutics lecturer) at our stall. LOL. Really, there was no time for me to stop and pre-made the bubble milk tea as the orders kept flooding in. There was no time for standardizing things too (We need to standardise though we already practise making the drinks before coz our syrup concentration is different from that of the supplier.)

I had a few surprises on that day too. Before that, I had invited my high-school (mc) friends to come. I wasn't expecting them to come as fui, the mc guy in our uni would not be coming. I got a pleasant surprise when shin called me at 12 plus to tell me that patrick, wei jen and hoi were there. =) I brought them to po leen's stall for the chicken chop set as joanna was eagerly promoting it to me. I also bought a set for my family as I was having cough and ulcer so I couldn't take fried stuff. Shin and her bf came at 2plus eventhough things were slowing down. I am really touched and happy for their support!!

I also invited the sedaya pharmacy students whom we met during industrial attachment. The guy, chun wei, told me that they had community pharmacy attachment on that day and may not be coming. However, cw brought his friend along on that day; it was a pity I was too busy to play host and showed them around. Thankfully, cw told me that they did enjoy themselves. We should visit sedaya too if they have any events like this coz they may be our future colleagues/partners in business *wink*

There is something that Elaine would get jealous over =P I was showing my mc friend in the cafe where the lecturers were having cooking demonstration. Mr. D saw me and just passed me a plastic bag with 2 brown coloured balls. He said 'this is for you'. I was rather taken aback but managed to say thank you. While we were waitin for Dr. I's tortilla de pastata (I finally found out what it was-it was eggs with potatoes!!!) with my mc friends, I asked Mr. D what was the things he gave me. He said 'it is gulab (sth), a pakistani dessert. It is too sweet'. WAT?? HE GAVE ME UNWANTED STUFF???? OH but he gave ME, and not someone else. =P LOL anyway I didn't eat if coz I was so SICK OF SWEET things after tasting my own syrup and bubble milk tea at home. I am a fan of jelly yet I didn't eat any on that day.

I felt really grateful to all my friends who helped out selflessly; some of them ran in the morning and were still semangat to help us. They even stayed to wash up the stuff!! At the end of the day, they told me that they had fun though they were aching all over; it was really a good bonding session for us. ^_^ It wouldn't have gone so well without their help; our profit was RM2490 before deducting the cost. Let's hope that we could do well too in our future fund-raising projects for our convocation magazine.