Last day of holidays, wow can't believe it passed by so quickly. Like graduation was on 4 November? Then till now seem wayyyy to fast man! First part of holidays were spent at the opposite end of the globe, next part was mostly half working at Pepper Lunch @ Jurong Point, a quarter at bridge lessons and a quarter having random outings. Shall blog about my experiences at Pepper Lunch and being a banquet waitress at Regent Hotel for 2 days! ^^

Okay start with the shorter one la, Regent Hotel. Worked there from 6pm-12am on Christmas Eve and Christmas itself. The working conditions were really good la, there's staff dinner buffet spread, free transport back home (both nights I had a cab directly to my house's doorstep!), and air-con ballroom with free wedding show! xD Work there was fun, would have continued cause I got pretty much used to it after the second day, but the court shoes I was wearing totally killed me. Cause it has relatively higher heels than normal, plus you have to walk superrr alot, felt my feet aching the whole of the next day. >< Quite horrible really.

Before working there we had to attend this training session thingum at the employment agency, which was pretty interesting cause you get to know all the details behind a banquet, since most of the time we're the ones sitting down just eating, you don't really notice all these small stuffs.


The training booklet is superr informative la! Stuffs like how you should portion the fish, in which direction should you serve the food into the bowls blahblah, though I gave up following it and just did what I felt comfortable in the end heh!

Okay the cool thing about being a waiter is you really get to see the behind-the-scenes of a banquet, like surrounding the ballroom is actually this long corridor with kitchen and everything you need for the banquet. Freaking convenient and cool really. Like you get to see all the busy-ness of the kitchen and the dishwashing place, really a world of difference from the calm and peacefulness of the banquet itself HAHA! Oh another thing about the behind-the-scene part is that there's actually this special employee's entrance at a corner of the hotel! Frigging cool la! Then when you enter it's really the place where you see all the different people working there - waitresses, chefs, cleaners, etc. Even the cafeteria where you get your food! Everyone gathers at the same place. Pretty damn cool!

The first day of my work (Christmas Eve), got pretty freaked out at first cause when we reported to the banquet for work, the manager look damnn scary. Like there was this bunch of guys who reported like 5 minutes late, and he was like "What time is it now? What time did I ask you to report? Write your name here. You can go home now. Good I can deduct more money." SCARY SHIT OKAY. But heng he was okay later LOL. So first thing they did was to distribute the menu and let us familiarise with it, not only with the food but also the wedding couple's names haha! Then they started grouping us and allocating groups to tables, which we then proceeded to check our table settings, arrange them, prepare our side stations (where you put all the plates, bowls, serving gears).

First day of work was a breeze for me, was grouped with 2 other super experienced people, and another newbie like me from ACS, we were in charge of 3 tables, and the whole wedding dinner was quite different from the usual chinese dinners, the whole thing is portioning at side station (ie we portion the food at the tables at the side and serve people their individual portions). Oh it's like this cause the couple organised the wedding such that there was elaborate decorations on the lazy susan (the glass round thingum you turn round and round) which was quite hard to remove. So it was relatively slack cause the 2 more experienced one portioned while the ACS guy and I served. And those 2 were there to constantly guide us as to what to do next, so it was quite fun really. Plus the ACS guy and I would take untouched leftovers to the back to 偷吃 sometimes hehh! DAMN WASTE OKAY REALLY.

Second day of work, was assigned to table number 15, and I had to serve that table all by myself. Was superr scared cause it's not portioning at side station anymore, instead it was ALL dishes except the first cold dish (which was family style, ie they take the food themselves) portioning at lazy susan. THIS IS HARD OKAY. Especially when you have not enough space - table filled with wine glasses and everything. Yea and my table particularly requested for a lot of wines la, like 6 people had a glass of wine. Oh and about the drinks, IT'S SUPER MAFAN LA, cause the bar is outside the ballroom, so whenever we wanted to refill soft drinks or wine or beer we have to walk all the way out of the ballroom to get them. Wine is the worst, cause they don't allow us to use trays to carry them for fear of accidents, so I had to keep walking to and fro my gosh. Okay my portioning was not bad, everyone had relatively equal amount of food, but cause I was super noob, my lazy susan became quite dirty in the end with all the sauce drips here and there HEHH.

