I am grateful for both the things I have and don't have, are you?
-continued from previous post, 29 Aug 2008-
Actually I don't wanna continue about the remaining of yesterday's work, I shall talk about what happened after I got home.
As I was saying, my sis bought the keyboard and mouse + mousepad (instead of mousepad only). I didn't have much trouble adapting to the ergonomically-designed keyboard (meaning the keys are curved to suit the inward slant of hands), in fact these two posts were written using it without much typo errors.
As for the mouse, of cuz I like it as it emits a blue (my fav colour) light through the scroller and sides and the overall feel is better, but if she called me before she bought it I would have asked her not to so that I could choose between it (Diamondback 3G), Copperhead and Deathadder. I understand that she wanted to surprise and make me happy, as I spent 2-3 hours thinking before finally deciding to buy the mousepad only.
-30 Aug 2008-
The drive to work was smooth but there were two accidents in the opposite lane. The first one near Bedok interchange seemed as if the van had changed into the other's lane and didn't or couldn't stop in time. The second one nearing Laguna National seemed as if the car had lost control while turning and went straight into the railing road divider. The damage was so bad that the front hood was crashed totally. In both cases traffic police were already there.
Work-wise, shall not write much about lunch as it was ordinary and manageable considering that there were 11 staff. The thing that pissed me off was that at one time 4 were at the bar, another 4 in the kitchen, 1 was missing and 1 was wiping the cutlery, leaving me to handle 7 tables (7x4=28 people). When I was in the bar I noticed ants and lifted the sugar and milk jar underliners, turned out that there was a lot more underneath but I couldn't bare to kill them so I left the underliners aside and let them move away, hoping someone else would not kill them before they did. Then there was an order of chicken rice with the customer asking for chicken backside meat with bones, I was like..
Before my 2nd break from 5 to 5.30pm it looked like it was going to rain. As I was eating it did rain and when I went back up there were a lot of customers. There was this group of 8 customers whom I took order for, all familiar faces. The 1st thing the guy said was "can you speak mandarin?" and I answered with a "ke yi". After the food was served he waved at me and asked "da ge ni de ming zi shi she me? bu ke yi yi zhi jiao ni da ge". Fact was that he's several times my age, about 50-60+? Anyway I replied that my Chinese name was "wei jie" and he asked "xing she me? and I said "wang, san zhi wang".
Was kept busy for the rest of the evening and night until I went downstairs to collect 34 cooler boxes from the golf cart area at 7.34pm. I finished in about half an hour and Bernard had merged tables and prepared ice water for the 30+ people who were coming.
They came separately in groups and were only seated at 8+. Bernard and Suhaime took care of their orders while the rest of us continued with normal operations. As I expected there were more people than planned and they merged more tables. I had filled up the ice water container at the station with instructions from Angeline when Bernard asked me to pour ice water for the new tables. Cuz the glasses were at the station, I didn't think of getting ice water from the bar instead and got it from the water container instead, which I had just filled up and would need to fill up again. Guess I was tired to the extent that I wasn't thinking straight already.
When the food began coming out from the kitchen (which got spammed) we had to sort through them before serving to the appropriate tables. The system which Bernard came up with was brilliant, the orders were taken from a few people instead of from everyone, then other than the usual table numbers there was also their names for reference. So we looked for that particular person at the table and asked him or her who to serve to. I thought it would be a big mess but thanks to him things turned out okay.
A regular customer (with his family) had ordered mee goreng takeaway and another coke light. I was helping Bernard with the 40+ people (and was exhausted) so I simply put away the coke light receipt when it came out, thinking I had served it already when I didn't. In the end he was so pissed that Suhaime had to tend to him and apologise, after Angeline had already been told off that he didn't receive the coke light.
For the same reasons, I overlooked the other stations and the already-bad-mood Angeline shouted aloud "hire you for what? stand around then forget the other stations". Sigh, she can complain to all the other staff about my "bad performance" all she wants, cuz I know there are times when I'm more alert and hardworking than full-timers like her.
Earlier at noon Bernard was telling me that his laptop given through subscription of a particular telcom's plan was fixed. The motherboard and lan adapter had been changed and without warranty it would have cost over $800. Then he said about how he had certs in website design, basic programming and another two IT ones from his previous studies back in Malaysia and I told him although I'm studying similar things, I'll only graduate with one cert. He also said that the 1-year e-learning diploma/degree in IT security from a renowned institution was gonna cost him $6000, no idea whether he's gonna leave the restaurant and take it up.
Like I told him previously, since he has interest in and is competent in the IT areas, he shouldn't withhold himself within the restaurant. His reply was that he could always make a few calls and get another IT job, but he was "lazy". In other words I guess he was comfortable in his comfort zone and wanted to remain there since as a captain his pay is higher than regular staff and he does not have to do as much.
Anyway after he declined my offer to help by staying after 9 I went off. As I was walking past Hadi and the other staff (who were waiting for the company bus) he was like "woah don't drive me to Simei, hope you crash". He's good to hang around and work with, always making laughable jokes and relatively hardworking. However that was.. unnecessary.
After more brooding about how I could have chose the Deathadder (which is right hand ergonomically-designed) or Copperhead instead, I finally realised the irony. I had come up with this quote "I am grateful for both the things I have and don't have, are you?" a few days ago. Yet I already have two Razer mice (Krait and Diamondback 3G) but still wanna trade the latter for another. I really shouldn't be asking for so much when people in 3rd-world countries barely have enough food to eat daily.
