Sunday, September 07, 2008

Updates...

Credits: Grant MacDonald

It has been a while since i do some SERIOUS updating. Yes yes, you may have noticed every tuesday i would put up a video from YouTube and every friday a joke. But... they are not updates. More of like auto-generated posts running on a timetable.

So... i decided to sit down and do a SERIOUS update...
But... being a no-life... hmmm... the post might be short...
We shall see.

First of all, i am having a break from school. Wow. It is not a very long break la. Well, how do i put it? Eh, during my break, some of my friends are still studying. Than they have breaks too, ranging from 2 weeks to 1 month. Than they go back to school. And i am still enjoying my break.

Well of cause coming from a middle-class family, i didn't stay at home and shake legs. Took on a few jobs here and there and really, i learned a lot.

My first job is at gramophone, the cathy branch.



Initially i applied for the position of retail assistant. But as gramophone is having a warehouse sale at the time of my application, i was sent to the admin side to sort out the goods for the sale. Wah lao. Not fun sia. Wei Chuan(yes, we applied together) and i have to tag mountains(literally) after mountains of CDs, VCDs and DVDs for 7 days straight. After the sale, we have to de-tag the same shit and sort out the mess the sale brought. When i say sort, i really mean sort. Title by title, supplier by supplier. That, is madness and it took us 2 to 3 weeks alone. I was supposed to stay on longer, till at least mid-August when my mind gave me a sign saying that my Graduation Project(GP) is more important. Hence, i leave around end July to fully concentrate on my GP.

11th Aug marks the end of my mugging for my GP and i find myself in a not-very-bad-but-not-very-good-either situation. Penniless and jobless, i have to find a job soon or else i will be eating air and drinking rain water everyday. But than, who is going to hire someone who can't commit fully for at least 3 months? So, i decided to find a permanent part-time job so that even when i start school, i can still continue working. It must be a coincidence that Starbucks, my favourite coffee joint is hiring.



Since than, i have embarked on a training journey towards being a Starbucks barista. It is fun, really, learning more about the different kinds of coffee and making caffe latte and mocha etc. Hopefully, i can pass my training without screwing up too much and not make my training coaches cut me up and stuff me into pastries to be sold.

One good thing i like about the training is that i have full control over the days of my training. This flexibility allows me to try something new - selling laptops at COMEX 2008.



This is the first time i become the person behind the booth trying to sell something to someone and not the person walking around trying to reject the someone behind the booth trying to sell something to me. I would say it is an enriching experience as i really learned a lot of valuable lessons. Really, in such a tough and competitive environment, you have to unleash all your salesman's skills or else you will just die in the clutter.

So i guess for now i will just try to complete my barista training as soon as possible while waiting for school to reopen. Having such a long break is kind of sianz actually and the motivation to study is really diminishing day by day.

Speaking of which, i realise day by day i am inching closer to my 21st birthday. Wow.

21st Birthday sia! Adulthood man!

Ya, adulthood. While friends around me are holding birthday parties to welcome in adulthood with a bang, i have nothing in the works, seriously. I don't know but i don't see any point in holding one. To make it worse, my birthday falls on a thursday, a weekday stuck in the middle of nowhere. While friends are asking what am i going to do on my birthday, my usual reply is simply, "Stay home and sleep?" A loser reply. Yes i know. To be honest, there is a dilemma in my heart. Part of it wants to hold a party, inviting friends to come over to hang out. Another part of it wants to celebrate it alone. Add procrastination and the following equation appeared.

Dilemma + Procrastination = No plans for birthday

Well at least i can seek console in the fact that my family still remembers my birthday and today, i had a birthday lunch at Sushi Tei over at Vivo City. Wow. The food is good and even better is the service. We being a large group(6 adults and 2 rowdy brats) is a headache for any service crew at any restaurant. But the waitresses are rather patient and ensure all our needs and requests(we made quite a bit) were fulfilled. Kudos to them man!

Woo... this post is not as short as i expected it to be. Nevertheless, it is a relief to finally jot down my thoughts after so long. Right now, i just want to countdown to adulthood and enter it peacefully, preferably with a Starbucks Grande Vanilla Latte in hand. =)