~ Curious Charlie ~

@ Sunday, December 18, 2011

I said I'd get up at 10am, wrap the thing for jas and make the room spray, well that didn't happen, instead I spent the morning in the world of my nightmares, which I don't have much recollection of... Had lunch at the mall, honey chicken ^^, sadly not as good as peko peko, btw: you can't eat as much as you think. No pictures, cause I didn't think there was anything to take picture of :(. Went to GJ (sadly my coffee place is near ~~my old~~ college, an hr away), had the xmas special, butterscotch latte. Recommended? No. Will try another xmas drink next time, a chiller this time.

Spent the afternoon gift wrapping for charity :). Please don't put me down as team leader next time? Esp when the others have done this before and I haven't. We started off by signing in (I forgot to sign out...) and reading the OH&S. Everyone was sent a info pack in the mail, though mine was emailed; they also got a Santa hat & XL (one size fits all) shirt from the foundation to wear (very unflattering). I didn't get one but that's kinda cool, as I got to wear a nice white top (and didn't die in the heat) and tinsel headband ^^.

At the end of the afternoon, we raised more than $250 :). Though I do think we could have done better. For each gift wrapped it was a gold coin donation. College denotes that a $2 is a gold coin, a $1 is bronze and that the term "donation" means mandatory payment. The record for most wrap per person was a woman with 8-10 things to wrap, $2 cheap bad chocolates and cookie tins, all made in China. She has a $10 note and went to get change so that she could pay eight $1 coins, talk about cheap. Fortunately there were others who were more generous, like a guy who has 2 things wrapped and donated $10.

My fav things to wrap are in boxes, or are structured, especially books. The smallest thing I wrapped was a mascara XD, most $$$, an iphone, most cheap see chocolates above. The most O.o thing I saw was a huge elephant plushie ride-able (think rocking horse), which we were like... no way am I wrapping that for $2. Someone else ended up wrapping it though... The worst wrapped thing I think was my first, a round box of nuts? and a packet of peanuts. I also got a dinasor, but passed that onto the lady next to me XD.

Something I do not like is last minute unorganized people, we were to pack up at 5pm, but there were a few last minute people, we did one, told the other to come back tomorrow. After that we counted donations, which was a bit O.o, I like to write down how many there are of each coin and then get a calculator. Fortunately a lady on the same shift used to work in a bank (can count) and understood the bank bags that said e.g. $10 of 5c.

It was a bit scary, as people give you the item to wrap and then stand there wait, sometimes impatiently. Esp one guy who looked annoyed and had his arms crossed. I like to ask them if they'd like to watch me wrap it (close to watching paint dry) or go for a walk and come back - as I found it stressful to be watched. There were an assortment of papers, though you ask them to choose, same with the ribbon. The typical thing is to stick ribbon on it and curl that, I have no clue how to do that, so I just do my own thing which everyone was happy with. Using big ribbon I wrap around it, like a band, and then sometimes do another one, so that all sides are covered. I did make a bow, but that looked bad...

Actually is was something more like this.

Tips:
- pretend they aren't watching, and aren't there - take your time
- make sure they cough up, though don't take an notice and comment they're stingy
- if it's a funny shape, recommend they buy a box for it e.g. basketball