162 - When your coworkers shift all their duties on to you

I've been bartending for over a week now, and I've been doing exceptionally well at it. I come in every morning, pour myself a glass of orange juice, and for the following twelve hours, I do my job as if I love it, because I truly do.

I can see the same passion and work ethic in the eyes and behavior of the man that hired me. He owns four restaurants, and in order to fully respect my Boss, I must adopt his internal devotion to providing customers with high-quality service.

The thing is, though, I can't say the same about some of my coworkers, especially this one guy, who I will give the alias, Gaston, for now.

As people in the food and drink industry, us waiters, waitresses and barmen, all have our preferences as to who we want to serve. My Boss likes to serve the big tables, keeping track of what twelve different people are eating and drinking at the same time, while I like to cater specially to the customers who seem to be a little wealthier. My logic is that my extra bit of effort put into serving these diners will generate more tips, and therefore more profit for the business, and more wages for the entire staff, including me, of course.

Now, Gaston is an assistant manager. Gaston enjoys what he does, and is good at what he does -but that's only if he's focused enough. What I mean is, he likes to talk to the ladies.

It ticks me off. Because he then gets too distracted with his lady-friends to actually do his job. He tells me to clean this, pour this into that, hand this over to that person over there, while he gets to entertain beautiful women sitting at the bar.

He shouldn't even be behind the bar. And I hate how every evening, he orders me to clean the beer taps, and the coffee machine. They're really annoying to clean, to tell you the truth. So shouldn't we take turns cleaning it, as it's such an undesirable job?

I guess not. Just because he's my superior, wearing the black shirt that demonstrates so, then I, wearing the white shirt that signifies my inferiority, must always perform these difficult and tedious duties.

161 - When your boss gets impatient or bossy

So today, I started working at my new bartending job. This is my first job, and with it, I got a new boss.

Actually, I got three new bosses. I think one is the owner, one is the manager, and one works the floor. What the difference is between their three jobs is beyond my apprehension, but I'm sure that the three of them are all equally important in keeping the Belgian restaurant/bar I now work in running.

So let's start with the owner. I think he's French. I was delicately handling this piece of weirdly shaped drinkware (pictured right), when all of a sudden, he exhales a humongous sigh. I look at him, and he's shaking his head. He comes over, and he tells me not to be afraid of using force when cleaning the glasses. Now, look at the glass of Kwak. The glass looks fragile, doesn't it? Why the Hell would I use force...? I'm just trying not to break anything!

The Belgian manager told me that I looked bored when I polished glasses, and that I should always up my game. Hell, yeah, I'm bored. After wiping a hundred glasses, it gets boring! (I guess he has a point, though. Bartenders need to look energetic.)

The Chinese floor manager was the most impatient. He kept making kissing noises to get my attention, instead of actually calling my name. What that's about, I have no idea. He would then direct me to something, just to make me move here and there, climb this ladder, place these bottles in the lower fridges, clean the glasses on the left, wipe the coffee maker clean on the right, check behind me for any new orders, look in front when polishing, turn back to answer phone calls, turn back again to pour beer, one Stella Artois, two Leffe Brunes, one Kwak, two Hoegaardens, one cranberry juice - no ice, three Cokes, one Leffe Blonde, polish these glasses, go get more ice from the kitchen, go throw out the trash, go get more milk, go give a pint of beer to the chefs in the kitchen who will use it to flavor their mussels Belgian-style (????????), there's another order for three Leffe Blondes!, one fruit punch, two glasses of housewine, that tab is being paid for, tell Alex to serve these gin and tonics to those ladies over there...


This was all over the course of two hours, so I had plenty of time, and it was okay. It all went down smoother than I expected, and nothing broke, nothing spilt, nothing went by with flaws. That's not to say that I don't have a newly discovered respect for bartenders, though. They have to remember a ton of stuff. I guess bosses are meant to be bossy, in that, they're just trying to train me.

That Chinese floor manager still could've helped a bit, though...

160 - When people don't take advantage of the opportunities to do stuff when they're on vacation

I went to Bintan, Indonesia with my class for a week on our graduation trip. The Nirwana Gardens Resort was so nice. To be honest, it was a lot of fun, and there wasn't a whole lot to hate. There was one point on the trip where I was reading my biological-anthropological book, by the pool, near the beach, tanning in the sun, with a citrusy alcoholic beverage by my side, next to a plate of spaghetti, and half a dozen sticks of chicken satay. Life could not get any better, all my needs were satisfied.

I know my classmates may be reading this, waiting to see what Michael hates now, what Michael just didn't feel right about, like the many times he didn't think see any good in something or someone.

So I will give it to them.

