the waiting room

Time for Lime Part Deux

I’d been down for a while now, for various reasons.

My family is moving into my brother’s place. It’ll be nice to have everybody in one location again, but as nice and roomy as their apartment is the loss of space and privacy is something I’ll feel. Especially since I’m still unemployed. Which is another sore point. I didn’t get a job I’d thought I’d get (having gone through several levels of applications), although I’m not so much upset with that as I am with the fact that I actually still have to keep looking for full-time employment. Separately all these things probably wouldn’t have been that bad, but together they just compound to make things seem far worse than they really are.

But as it turns out, all I needed was to get out of the house and spend some time with my friends. I think being cooped up in the house with only my PC and a copy of the classifieds for company and surrounded by all these boxes is just a downer in itself, and doesn’t help matters at all. So last Saturday I was at the Lime Flea Market for the second time with the help of the lovely and talented Winda. For the sake of money and space, I had to let go of some clothes, CDs and comics.

I must say if you’re not a karang guni, I’d enthusiastically recommend the Lime Flea Market over the Tanglin Mall Bazaar. From experience it seems like the Tanglin Mall Bazaar is patronised mostly by foreign workers. Which isn’t a bad thing, but they’re not going to pay you much and the $70 registration fee really doesn’t help if you’re looking to earn. The Tanglin Mall management also doesn’t allocate chairs or tables for you, and doesn’t allow sellers to bring their own tables or chairs either. Besides the fact that it was a pretty bad day to begin with, the throngs of humanity continuously rifling through our merchandise didn’t help with our stress levels either.

In contrast, the Lime Flea Market is a far more civilised affair. Contractors will rent you as many tables and chairs as you need (limited only by the small space you’re allocated) and potential customers will ask you lots of questions and browse and haggle but they tend to breeze by as compared to the deluge of people over at Tanglin.

The first customer bought a pair of old New Balances that were still cool, but seemed a little on the small side after I got another pair of NBs that were a half size bigger. I’d wanted to sell them off at $30, but for the sake of good business I obliged his offer of $20.

This girl (apparently… she conveniently had her name tattooed between her shoulder blades) rummaged through the CDs and got excited over everything from Bens Fold Five to Creed (insert obligatory “Even Jesus Hates Creed” joke here). She didn’t buy anything though.

There was the Filipino guy who wanted to buy a bunch of t-shirts but kept asking his girlfriend/wife for approval while she was busy browsing at our neighbours stall (babyyy…). He ended up buying pants, a t-shirt and a cap for the low low price of $36 (I’d offered a $40 price point).

I sold off a bunch of my comics too. Somebody picked up my entire run of Astonishing X-Men (Joss Whedon’s two year run just ended recently… after three years) and while some people were interested in my set of 1602 comics nobody actually purchased them. I still love my comics, but as mentioned earlier for the sake of money and space, they have to be let go. I’ve stopped collecting almost all of my titles (although that’s mostly because I find a lot of what’s coming out of the major publishers difficult to enjoy) and now that Y the Last Man has ended its run I’m pretty much left buying only Astro City in single issues, and that doesn’t come out regularly.

One of the nice things about doing things like this is just getting to talk to random strangers, and a few of the customers(potential or otherwise) engaged me in conversations about my taste in music and comics.

Nearing the end of the day we met Mr. “You’ve got to be kidding me“, which was what he said everytime he came across some of the more choice selections in my CD section. Oh, and he pronounced The Coup as “The Coop”, like where you keep chickens. Nawar and I had to resist ourselves from correcting him because, well, you just don’t insult your customers. He insisted that my copy of Sick of It All’s Blood Sweat and No Tears was out of print, and that I shouldn’t sell it especially since he’d worked at their gig in Singapore last year.

The Sick Of It All CD was picked up by a kid in the next group who strolled by, a bunch of young ***** which coincidentally included one of my younger cousins. They also got my Earth Crisis CD, wondered aloud if there was going to be some PETA propaganda material among our merchandise and asked me “Abang dulu hardcore eh?”

So I managed to turn a tidy profit of about two hundred dollars, which was pretty good for a day’s takings. Granted, that’s probably like a quarter of what I spent on the items in the first place but it’s good money still. So once again thanks to Winda (who kept laughing and laughing for reasons beyond human explanation), and thanks to Suzi, Farhan, Nawar and Adila for coming down.

And there’s nothing wrong with liking Nelly Furtado okay.

Peace.

*Photos of Farhan only because other people think taking photographs will steal their souls. Taken with the new 6120 Classic. The photos look good, but unfortunately only under direct lighting.

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