Friday 30 November 2007

Still surviving

Have some time to blog now since my shift starts at 12pm till 8pm today('night' shift).

Yesterday was pretty fun cause i managed to learnt some new stuff in cold storage. First, when i reached the staff room at about 8.30am, i was asked by the aunties to bring the crimson and thompson grapes out. Had no idea what alien language they were talking at first but Azmi (Indian no.1) lead me to the chiller room to take out the grapes, and i can still remember his 金语良言.

Me: So how do we differentiate between Crimson and Thompson grapes?
Azmi: Bro, you see here *points to side of crate* this is crimson, *points to another crate* this is thompson, ok u wait a while.

Next, he moves about 10 (eff-ing) crates of grapes to the trolley.

Azmi: Pack. (and then he smiles like some dumb dumb while he goes slacking off)

At that moment, i was going 'WTF' in my mind cause the crates stack up to higher than me and it may take forever to finish wrapping them into the small plastic boxes. Nevertheless, I started working on the grapes and managed to complete the 10 crates of grapes after about 2.5 hours. It was difficult trying to wrap them up because i needed to cut them up nicely to fit into the boxes, and there's also the murderous task of picking those disgusting, foul-smelling rotten grapes.

Here's a snapshot of rotten grapes taken from yahoo search.

and im not exaggerating what i saw and smelled in cold storage.

Later on after lunch, i learnt how to do some accounting from the auntie in the department. Quite interesting to calculate the cost of wastage per day for just the F&V section, which actually amounts to quite a high sum, e.g ~$600-900 /day. For fruits/veges that are rotten, they cannot be thrown away and have to be brought to the room to be weighed so that we can calculate the loss.

Half an hour left before i leave home, shall go eat lunch now...

Labels: , , , , ,

by WEIMING at 09:57 | 0 comments

Tuesday 27 November 2007

My very first day of work (in my life)... along with my very first post

Today's the first day of work at cold storage in King Albert's Park which is located beside ngee aan poly, it's quite far away from where i live but im only working that far because my neighbour's uncle is driving us there every morning.

Had to wake up at 7am and was freaking tired because i've been waking up at very late hours the last couple of days. After about 30 minutes in joven's uncle's car, i finally reached the place and went through an interview with the boss there, managed to clear it after about 5 minutes? and then went to the department i was assigned to... FRUITS AND VEGETABLES (AHHHHHhhhhh..)

The people there were really helpful, my department consist of 2 aunties and also 2 indian men. As expected, the staff rest room was really smelly with the stench of veggies and fruits in the air. Din't really like the conditions as it was considered disastrous compared to joven's department (canning) :S. The only cool thing about the room is that it's connected to 3 chiller rooms which is real cold, bout 10 degrees C. The day was packed with never-ending tasks even though i was doing 5x the speed of those indians slacking in the room. I was stacking, wraping, transporting, forwarding (shifting the older goods to the front of shelves) and of course, slacking(after i finish my job alright!!), basically i was covering everything a banglah would have to do.

Motivating myself to wake up early and continue working now so that i wont lose the interest since im most probably ganna work till the end of December(oh god, countdown:4 damn weeks)

Oh ya, my advise for anybody who is slacking at home wondering what to do every hour? CONTINUE SLACKING... don't go and find a job unless the pay is really high and is highly interesting, e.g LIFEGUARD.

END OF FIRST POST :D

Labels: , , , , ,

by WEIMING at 20:20 | 0 comments