Half of us tried to go out as much as possible. We went kayaking, swimming in the pool and at the beach, played beach volleyball, ate local food (e.g., pineapple fried rice, calamari, seafood, nasi goreng), saw the sunset, drank, sang karaoke, played poker and blackjack, did some archery, and rifle-shooting, and dancing at the resort's club. Right now, my skin is peeling like crazy from going out in the sun so much, but the finished product should turn out to be awesomely tan in a couple of days.

I was so surprised by the fact that the other half of us stayed inside the resort villas as much as they did. They even brought their laptops, and their Playstation 3, and all the technology they would fill their time up with back here in Hong Kong. At night, they would watch movies, and in the early daytime, they would sleep. They did go to the pool, but only for the poolside bar, and they did go to the beach, but only for a few hours altogether.

I don't get it. Why not just do that in Hong Kong, on an island in Hong Kong? What a waste of money it is to go to some foreign place only to sleep in and stay indoors. Why is everyone just going to sleep when they feel tired? Sure, everyone is tired, but now that we're back, you have the rest of the summer to sleep and rest, don't you? Wasn't this supposed to be a graduation trip, filled with late-night chats, and late-night dips in the ocean, and late-night card-playing, and drinking, and bonding?

Sigh, but to each their own, I suppose. Some people like to take advantage of the locally available facilities, while others would rather use the time to relax. There are people that actually like to travel the world, and 'test out' different hotels' services, to compare their customary quality. I could never be one of those people... I must try out the food, learn a bit of the language, explore the place...

What do you guys think?
And did you miss me? (I promise noooooow I'll be a more active blogger.)

159 - People who insult something that you like

"What's so good about the beach? Who cares about the beach, man?"

A line like that irritates me, and pains me. I certainly don't hold that shitty attitude when people are talking about their favorite places to go. I try to be open-minded, I try and enjoy the environments that other people are fond of and are well-adapted to when they bring me there, but of course, of course, I have my preferences.

Given that we're all different people, sharing is caring. Seriously, why disrespect my life, and what I like, so rudely? I spent a fair amount of time living next to the beach, and I love it. I don't go, "What's so good about shooting each other with little plastic balls?" or "What's so good about having fifty pairs of shoes?"

I don't say, "Canadian education's a frickin' joke, man" or "Screw the USA, UK for the win!"

Jeez, some people...

I understand, though, why some people may not be fond of the beach. The water gives your hair this unbelievably discomforting feel to it, and for some people, the consistency of the water hurts their eyes. You also risk getting sunburnt, and there's all the trouble of spreading sun-protection lotion over your entire body, giving this totally unpleasant, oily feel to your physique. And the sunscreen gets washed off by the sea anyway, and you have to put on sunscreen once more after every time you enter the water. And the lotion makes the sand stick to you. Lotion or none, when it's time to go home, you spend ages brushing the sand off your back and your limbs, between your toes, inside your shoes and your bag, in your hair, in your towel, in the little crack on the screen of your phone...

Okay, I get the point.

But, that's precisely why we go to the beach. That's why we go hiking, and trekking, and camping, and backpacking... getting dirty is the whole point. Don't complain about the sun. Don't complain about the water. Don't complain about the sand. The beach is there for adding a bit of color to your complexion, for swimming in the great blue sea, for building sand castles, and for playing volleyball on.

You know, it's just 'cause some of the people I know are city kids who don't know how to appreciate the beauty of nature, and would much prefer spending the majority, if not all, of their leisure time on this treacherous contraption known as a computer for days on end, getting a bigger and more cushioning arse, getting obsessive over the vast variety of digital wonders and media available on the internet 'til they're braindead, and getting sickeningly pale from basking in their tenebrous rooms like a crepuscular creature of the night.

Buuuuut, I like doing that, too, so who am I to talk? I guess my personality is too all-embracing to really limit myself in any way.

But going back to the beach, there's very little that I personally find wrong with it. My eyes don't get red in salty water. And my skin doesn't get burnt.

But I do hate sand in my stuff, I have to say...

158 - The cup sizes in coffeehouses

Say I wanted a large cappuccino to go.

The barista will then ask me, "Do you mean a venti?"

No, I mean a large, because venti is Italian for 'twenty'. Tall is a synonym of large, and grande is Spanish for large. It's actually quite amusing, because, in fact, venti is the only one that doesn't mean large, and it's the only one in Italian.

And when I say I want large, I am speaking in American English, implying that I want the biggest of all the cups, the cups available being small, medium and large.

I find it quite ridiculous that if I wanted the smallest cup, I would have to request a tall.

To them, tall means small.

I seriously, don't get it. So, to you, your smalls are talls? What?

You call smalls, 'talls'?

Seriously, why don't you just call your small, 'small', afterall, from what I can recall, small does not mean tall, small means small, 'cause tall is taller than a small, and small is smaller than a tall.

