For the first time in Shanghai, I woke up when the sky was still dark. I was up at 5.30am and after bathing the sky was bright already.

Ehui asked YJ and I to report to work at 7am today because there was a full day event going on- IBLAC (International Business Leaders Advisory Council) for the Mayor of Shanghai.

There was a seminar going on at China Hall in the morning and the set-up was way cool- round table in the middle and classroom at all the sides.

Having nothing much to do while waiting for the conference to start, Johnny asked us to go down to eat breakfast (:

Oh, guess who we saw at the conference today. Sun Yat-sen’s granddaughter- Nora Sun.

There were so many rich people today, all the CEO’s of companies were at the conference and almost 90% were male. But I find it funny that they separated the China companies and overseas companies seating arrangement- each took a different side.

We couldn’t stay inside when the conference took place so we stood outside the foyer waiting for their coffee break. When they were out, we went to refresh the room by changing all the opened Evian bottles to new ones.

After that we went out and helped the BQT staff clear coffee cups and all but we didn’t have any tray! So we could just take like 2 cups at one time which made us quite useless.

The meeting continued again and YJ and I walked around to the Grand Ball room to see the set-up of the buffet lunch they were going to have.

With nothing much to do already, we made our way down to BQT office to help them do up the dinner menu’s for their farewell dinner tonight. We also started teaching Tracy how to speak Hokkien while she taught us how to speak Shanghainese.

Turns out that Ehui, Goh and Kelvin had already been teaching her all the vulgarities and she used them without knowing how rough it sounded! We were all laughing so loudly when we were trying to speak each other’s languages because the pronunciation will always be wrong somewhere.

We met Goh on the way and he asked if we wanted to join them (Ehui, Cherry and Goh) for lunch at Super Brand Mall’s Burger King. We said okay and he said he’ll call us so we went down to BQT office to rest.

Waited and waited and we were freaking hungry because all I ate for breakfast was 2 eggs and 1 sausage. Called up Goh and he said they’ll be done in 15 mins. But after more than half an hour they still didn’t call so YH called him and he said they were already at BK and asked what we wanted to eat. Having heard that, we assumed that they’ll take away for us and bring it back to the hotel so we continued helping Niki and Dora do up the menu’s for tonight.

After another 15mins, Goh called again asking where we were. In the end, it was a miscommunication and Goh actually meant that they helped us buy food first so we didn’t have to order it when we came over.

By the time we got there, our fries were already cold :( They waited for us to finish eating and then we went back together.

YJ and I were walking from Grand Ballroom to China Hall to and fro because we didn’t have anything to do.

In the end, we decided to go down to BQT office to rest and we slept in the meeting room for like 20mins before helping them do up the menus again.

Headed up to China Hall 2 hours before the cocktail reception and dinner because there was a roll call. It wasn’t such a big ass event as compared to Opera Night and Singapore Evening so we weren’t assigned to do anything.

To make ourselves useful, we helped them place the menus on the table, arrange the chairs neatly etc etc prior to the event.

When the cocktail reception started, we went to the bar to help them pour drinks and also walked around (without a tray again) to help clear rubbish.

The air was horrendous today though- hazy like nobody’s business. You could even smell burnt smell when you’re outside. YJ and I wanted to see how cold it was so we went outside the foyer.

The wind was so strong that it blew off a glass of water and it flew right onto the floor and broke into bits.

It was cold, windy, smelly and hazy so there was no point staying outdoors. Soon enough, the bell rang indicating that it was time to be seated for the dinner.

They had Chinese set dinner today. We didn’t have any tasks assigned to us so we just walked around everywhere pouring red wine. It was much easier than the previous 2 events because there was only 1 type of red wine tonight and there wasn’t a need to pour different wines for different dishes.

Although there was also white wine, many guests didn’t request for it so it made our job easier.

The dinner was quite boring, because there weren’t any performances :( We had to continuously top-up red wine because they are forever toasting to whoever and whoever.

I met some rude guests too while pouring wine. There was this young guy (seems like that whole group of people are students) and when I was pouring wine for the girl beside him, he happily tapped my arm a few times indicating to me to stop pouring the wine -.-

And there was another Chinese guest, the moment I started pouring the wine, he was like “enough enough enough” (in Chinese). Whoa rude can!

There wasn’t really a sequence to serving and clearing dishes today so YJ and I helped out. After topping up all the wine, we’d occasionally walk around helping the BQT staff clear plates so that they could give them their new dish.

And yet again, we didn’t have any trays!

The whole night, we were walking around non-stop pouring wine, serving food and clearing plates.

My feet hurt so bad now!

The whole dinner ended at around 8.30pm and the BQT staff led us to somewhere to secretly eat food! There were so many plates of untouched food because some tables were empty!

We ate fruits, beef, glutinous rice and coffee cheesecake (: The poor BQT staff ate more because they didn’t have time to eat lunch and dinner. They ended work at like 4am last night and reported to work at 5.30am this morning. Madness.

Right, so anws there was a debrief after the whole thing and after that they had to tear down and set-up for another event. We helped them clear the tables and kept the seat covers before leaving.

Overall, we worked 14 hours today. This is MADNESS. But hey, we get to take off from RSVN next time so it means less hours in the office!

Walked home and omg my feet seriously hurt like hell. Although I was not hungry, I just felt like eating Shao Kao so I bought it before going upstairs.

YJ and I still wanted to watch a movie but after 10 mins of turning the TV on, we got sleepy.

Work tomorrow at 9am again. Oh what boring routines we get when we work in the office :(

Replies

KC: Ditto to you!