Wednesday, January 27, 2010
455th post: Final Destination.
Today marks the end of my secondary school journey. Actually it has already ended the day O Level's end but I wanted it to be today. Looking back, I think I've grown a lot, not only physically, but also mentally. I'm not the nerd with nerdy hairstyle which was constantly teased by Fion and Wenya to go to Beijing 101 anymore; not the crybaby although I still cry a lot now; not the vulnerable child who relied so much on parents; not the indecisive boy who didn't have his own opinions and thoughts.
It was only recently when I sat in the bus back home from work that I started thinking about how much I have grown since Sec1. A lot, I'll say, but I think I'm still as childish or playful as ever. Friends in secondary school influenced me emotionally too. They play an important role of my life, and I'm sure I play an important role in at least one of my friends' lives too.
Before the O Level's, the only worry was studies. After the O Level's, I have to worry about getting jobs. In the end I managed to work as a hotel staff in Raffles Hotel. I've worked there for 17 times over a time span of 1.5 months. The main reason I work is because of money LOL. Yeah I'm money-faced $.$ Working also allows me to gain experience too. Working in Raffles has allowed me to gain a whole lot of experience. Like how some of the cabinets where plates are kept are mildly infested with cockroaches; how short-tempered the managers are; how the managers constantly spam vulgarities at hotel staff and calling us idiots; how the word 'f***' always comes out of manager Razif's mouth whenever he's pissed off because of some small mistakes.
Those are 'wonderful' experiences I had there.
The real wonderful ones are how the hotel staff work together to eat the leftovers(which are CLEAN and not touched by the guests); how we gossiped and scolded/cursed the managers and captains behind their backs; how we managed to sneak out of the rooms to slack etc. The most important thing I've learnt while working is that I should be more sociable. I realised that it's very important to be sociable and open when I step into the working society, especially when you don't want to be left out. I wasn't left out because of friends working with me there, but what if I was working alone, I would be all alone and solo everything on my own. I guess I really need to learn from those cheena people on how to be sociable. It's like they can talk about anything under the sun and many random stuff. For me when I am with a person, I really have to rack my brains to come up with topics to talk about with him/her. And when we are done talking about that topic, silence will engulf the surroundings once again then I have to think about another topic.
Of course I managed to make some friends at Raffles. I'm not that kind of totally zibi person okay. It's important to maintain a good relationship with the people there so they wouldn't do anything bad to me and sometimes help me during times when I'm in need. Hmm at least I know how difficult it is to be a server, so next time I shall not mix those food or drinks together to create disgusting and inedible substances LOL. The most valuable experience is to be able to work in Istana WOO. I managed to see President Nathan and Health Minister in person! Lols big deal.
A brand new journey awaits me tomorrow once I step into ACJC. I hope I'll be able to make many many new friends and adapt to the new environment. See you guys! This blog will be inactive from now on. The new blog link will be situated somewhere in this blog, but you have to find it on your own.
Goodbye, freakinggreen.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Hey! In case you're asking why am I not blogging these days, it's because I'M TIRED! I simply don't really have the time and energy to blog. Okay maybe those are just plain excuses but blogging sorta makes me feel bored and sleeping seems to be crawling on top of blogging in the priority chart. I woke up at 4.20am today just to get ready for work. Fortunately, the hotel had booked taxi for all the staff working for the 6am slot, good right?
Today Nixon, Hiokshian and I worked at Swissotel. Well there are many parts of it so I don't know which part of Swissotel I was working in today. That's not the main thing, the main is, IT'S BETTER THAN WORKING AT RAFFLES HOTEL! It's like woohoo there. The managers are so much friendly and some allowed us to eat the leftovers for the buffet, good right? The whole place is also air-conditioned (because it's in Raffles City) whereas Raffles Hotel isn't air-conditioned along the corridor, plus there are frequent weird stench along the corridors and pantry in Raffles Hotel. The ballroom in Raffles City could contain more than 50 tables while the Raffles Ballroom could only contain like 20 plus tables, lousy. The oval and rounds trays in Swissotel are odourless and much much cleaner as compared to Raffles Hotel's dirty and smelly (with occasional spider webs spotted) trays. Damn yucks la Raffles.