Is this some sort of joke? Is this an attempt to make us feel like we're getting a lot of coffee for the same price? To make us feel like we have tall cups, and grande amounts of coffee in our cups? Is this Starbucks trying to give us the sense of "we can be like sophisticated Italian coffee consumers, 'cause we've got venti-ounce cups."

It probably is a marketing ploy. But, dude, it doesn't make any sense.

I refuse to play this game with the coffeehouse people. I want 'the big one' and that's final.

No, not a venti, not a grande, the big one. If you give me anything smaller, I'll only ask you to supersize me.

157 - People who never meet their deadlines

I'm not the only one who's bound for University College London in the UK. I have a classmate who also plans on heading to that institution for university. He's an interesting fellow, someone who I feel privileged to know. He's very conversational and straight-forward, and tells a lot of fascinating stories. He doesn't really know how to complement people, though, and he's not the kind of person you would typically look to for consolation. But that doesn't bother me, 'cause I appreciate his cynicism, however, the thing that does annoy me about him is the way he leaves everything 'til the last minute.

No, let me make a correction: he leaves everything 'til after the last minute, after every deadline.

The university wants us to apply for accommodation before the thirty-first of May, and he hasn't done so yet. At the point when I heard this, I was already quite annoyed because I thought I didn't have to think about university applications ever again, as I had managed all the paperwork a while ago now, but apparently not - I have to help this guy out.

He says he didn't receive the application forms from the university. He realized two weeks ago that it's the only university he applied to that hadn't mailed him any information yet.

But it's only at this point that he thought to himself, that maybe he should have sent them an e-mail, asking why. And now he plans to write an e-mail of inquiry, one day after the deadline for the accommodation application.

Seriously, then what? Wait another three weeks for the form to get sent here?

The deadline was the thirty-first of May. You have no guaranteed place to live in anymore.

He's been like this since I first met him, he's been late with his geography coursework, his mathematics coursework, his English essays, and his physics lab reports.

Everybody waits until the last minute before they have to do their work, of course.

But get your shit together before the deadline arrives, because if you really wanted to go to London, like I do, that's what you have to do.

156 - People who can't dance

Frankly, I'm still learning, but I think I've fooled people enough to make them think that I know how to shake what my momma gave me. Afterall, I've been going drinking and clubbing for a couple of years now, dancing is a vital part of the Get Drunk! package.

Two days ago, I had my graduation ball. It's where we all get dressed up nice and pretty, and there's a big buffet at dinner, then raffle prizes are given out, and last but not least, the lights dim and a DJ puts on some music for us to dance.

I danced for a few seconds, then I sat back down again. My friends came up to me and said, "Go up and dance, man. You belong on the dance floor!"

I replied, "Sorry, but I don't want to dance with the people there that don't."

155 - Rust on the guitar strings

I have one electric guitar and one classical guitar, and they both have rusty strings. It's my fault for neglecting them, placing them in their respective cases, and putting them in the dark corner of my room for the past two years. I remember I loved playing music on those things, but schoolwork, exams and time spent with classmates consumed me, and got in the way of me actually making some music in my spare time.

My best friend was talking to me the other night on the phone, and he was playing the guitar while doing so. It prompted me to take out mine, and I played and played and played 'til the sun came up, 'cause now I have the time and luxury to do so.

And it feels great, to make music. And to record myself on my computer again, to work on my voice, and to try and play better.

It just irks me that these strings are rusty and making my fingers orange. I have to go buy the strings, and change the strings, and that's such a hassle. Damn me, for not taking care of them continually in the past two years. If I had cleaned them and played them regularly, none of this would have happened.

My poor guitars...

154 - When people don't trust your directions

Tomorrow, I graduate from high school. I will shake hands with the headmistress and will finally, officially, be out of secondary education forever. It's an exciting feeling going into tomorrow's graduation ceremony. Our parents, and our teachers, will all be sitting in the audience, feeling proud of us. My mom will be there, and so will three of my aunts. It's a happy occasion.

Tonight at dinner, they were asking me how to get to my school. I told them they could catch a cab from this location, or they could take a bus from that place. And then - they didn't believe me. They thought that that road would be busy during the evening rush hour. They told me that the bus doesn't go the right way. They said they had another means of getting there in mind. They asked me if I was sure those were the fastest routes.

Uh, of course I'm sure. I've been going to that school for four years. I've gone up that hill over a thousand times. If you want to go the long way, the more expensive way, the busier way, fine. I just don't understand why you asked me for directions in the first place, honestly, if you had already planned on going your way.