Shall take good care of my keyboard and mouse and use them till the end of time.
Actually I don't wanna continue about the remaining of yesterday's work, I shall talk about what happened after I got home.
As I was saying, my sis bought the keyboard and mouse + mousepad (instead of mousepad only). I didn't have much trouble adapting to the ergonomically-designed keyboard (meaning the keys are curved to suit the inward slant of hands), in fact these two posts were written using it without much typo errors.
As for the mouse, of cuz I like it as it emits a blue (my fav colour) light through the scroller and sides and the overall feel is better, but if she called me before she bought it I would have asked her not to so that I could choose between it (Diamondback 3G), Copperhead and Deathadder. I understand that she wanted to surprise and make me happy, as I spent 2-3 hours thinking before finally deciding to buy the mousepad only.
-30 Aug 2008-
The drive to work was smooth but there were two accidents in the opposite lane. The first one near Bedok interchange seemed as if the van had changed into the other's lane and didn't or couldn't stop in time. The second one nearing Laguna National seemed as if the car had lost control while turning and went straight into the railing road divider. The damage was so bad that the front hood was crashed totally. In both cases traffic police were already there.
Work-wise, shall not write much about lunch as it was ordinary and manageable considering that there were 11 staff. The thing that pissed me off was that at one time 4 were at the bar, another 4 in the kitchen, 1 was missing and 1 was wiping the cutlery, leaving me to handle 7 tables (7x4=28 people). When I was in the bar I noticed ants and lifted the sugar and milk jar underliners, turned out that there was a lot more underneath but I couldn't bare to kill them so I left the underliners aside and let them move away, hoping someone else would not kill them before they did. Then there was an order of chicken rice with the customer asking for chicken backside meat with bones, I was like..
Before my 2nd break from 5 to 5.30pm it looked like it was going to rain. As I was eating it did rain and when I went back up there were a lot of customers. There was this group of 8 customers whom I took order for, all familiar faces. The 1st thing the guy said was "can you speak mandarin?" and I answered with a "ke yi". After the food was served he waved at me and asked "da ge ni de ming zi shi she me? bu ke yi yi zhi jiao ni da ge". Fact was that he's several times my age, about 50-60+? Anyway I replied that my Chinese name was "wei jie" and he asked "xing she me? and I said "wang, san zhi wang".
Was kept busy for the rest of the evening and night until I went downstairs to collect 34 cooler boxes from the golf cart area at 7.34pm. I finished in about half an hour and Bernard had merged tables and prepared ice water for the 30+ people who were coming.
They came separately in groups and were only seated at 8+. Bernard and Suhaime took care of their orders while the rest of us continued with normal operations. As I expected there were more people than planned and they merged more tables. I had filled up the ice water container at the station with instructions from Angeline when Bernard asked me to pour ice water for the new tables. Cuz the glasses were at the station, I didn't think of getting ice water from the bar instead and got it from the water container instead, which I had just filled up and would need to fill up again. Guess I was tired to the extent that I wasn't thinking straight already.
When the food began coming out from the kitchen (which got spammed) we had to sort through them before serving to the appropriate tables. The system which Bernard came up with was brilliant, the orders were taken from a few people instead of from everyone, then other than the usual table numbers there was also their names for reference. So we looked for that particular person at the table and asked him or her who to serve to. I thought it would be a big mess but thanks to him things turned out okay.
A regular customer (with his family) had ordered mee goreng takeaway and another coke light. I was helping Bernard with the 40+ people (and was exhausted) so I simply put away the coke light receipt when it came out, thinking I had served it already when I didn't. In the end he was so pissed that Suhaime had to tend to him and apologise, after Angeline had already been told off that he didn't receive the coke light.
For the same reasons, I overlooked the other stations and the already-bad-mood Angeline shouted aloud "hire you for what? stand around then forget the other stations". Sigh, she can complain to all the other staff about my "bad performance" all she wants, cuz I know there are times when I'm more alert and hardworking than full-timers like her.
Earlier at noon Bernard was telling me that his laptop given through subscription of a particular telcom's plan was fixed. The motherboard and lan adapter had been changed and without warranty it would have cost over $800. Then he said about how he had certs in website design, basic programming and another two IT ones from his previous studies back in Malaysia and I told him although I'm studying similar things, I'll only graduate with one cert. He also said that the 1-year e-learning diploma/degree in IT security from a renowned institution was gonna cost him $6000, no idea whether he's gonna leave the restaurant and take it up.
Like I told him previously, since he has interest in and is competent in the IT areas, he shouldn't withhold himself within the restaurant. His reply was that he could always make a few calls and get another IT job, but he was "lazy". In other words I guess he was comfortable in his comfort zone and wanted to remain there since as a captain his pay is higher than regular staff and he does not have to do as much.
Anyway after he declined my offer to help by staying after 9 I went off. As I was walking past Hadi and the other staff (who were waiting for the company bus) he was like "woah don't drive me to Simei, hope you crash". He's good to hang around and work with, always making laughable jokes and relatively hardworking. However that was.. unnecessary.
After more brooding about how I could have chose the Deathadder (which is right hand ergonomically-designed) or Copperhead instead, I finally realised the irony. I had come up with this quote "I am grateful for both the things I have and don't have, are you?" a few days ago. Yet I already have two Razer mice (Krait and Diamondback 3G) but still wanna trade the latter for another. I really shouldn't be asking for so much when people in 3rd-world countries barely have enough food to eat daily.
Shall take good care of my keyboard and mouse and use them till the end of time.