I'm sick. Damn it. It was sore throat a few days ago and yesterday night I coughed like I had TB. And now my nose is blocked. Oh wth.

It rained the whole night yesterday and we stupidly left our clothes out to dry. And it’s still outside now and it’s still raining! Ugh we intend to bring it in tomorrow morning and re-wash it.

So we used our rainbow coloured umbrella’s today! :D When it rains, it’s super hard to get a cab. We waited around 10 mins before we persistently went into 1 cab.

Our whole day was spent inside Training Room A again. This time round they spoke to us about security, HACCP / SFSMS and fire safety.

Security and HACCP / SFSMS was before our lunch break (9am – 12.30pm).

At first I was still quite awake, but after the first topic I started to feel sleepy. Dozed off quite a number of times because I didn’t understand what the speaker was saying and I’ve actually learnt all those stuff during FABM and HOM in school.

After the lunch, we had around 3 hours of fire safety procedures (which we already learnt during the IMF period). I couldn’t take it already, I slept! And after sleeping I got restless and this was when the 7 of us made quite some noise because we were laughing at our own jokes.

Then at like 4.30pm there was a walk-about at the back stage of the hotel (which we already toured like 2 times because we asked our manager to bring us around when we were free).

So we walked pass the laundry area, in-room dining, offices etc etc.

Oh did I mention that there was a typhoon at Zhe Jiang area today? Quite serious I think, and our manager told us to come out of our house earlier tomorrow because there’ll be a typhoon too. :/

We ended work at 5pm? We met Aaron in the lift and decided to go to the staff canteen for dinner together.

Who’s Aaron? He’s this little boy that we met when we were packing moon cakes. Yes, he’s damn young, turning 17 years old this year. He’s from Si Chuan and ran away to come to Shanghai to work. His name is actually Shen Xin and I gave him the name Aaron because everyone in the hotel has a Christian name!

Seriously, if you don’t have one the HR dept will give you one. This resulted in me seeing really strange names such as Forrest, Echo, Lemon, Cissy etc etc.

Okay so back to Aaron, he’s really innocent and keen to learn. He just started work for 1 week and is actually in the Banquet department working in the store room but because of the moon cake thing going on, he’s being posted there to work until the moon cake thing is over. He’s so quiet and shy lah (and not too bad looking).

So all of us have like a soft spot for him because he now lives in the hotel’s dorm (which is super small, dirty and smelly) and he comes across really genuine.

And since all of us were off from work and he also ended his shift already we decided to bring him to Super Brand Mall because after working for 1 week in Shanghai can you believe that he hasn’t walked around the hotel at all?

We brought him to the arcade to play games but stopped by a restaurant first because we wanted to try their Portuguese egg tarts. (I MISS TONG HENG EGG TARTS!!!)

We then headed to the arcade to play some games. He hasn’t stepped into an arcade before you know. He was quite shy at first but after a while he got more comfortable with us.

After playing games like car racing, shooting basketball into hoops etc we stopped to play some bowling game where you earn tickets to exchange for stuff.

We played until we had enough tickets to get Aaron a Nike wristband. He was really happy and thankful.

Did I mention he was also very keen to learn English? And because he was never taught English before it’s easier to teach him the correct pronunciation of words. We are planning to buy for him a notebook so he can record down the English words we teach him.

We’re also encouraging him to quit smoking (he’s been smoking for 3 years already) and he’s really listening to us! Like, we told him he can’t smoke anymore today and he really listened.

The scenario was like this. We were all outside his locker because we were waiting for our manager and he told us he received RMB20 tip yesterday. He then took out his packet of cigarettes and put it in his pocket. So Yi Hong asked how did he spend the RMB20? He said RMB10 was on that packet of cigs (yes they are DAMN cheap here) and he still had another RMB10.

I then said “are u going to use that RMB10 to buy another packet?” He nodded his head and YJ, Yu Hong and I started “preaching” to encourage him to kick the habit. Yu Hong then said “you give me the RMB10, I’ll keep it for you and return it to you next time.”

If you were him, would you give Yu Hong the RMB10? No right. But he took it out of his pocket and gave it to him! Obviously we didn’t take it lah.

Such a nice guy right, how can we not have a soft spot for him! He’s the kind that will surely kanna bully by other people in the hotel lah!

So after the arcade session we went down to Lotus to walk around a bit and show him around.

It was already 8.20pm and we decided to walk home while the guys went to take their bus. But we knew that there was a shuttle bus from Super Brand Mall to somewhere near our home.

Explored a bit and realized the last bus was at 8.30pm. So yay! We had our first bus experience in Shanghai today although it was a shuttle bus and not a public bus.

I have no clue what we’re gonna do for orientation tomorrow man. Hopefully we’ll end early!

Gonna watch Pink Panther now! :D :D

Replies

KC: Yes, I'm like holidaying! I think I'll officially feel like I'm working ony after the first week of October?! :D

Nadia: HELLO BEST FRIEND!! I miss you tooo!!! Quick, come and find me! :D