getting use to life in shanghai =)

5th day in shanghai (04/09/07)

First half of the day was just seating in the training room listening to the training manager (I shall not say the name) telling us all about the history of the hotel, the vision, mission and blar blar blar..we were all so damn tired that all of us almost fell asleep.. (he did say sth about f&b stuff but still, the lecture/training is so damn boring)

After which we had our lunch and then was to an outlet called yi café to see how the service system work. (it wasn’t to much help as all we did was like seeing how the waitress and waiters clearing up the plates and setting up the table.. which I know how to do it since like 4 years ago…)

Both kim and I were partnered tgt and we were told to try clearing up the plates. Haha I think they treated us like really some newbies that knows nothing.. I mean, I remembered the very first time I started working as a waitress in Singapore, on the very first day of work, they just started asking me to clear plate and stuff.. and over here, we were told to SEE how they serve and TRY clearing up the plates… hmmm.. maybe that’s good in a way.

Then it’s the craziest thing that happens. So, what happen was: Yi café is this super big buffet restaurant that sells international food and there are several stations (10 to be exact) that specialize in certain cuisine like there is western station, japan station, desert station, asian station and chinese station. There wasn’t any food tag on each station as the concept was to allow the chief to interact with the guest.

So what the training manager asked us to do was to write on a piece of paper exactly wat each station sells; the food, the ingredients in it, the condiments, the sauce and etc… That was like crazy coz there were so many things and there were a lot of terms that I haven never come across (coz I dun cook at all..) and it’s either most of them don’t understand what I was trying to ask or I don’t understand what they are talking about. (its like I ask them in English coz I have got no idea what’s the chinese word of the item and they would like reply in chinese the ingredients name which I know nuts about it.)

In the end of the day, once the manager said that we can go off as he had a meeting to go, all of us just cant wait to get out of that place..(our legs were like breaking already)

After work was to this feet massage place near out motel.

The service is like damn damn good.LOL. I realized that china service is all very good but obviously got to go to those decent shops. Singapore service standard really can’t be compared to them. I think they are all very sincere (thou yea, they wanna earn our money..but still, the service they provided made me very willing to pay the money.)

Had our dinner at this road side store and when I was going to take my first piece of food, someone said very loudly(in chinese): ‘there is a rat that ran across my legs’. All the girls that heard it screamed and my leg immediately went onto the chair.. This is like so damn scary..my legs was up on the chair for the entire stay there.

And the funny thing was that after the meal, we quickly went out of that shop and as I was thinking to myself that I hope I wont ran into a rat, kim started screaming and holding on to my hand. And I could just took a glance on this small little mouse, kim starting pulling my hand and ran all the way to the end of the street.. that was like damn funny…

Went back to the motel and we actually went the wrong direction.. but anyway, we brought sth along the way =)

6th day in shanghai.

Today wasn’t that bad. The whole day we were practically seating down for lecture or doing some odd jobs.

Went through the homework we did yesterday (the one that we got to note down all the food and ingredients and stuffs) and I think I failed like terribly coz majority of wat the employee told me was like wrong.. I think they just guessed it and bluff me…

Set up the training room (fish bone structure) for this spirit lesson, waited for lesson to start and it was like damn super boring..

So, I am going to know where I am going to work already soon =) It will be either hotel hostess or in house service. So at least I am not clearing plates or what so ever =)

End our day after the lesson and headed back to the motel… reached back by like 6.30pm, the earliest timing ever since we were in shanghai I think.