I miss blogging regularly.
But I’m tired of girls, tired of The Church, and tired of most things generally.
So I don’t really have anything to blog about.
As of now I’m married to work. I love being able to work hard at something and get recognized for it.
I woke up around 6AM this morning to watch the US markets open and bought stocks for the first time ever in my life.
I then proceeded downstairs around 7AM, hoping to get some Olympics soccer highlights, when I heard these errie, wild screams from my backyard. Then I saw it:
The 3 raccoons who frequently pay visits to the fish pond in my backyard were there. Only, they are supposed to be gone by then. I mean, the sun was up. Raccoons only move around at night, I learned on wikipedia.
Anyways, so I screamed English obscenities at them. Two of them left, but there was still one – the smallest one – screaming and struggling in the pond.
Note: the reason they can crawl around the pond is because we have a net set up on the surface of the pond, to prevent animals like these things from eating all of our fishes in the water.
Then I realized why: one of its tiny foot was stuck in the net. It must have been stuck there since 2, 3AM at night, and it was shivering.
As much as I hate animals, even I felt sorry for the little guy.
So we tried pushing the net around with a stick (which the thing attacked very aggressively, THANKS for appreciating my help you little thing), throwing a soccer ball at him (LOL, that was before I realized he was stuck), and making a million phone calls to every animal shelter related agencies I could find on the phonebook.
Even the RIchmond City workers working the back alley way heard the thing’s screams and came for a look.
I eventually had to go in for work (my first day making espressos, btw), and fortunately my brother was able to find some pest control dude who was willing to set the poor guy free at no cost (my bro did end up paying him though).
The biggest thing of note was when the dude’s family (the other 2 raccoons) came back for him. They tried to help, gave him hugs……basically did the kinda things us humans do.
Well, what a day that was.
And while my manager insisted on me just learning how to make Americano, Latte, and Cappuccinos, after she left I ended up getting straight into the war zone and even got to make the latest addition to the drinks menu, the Vivanno.
It was a fun day all round.
And now I am at my second job working till 10:30PM.
Yeah, I usually hate it when bloggers just outline events without giving much thoughts, but I think today’s events speak for themselves.
This is somewhat of an afterthought to my friend Sarah Joy Wong’s post (I realize I can’t just call her “Sarah”, and “Sarah Joy” sounds weird without the “Wong”……), found here: http://sajoy.wordpress.com/2008/07/20/broken-telephone/
To give you a good understanding of what happened, I have to give you an overview of the geography of my workplace.
As a receptionist, when I see a client walk through the front-door, there are basically three possible scenarios:
1) They are coming in for a group class, and so I would have to check them into their class
2) They are coming in for a private lesson, to which I do absolutely nothing
3) They are coming in for open floor practice, which means they would have to leave $4 at the front desk
And so, this Chinese couple came in a couple of nights ago. They had previously already made a bad impression on me, as they would always practice till very late (they do have a good work ethic, I suppose) which meant that I would always have to kick them out, so to speak. And they would speak to me in Mandarin, which is a language I am not very fluent in.
Anyways, so they came in the other night, and rushed right through into the ballroom without acknowledging me at all. And guess what my natural reaction was?
‘These guys are so cheap, they aren’t even gonna pay their $8 bucks!’
And just as I was about to chase after them to get them to pay up, I found out that they were actually there for a private lesson.
There’s my prejudice.
There’s my racist attitude towards the Chinese folks.
But here’s a life application question: several acquaintances have told me over time that I should simply pretend I don’t know Chinese when customers speak to me in the language, their reasoning being that if these customers know I spoke their language, they would take every opportunity to abuse their privileges and treat me harshly, because I would’ve now become a “comrade” to them.
While I know exactly what these acquaintances mean, isn’t it a mean thing to do though?
It’s almost as if they are telling me to put a handicap on these customers, by speaking in a foreign language that they are not very fluent in.
Plus, it’d be a big white lie to pretend that I don’t know Chinese. In fact, it’s beyond a white lie. It’s a real lie.
And if I am going to be providing legendary customer service, I better learn to deal with these difficult people regardless.
And lastly, I think I had my share of being treated poorly and handicapped when I visited Rome with my family a couple of summers ago. The fact that no one around you spoke a language you understood was very frightening, to say the least.
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