Princess' Diary: Work

Sunday, 20 December 2009

Work

9:40 pm |

Posted by Hui Ann |

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Christmas is around the corner and it somehow musters along the willingness to spend.

Hence, i have been working to save up extra money for my Christmas trip to Germany and to lavish myself and the people i love with gifts.

My first job was a Student Ambassador/Leader of a group of Year 11s for a Law Open Day which i worked from 9am to 3.30pm.

There were about 100 teenagers from high schools around Wales.

A beautiful Christmas tree at Glamorgan Building, where the Open Day was held.

Ive only entered this building once so it was quite embarrassing when i led them to the wrong place to register. My bad!

Look at the design of the building. To me, i thought it was really unique!
There is a room in the middle so you have to walk in a circle/semi-circle to get to one entrance of the building.

The first activity of the day was exposing them to a Moot Trial Court system. Melody was the Prosecutor of a road accident case. She was really convincing and she led the case extremely well!! Im so proud of her :D The BVC definitely brought out and polished the advocacy skills that she has. So im guessing that all the tears, hard work, stress, late nights and sleepless nights did pay off in the end :) I hope it will do me good next year as well.

We had other activities for them such as the Murder Case, a talk about the life of a University student and lastly, a visit to the Crown Court but unfortunately the power went off for the whole day so we had to replace that session with Campus tour.

These are the 100 teenagers we had.

You wont believe how interactive and mature these kids are! They speak like an adult! And they are like......15-17 years old only! Aiyoh! The kids of similar age back in Msia wont even DARE say a thing if they were in a discussion like this. I really blame our system of education that produces students that think in the box. My lecturer was saying, "The reason why in examinations, we want our students not to just regurgitate the answers but to be creative because we want fresh ideas and opinions that will change the law for the better" I say Amen to that. Im glad that this chance to study abroad has brought forth the metamorphosis of my mindset. However, my Welsh friends say that even though they look mature, they are still BAYYYY-BIES! hehe. Welsh accent is really funny. When i was working yesterday at a restaurant, I had a hard time taking down the names of the drinks because of their deep accent. :S My customer said, 'Oh my! We're going to have a long night tonight!' =_=;; Who ask them to speak so funny in the first place??? hmph. Not my fault.

My pay for the day got my lovely bf a pair of comfortable & modern working shoes :)

Last night, i worked as a waitress at a very attractive, beautiful Spanish restaurant called La Brasserie which was located right at the heart of the city. It is beautiful!! Now i have a new restaurant to bring my friends to. :) However i dont really know whether the food served is THAaAT great because one of the main orders is steak and im not really into it. (However i do miss the nice times i have steak(T-bone) and ox-tail soup with my family at The Ship :) ) Upstairs is their yet another chain restaurant called Le Monde which is equivalent to fine dining. The ambiance and decor is AMAZING! i fell in love at once when i stepped into the place. But i dont think i will eat there (as for now) because it's way tooo pricey. I think 1 dish cost 60 pounds onwards.

Both of the restaurants has open kitchens which are unique and carries a bespoke environment.
Cindy and Adrian were in charge of serving the food to the customers' tables while i was in charge of drinks, setting up tables, cleaning it up and all those responsibilities of a waitress. We were in charge of separate areas.

Here are some funny and yet interesting things that happened to me.

1) I had this annoying black waitor (not being racist) that kept talking to me. The thing is, he was SO extremely lazy! He kept complaining that he was tired and he wanted to sit down =_=;; omg right. Isnt standing and hard labour sthg you have to expect once you apply for this job? You should see how he wiped the table. Chinese ppl will say - "You never eat rice ah" hahaha :I dont want to pass this statement down to my children tho..i think it's quite rude. My leader, Muncho(Spanish) was not happy with him so he took the cloth away and wiped the table himself. Plus, he is a hum sup lo. Crazy. I was really annoyed at him at the end. Couldnt stand it already.

2) This old man says he wants to bring me back to see his mother! haha so weird right. He kept calling me just to strike a conversation. Worst of all, he asked me to compare whether he or his friend is more handsome. o_O

3) My first proposal happened that night. A handsome guy took my hand, kissed it and asked me to marry him!! I said YESS!!! hehehhee nola! I was too shocked! Seriously, I didnt expect it okie. I said 'Sorry i have a bf'. Just so you know, these ppl have what we call Dutch courage after having too much beer.

4) Met this wonderful lady who was so nice to me. She was with her BF and friends and they kept thinking im from Thailand when i already told them that im from Malaysia. So the whole night when i was serving them food, they say "Sawadeeka...Kapunka" and being courteous, i just played along! hehe it was hilarious! Before she left, she came to greet me with a goodbye kiss (it's a loving gesture and i do this to some of my friends/boss who are open to this) and gave me her HP no. She knows my family is far away and she said im always welcomed to join them - i thought that was really sweet of her although of coz, i wont call her :) She even told Muncho that she likes me a lot and that im a very attentive waitress. Im so touched!

I cut my hand while i was stacking up glasses to bring them to the bar.
p.s: The bartender taught me how to fill a pint of Carling, John Smith and Guiness!! hehe :)

You will be surprised at the customers' reaction when they heard and saw that i cut my hand. This Australian lady came up to me and she was like "OH MY!!! GIRL ARE YOU OKIE???! YOU CUT YOUR HAND!!" hehe so sweet! I feel loved because she was SOOO concerned. My boss was so cool about this, he saw it and he said "Wow. That's nasty." And yay! I have a blue plaster :) I learnt from the First Aid course that all kitchen stuff has to use blue plasters if they get a cut so that in case if it falls into the soup or the dish that they are making, they will be able to see it.

I worked from 11.30am to 11.30pm. I would have to say that it was quite a hard work because you got to stand on your feet the whole time. I only had one break at 4.30pm to have a quick bite. Wai Kitt got Cindy n i garlic bread which was finger licking good. By that time we were starving! I even took 2/3 mini breaks to the toilet just to sit down for a minute. hehe. However, i learnt so much from this experience that im really glad i went for it :)

At the end of the day, my new found Scandinavian friend, Monika and Muncho spoke to the boss/manager telling him that they liked me very much and that im a very nice girl. He says I'm very good at what i do and i was soooooo happy! The boss/manager then took down my number and my friends' so that he could call us again when he needs us. He says he wants to keep the good ones. :D Thank you Jesus! I asked Him to help me perform my duties well on that day and He really guided me. I even dropped a glass and thank God it didnt break because it fell on my toes *ouch x10 though!! And even when i cut my hand, the glass didnt get into my skin althought it crushed and broke in my hands. Thank you Jesus! I really believe that all things work out for good for those who love Him. :)

To end this real quick coz my sister is sleeping already, tonight we had dinner in my sis' place. Brian was the amazing chef for the night.