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United States Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama walked door to door in a working-class Ohio neighbourhood on Sunday, urging Democrats to vote for him and trying to win over wavering independents.
'Remember, everybody can vote right now. There is early voting in Ohio. Don't wait,' Mr Obama said as he knocked on doors, shook hands and fielded questions.
The walk down Shrewsbury Street in Holland, Ohio, was a rare foray into retail politics for the Illinois senator.
He spends the next two days in Ohio preparing for a last televised debate with Mr John McCain tomorrow. Polls there show a dead heat, with a slight lead for Mr Obama.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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Why charged-up and positive?
That is exactly the way we (WP) do our ground work apart from our weekly sales of Hammer in the different wet markets in Singapore. We go door-to-door and I really mean every unit in a particular HDB flat.
It takes a lot of discipline for every team to do this on either a weekly or fortnightly basis. Walkabout as such has to be done during weekdays evening so that the probability of someone at home is higher.
Discipline is essential because all of us need to work, once a week after a hard day's work, our team will meet at the void deck of a particular block and we start making our rounds from the highest level. Sometimes the team may not be complete or at times too many. Of course its wonderful to have more people walking so that we can move faster and at the same time create more visibility. We have different teams walking on different days.
The willingness to do something like that on a voluntary basis requires lots of passion and the desire to make and see changes.
To be frank, I ever thought how are we going to complete all the flats with limited manpower and resources! Given the fact that we were not there to just greet the residents but also to engage them further. Once in while we hear feedback such as, ' We don't see the opposition around, they only appear during elections.' Remarks as such can further dampen our spirits.
But today after reading the article above, it has definitely charged me up.
If Obama can do door-to-door in a country that is so many times bigger than Singapore although its only Ohio, why can't we?
If Obama with the type of financial support and resources that he has which we don't, opted to do his campaigning this way, I'm sure it does work to a certain extent.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish the Democrats good luck and to WP comrades, our hard work will not go down the drain, continue to strive!
