Thank you friends, you are bottleful

I needed about 50 to 60 plastic bottles, to fill them up with water, and use them as weights. And I had two weeks to collect them.

Judging on my own household usage, we only produce one or two empty plastic bottle per week. That is not going to cut it so it's time to ask for help.

Hence, two weeks ago I sent an e-mail to around 20 to 30 of my colleagues asking them for the favour of keeping and passing to me any plastic bottles they would have thrown away otherwise during these two weeks. I figured that if every one of them gave me one bottle, I would be about half way there, if they gave me two bottles, I would have enough.

Of course I didn't expect all of them to respond or to help out, so wifey had been asking our neighbours for help as well.

Gotta say the results were not at all what I expected.

A few replied just wanting to find out what exactly do I want the bottles for? What project am I working on? I guess using them as weights is not good enough an explanation, I have to provide something like a full report... -_-

Anyway, I didn't get many replies, which honestly wasn't unexpected. What was unexpected though, is the number of bottles I got in the end and their source.

- number of colleague in my department who helped: 0 (this is a real shocker, the bad kind)

- number of colleague at ulu place who helped: 1 (this is a pleasant surprise)

- number of colleague not at ulu place who helped: 6 (this is a real surprise, the nice kind)

You see, I work at ulu place, I would have expected more help to be from ulu place, but the fact is quite the oppostie.

None of my immediate colleagues bothered was just... disappointing. I guess I must be a real pain in the arse in my department. =(

Out of the seven persons who helped, six of them are females. Proves that women are just more helpful in nature.

I received a total of 102 plastic bottles in the end, and 96 of them are from the five ladies in Penang. Way out of expectation! 0_o

Please allow me to express my sincere thanks to Mooi Kim, Ryan, Lee May, IZ, Hoay Tien, Wen Wen, and Chin Chin. You are wonderful (and bottleful)! ^_^