And the people at my table abit.. cold la, maybe it's just me cause when I portion they stare really hard at what I'm doing, quite scary LOL. Oh but got this damn nice old man will try to help me with small actions (like take his own portion.. cause I'm supposed to not only portion but also to distribute the portions, quite mafan really). Oh then the fish part totally scared me out, heng someone helped me portion it at the side station so all I had to do is to scoop up the parts on the plates and serve hehe! Damn scared of disfiguring the fish if I were to portion it LOL. Though managing a table myself was pretty stressful, I feel damn accomplished la! Like WOW I actually managed to do that without any super big accident or anything~ Oh another thing about this is you really have to manage your time well! Like if you're lag and slow you'll 害 your table to receive their food later, so it really feels good when you get the dish from the kitchen and see that there are still many dishes there, shows that you're one of the earlier few to serve the dish! ^^

Oh and about the second day, don't know why the manager assigned me to do a guy's job. =.= Well I assume it's a guy's job since I was the only girl doing it. Before the wedding dinner starts people have to register outside the ballroom, then there are people assigned to walk around with trays to serve drinks to these people lor! Woa the tray was super heavy la, totally trained my biceps LOL.

Okay now to Pepper Lunch! Started work on 7 December, Wednesday, have been working for 21 days as of now, total of 141 hours, excluding breaktime. Still remember being so unfamiliar with the uniform the first day I wore it, and feeling so out of place, feeling as if everyone was looking at me weirdly LOL. But now it's totally HECK LA and I'm so used to wearing the uniform! (Was even more used to it than hongzi LOL)


Okay and being in service most of the time, naturally you'll meet nice and mean customers. Nice customers are those who are very understanding, and will say Thank You when you serve them their food! It's not needed la, but a Thank You really can make your day! Mean customers are those who..are just pure mean. Like if there's a slight screw up in the order they'll give you this super 臭 face and talk to you with attitude. Really buaytahan. Like there was this time we added the egg in the wrong plate, and this particular plate was meant for the maid in the family dining then. The mother got super pissed that the egg was in the maid's plate, and was like the egg should be in her son's plate and not the maid's plate. So we were like okay we add an egg in the son's plate and give a free egg to the maid (since it's less waste of food, rather than totally throwing away the maid's portion and giving her a new plate without egg). AND THE MOTHER DEMANDED TO REDO THE MAID'S PLATE. Insisting that she doesn't want egg in that plate when we were more than willing to give the egg free. And the tone she talked to us felt..abit like cause it's the maid's plate that's why she doesn't want the egg to be there. Gosh.

And there was another guy. Cause he was waiting for his icecream to be served. At that time it was peak hour, usually during peak hours there'll be tonsa icecream order and I'll icecream machine will need some time to replenish la. And this guy didn't want to wait, so I asked him if he wanted to change his icecream to something else (since the meal is like drink + misosoup/mashedpotato/salad/icecream) and he didn't want any of the side dishes, but wanted another drink. Which I can't do that la. So he gave this rather pissed look when I asked him to wait for 5-10 minutes. Another colleague of mine when to talk to him, and she noticed that he was timing me LOL, thing is the colleague didn't tell me he was timing me until after I gave him the icecream, which meant that I gave him within the 'time limit', like I totally pwn him la HAHA.

Just really cannot stand how some customers must give this accusing look, talk in that very accusing tone. Though we're just doing service, WE ARE HUMANS TOO OKAY, waiters or in fact anybody regardless of what they are doing deserve to be treated with respect no matter what. Hmph. Haha but yea mean customers have become a part and parcel of this job la, pretty much used to them le~

Okay that's pretty much it! Earned aboout $800 in total from my work! ^^ Awesomeness teehee! Other than work..bridge lessons were coooool~ And the random outing and shopping! Watched Mission Impossible 4 and Sherlock Holmes, and I prefer the former honestly, somehow I prefer more action packed scary scenes heh! AND GAHHH TMR OMG. TOMORROW. Damn sian after looking at the IP activities schedule. I can already feel myself getting all fidgety and restless in the auditorium seats la! And all the tests zzzz! I can't even remember how it feels like to write and piak there's a english diagnostic test first thing on the first day right after 15minutes of annoucements zzz. ORIENTATION WEEK HURRY COME!! And honestly, I'm scared for tmr meh. BUT I GOT MY DEAREST SANBA-ERS. So I hope it'll all fine and good for now! ^^ HELLO HWACHONG.