How to tie a shoelace

Oh the irony of it.

I just attended a workshop here at work, and one of the activities (to test how we can write short sharp stories) was to explain, in forty words or less in a language that even a child can understand, how to tie a shoelace.

Just to explain: I don’t know how to *properly* tie a shoelace. I just tie it any which way, and it always ends up being untied soon after. When I was in high school and I was wearing shoes with laces, my best friend would tie my shoelaces for me, and now that I’m married, my husband would do it.

Otherwise, I try to find sneakers with Velcro straps.

And yet, apparently, after this exercise, i could explain how to do it the best. *snickers*

Maybe it’s like what they say..those who can’t do, teach.

Six months

It’s been half a year since I started working. I’ve made friends, I’ve been part of multiple numbers of projects, been madly coding (note: not programming – just popping in articles for our portal), gone home at midnight, and…well…just the life of an average working girl.

I can’t believe it’s already been that long, actually. Six months of one-hour commutes each way to go to and from work. Since we don’t have a car, it’s buses and trains for me!

Two bright spots in the past six months was when I went to Hong Kong with my family in June, and when my parents came over for my birthday in August. I’m still hoping I can go home for Christmas this December. *sigh*

But yeah…six months. And counting

I get it!

Yes, I definitely get that I’ll be starting work on Monday.

And this is because in the past two days alone, I’ve gotten four calls and one email from HR, reminding me of this fact. Come to work at 9 am, go straight to HR, bring passport, check.

I don’t know who’s more excited, them or me! Haha, as if I’m important enough for them to be excited about.

It’s the last few days of freedom…tonight will be spent learning mahjong! My friend and her husband will be coming over and we will take advantage of the mahjong set and table that our landlord left here in our flat. Wahoo!

End of holiday

This is it. HR just called me and informed me that they’ve gotten my employment pass. They’ll take care of collecting my EP – yes! that’s a hundred dollar less expense for me!

I just have to show up on the 3rd of March at 9 am, and I get to start work. More than two months after I got offered the position, I’ll finally finally be able to start work.

Wish me luck!

Approved

I just checked the Ministry of Manpower’s Employment Pass Online system and found out that my employment pass has been approved.

I wonder when my employer will make me start; given that I still need to receive the letter from them, collect the employment pass from MoM, take their compulsory medical exam, and the fact that they only let new employees start work on either the first or third Monday of the month.

I’m a bit nervous at  starting my new job. To begin with, I haven’t had much experience in actual journalism. I’ve written articles, for sure, but I’ve never done actual journalism in writing them. I hope they’ve got some training program!

Plus, I don’t know anyone there! And they will be mostly locals (Singap0r3ans). Not Filipinos like I’m used to. While I have worked with locals previously, it’s at an entirely different place and capacity.

And it’s been such a long time since I’ve done actual work. What if I can’t hack it? What if I’m too lazy?

This reminds me of when I was about to enter UP, and I was so nervous because I felt like I was extremely mediocre compared to the rest of the students who would be going in. But luckily, I survived. So maybe I’ll survive this one too.

So now I’d reaaaally better make use of the remaining days of vacation for me!

And this is why this blog’s url is cappuccinochiller…

I really do have so many stories that I wish I could have told from the last few months, from hellishly busy days, to relaxing days where I get to chat with nice customers (some of whom I’ve been mistaken to be 10 years younger than I am! Naks! Hahaha), to pesky customers, to weird customers, to smelly delivery men (phew!) to my fascination with steaming milk for hot drinks.

Yes folks, I am definitely in the front line of customer service in a great coffee shop that my husband’s family franchised. I open the store and stay there till late at night, taking orders, preparing food, chillers, coffee, and more. And no, it’s not that coffee shop with the mermaid logo, nor is it the one with the purple straws, if you know what I mean!

I now know my cappuccinos from my lattes, shots and foam and all that jazz. So if you’re ever in Singapore and you want a good cuppa, look me up!

A New Day

When I first got here in Singapore a year ago, after my husband and I got married, we tended to our ice cream business. It wasn’t really a full time thing, in that we didn’t have an office and we’d just go when we had appointments and deliveries and whatnot. It was a wholesale distribution setup, so we didn’t have to be in a store the whole day.

All that has changed now. In the span of less than a month, my husband’s family and I are now immersed in a brand new business; one that involves coffee, milk, and food. You get the picture. We have been undergoing training for the last couple of weeks, and boy, is it tiring, believe you me!

I’ve been learning new skills, been working hard, been learning everything I need to know so that I can help run the business effectively. I’ve even managed to fulfill a lifelong dream: to run the cash register! Haha.

It’s a lot of fun, and also a lot of hard work. My customer service skills are now back in action. I get to talk to a lot more people, see more people. A lot of booboos and cheers.

As Michael Buble would sing: It’s a new day, it’s a new dawn, it’s a new life…for me. And I’m feeeeeeling gooood.

So exciting!

monkey business

more food for thought for the coming work week, via my e-mail box. thanks mark!

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result – all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm!

Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, and then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been done around here.

And that my dear friends, is how company policy begins.

bad day at work

Here’s a little something to put your workday in perspective. I got this via e-mail, but wanted to post it just the same.

Next time you have a bad day at work…think of this guy. Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an e-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to Laughline, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won.Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had bad day at the office. I know you’ve been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it’s not so bad after all. Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job.

As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It’s a wetsuit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: we have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of crap sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose.

Now this sounds like a damn good plan, and I’ve used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is I take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It’s like working in a Jacuzzi. Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my butt started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit.

Now since I don’t have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn’t stick to it; however, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into my butt. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with 5 other divers,were all laughing hysterically.

Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make 3 agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling 35 minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet.

As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I get in the chamber.

The cream put the fire out, but I couldn’t poop for 2 days because my butt was swollen shut. So, next time you’re having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt.

Have a great workweek!

still no va

and it goes on

I e-mailed Shalu this morning to let her know about the non-publication of the press release, and told her that she might be better off with a local PR firm (perhaps their Manila affiliate, rather than a non-pro like me) to do the job. About an hour later, she called me up and basically, asked me to continue with the work, try to cultivate media contacts, and to get it published in at least one or two publications. She told me that she wants to keep working with me, and is hoping for more Manila-based projects for me in the future.

So (foolishly?), I said I’d try to do that. So if any of you dear readers have contacts that can help me in this little dilemma, give me a shout-out. If I still don’t manage to get it published, I’d better throw in the towel, sadly.