I had lots of fun working at Swissotel and I don't feel like working at Raffles anymore LOL. Zijue also worked today and she's damn funny while eating the wanton. A group of us were talking in a small room and Zijue wanted to try the fried wanton. So she took a wanton by the crispy area and took a small bite. One 'manager' (actually it was just some random staff) suddenly came into the room and she quickly put down the wanton, attempting to hide it behind her back. But the great force broke the crispy part and the meaty area just flew and dropped to the ground. The scene was damn funny! Nixon and I couldn't stop laughing at her dumbness. I didn't know that she's afraid of the managers considering that she's also a staff in TCC. Oh, the staff there were very friendly. A guy called Wuyue even brought Nixon and I to see where to slack and sleep, sleep as in lying down on the chair covers or table cloths on the trolleys LOL. We also met a Nanhua girl called Lili. She's quite friendly too. I didn't expect her to make the first move to talk to us. She isn't under TCC so her pay is $6/hr, not very much actually because our pay is $5.50/hr, not much of a difference considering we still have CPF and extra deduction of money because of TCC.
Today's job was quite slack. I did clearing of dishes, door boy, wiping goblets and some others. The most sian work to do was to be a door boy. I couldn't do anything! I could only stand in front of the doors for at least 30min, nothing much. The best part of the day was to be able to gobble down as much wanton as possible LOL. Nixon and I still damn auntie and went to secretly dabao some home. He took many more than I did! And we took pictures of our nice uniforms :D
And my fabulous nametag with my own name on it! You might think 'Of course your name is on your own nametag la-.-' But Raffles don't give its staff nametags with their real names. Sometimes guys could even get girls names, so I was really happy to receive a nametag with my own name on it from Swissotel (:
That picture was unexpectedly clear because I didn't take it with my eyes looking at the handphone screen. Sian I have to go work at Raffles tomorrow. I will miss Swissotel loads man, especially their delicious fried wanton LOL. Okay that's about today. I think I shall upload the pictures taken during Ben10 BBQ some other day because I will be working everyday till the following Monday. Nights!
Monday, January 18, 2010
I finally went to jog in the morning with my dajie, but it didn't feel good because I kept felt like laosai-ing zz. We chatted a lot and slacked a lot too. After that we went home and I asked my mother to make a hard-boiled egg again hehe, damn delicious. Then dajie and I went out to buy ingredients to make cupcakes and strawberry strudel.
Our first stop was Lot1 for lunch. Then we headed to a shop that sells baking stuff and ingredients in Sembawang. To my horror, the shop was replaced with a food court! I totally sian diao. Then we went to Sun Plaza's Fairprice to look for the missing ingredients but in the end we bought chocolate chips, which wasn't in the ingredient list lol. After that we went to Causeway Point's Cold Storage. Okay after some discussion we bought multi-purpose flour to substitute oat flour D: And we bought custard powder instead of the made-ready liquidy custard zz.
I changed into my home clothes immediately after reaching home and got work started! We prepared the ingredients for making cupcakes first because it looked a little simpler to do and higher chances of success as compared to making strawberry strudel. We simply followed the recipe and mixed sugar, butter and eggs together, followed by two kinds of flour and tada, it's ready to be baked. It's easy to say, but quite hard if you have to do it, especially alone haha.
We put 9 small balls(?) of the mixture into the oven for a try. Some were nice while most were quite yucky and chao dar. They tasted like biscuits, quite nice actually. So after having a rough gauge of how much of the mixture to put in each of the small paper cups, mine succeeded, but my dajie's failed (quite uglily LOLS). Hers looked like banana boat or something because some of the cupcakes looks kinda... disgustingly elongated HAHA! Okay la as long as it's edible can already :D
My kind dajie specially edited this lovable Chucky picture for me
retarded no. 1
We managed to make like around 40 cupcakes (which is quite little) and not all succeeded. My mother sacrificed and ate some of the chao dar ones. She complained that they tasted bitter LOL, obviously right? Then we prepared the ingredients for making the strawberry strudel. I used cake flour instead of whatever flour that was indicted on the recipe due to some stupid misunderstanding(my fault). In the end it failed terribly D: My mother asked me to try again sometime this week then I was like 'WHOA!' in my heart because this was like the first time my mother actually encouraged me to bake, so happy. Unfortunately, I'll not be free at home from tomorrow onwards till next Monday sian. So I'll probably do on next Tuesday then!
Although we failed in making the strawberry strudel, we managed to convert a strudel into a crumble! LOL okay it's kinda self-deluding but anyway, we were witty enough to come up with this idea okay. It didn't taste that bad although the custard had a rather strong taste. So we actually did strawberry crumble instead of studel :D And it tastes quite delicious when chilled, BELIEVE ME! I'm gonna let Nixon and Adriel try my cupcakes tomorrow only hahaha.
LOOK AT THE BLOODY DIFFERENCE!
retarded no. 2
BEN10 BBQ TOMORROW! NIGHTS GUYS!