153 - When websites require long and complicated passwords

I always have very simple, vanilla passwords. They've worked for me for my entire internet life, and I believe it will always continue to do so until some hacker hacks in. I hate it when a website requires you to have upper-case and lower-case letters, a couple of numerals, some punctuation marks and a space. And then to follow up with a listening of a confirmation code, or a reading of an annoyingly warped and illegible CAPTCHA. I just don't want anyone to break into my account. Are all those requirements being demanded of me really necessary?

Uncomplicated passwords are also easier to remember, and easier to type. How much time in the world is spent remembering and typing out persnickety passwords that require you to scout characters on your keyboard, one after another, that are completely different from each other?

How much of a bitch would it be to type 4$Mj@a(D< out every time you wanted to post a reply on a forum?

If you want a completely labyrinthine Daedalian password from me, then I'm not joining your website.

152 - When people get 'bright ideas' when a pen runs out of ink

When pens run out of ink, what are you supposed to do?

I hate shaking them, 'cause I've seen pens splutter all over the place like a guy with a terrible lisp. Sort of like cannons loaded to the muzzle with ink, people unintentionally blow an all-consuming blackness everywhere at a single discharge. That's really idiotic, and I hate seeing it happen, and I hated it when it happened to me the first and only time. Of course, the solution is to keep the cap on, then shake it. Sometimes, the ink's simply stuck in the barrel.

And what about licking the tip of the pen?

I was watching one of my classmates do this during an exam, and I couldn't help but smile to myself as I looked at him because... it's just stupid. You're licking the pen. Licking, the pen.

What has this world come to?

After the exam, he had blue ink on his lips and his tongue, and I had to fight hard not to laugh. It's so funny what some people do sometimes without even knowing it. I just think it's such a ridiculously bad habit a lot of people have, and unless something is edible (or sexual), I don't think you should lick anything.

Licking a pen... jeez.

151 - When people laugh at you when you simply want to look good

I have no time to do everything I've been wanting to do after high school finishes. I could only manage to fit in so much in the last 24 hours, but I still haven't gotten round to reading a single blog, or a single page of any book considered a classic. I've caught up with tons of people on Facebook, I've watched a lot of TV series, downloaded an album or two, gone out with my friends, slept in this morning, etc... etc... but there is just not enough time for me to sit back and read, to go to the beach, to write on my other blog, to see other people, and the list goes on forever...

Anyway, tonight I'm going to a banquet. It's funny because I don't know what the banquet is for, what host I'm going to be a guest to, where this thing is, or why I'm invited. To be entirely frank, I don't even know what a 'banquet' is and what you do there.

But my grandparents and my aunt are going, and I'm invited to go. I figured, I haven't been out with them in a while, and I haven't made dinner plans yet. A spontaneous free dinner from a random host I don't know the identity of yet?

Sure.

I tried to dress up nicely, but my aunt was snickering at me when she saw me leafing through my button-down shirts. She thinks it's funny that I wanted the blue shirt at first, then I switched to pink, then I changed my mind to the white one. Truth is, I was trying to match them with a particular pair of shoes.

I don't understand why she was laughing at me, though. I just want to look nice. God knows she's not fashionable, and I'm sorry if I don't want to dress up like I'm from the 50s. I will dress my age. So what if girls fuss over makeup, or if guys fuss over their hair? People need to be presentable in, and dress appropriately for, the given event. Do you want to look like an idiot in photographs? Do you want to be stared at by everyone around you?

You see, I was leaving you alone to dress up all old-fashioned, but if you want to laugh at me, I'll... I'll... I will...

I will BLOG about you. Humph.

150 - Talking about exams

Like the husband who talks incessantly about his boss and his work and his colleagues at the dinner table in front of his wife and kids, students who chatter non-stop about an examination after the examination is over can be so annoying. Pondering whether or not you got this question right, or that question wrong, or drew this diagram incorrectly, or calculated this distance to the right degree of accuracy, continually for two weeks straight, induces such a headache. All these words being exchanged about how this exam was easy, but that one had a lot of tricky questions, and about how you managed to draw this graph, and how you did this question, scratched it out, and decided to do another one...... why?

Why do you want to talk about it? Why relive the pain, or the boredom, or the feeling of stupidity if you didn't do so well, or, if you did well, the so-called 'challenge' the examiners think will stump you? Why does it matter anymore? What's done is done, no? So why talk about it? Seriously?

Maybe it's fun to compare what we each did, sharing is caring, lalala... After all, going to school is a communal gig. Maybe we just want to have a better idea of how well we fared amongst our class. Maybe we highly value education, and ask everyone about what they put down as their answer so as to confirm or enhance your current amount of knowledge.

Oooooor, maybe you think education is actually a pile of horse poo, and find it funny how badly you did. I personally don't see the humor/sense in that.

Oooooor, maybe you're so confident that you did well, that you just want to show off your wonderful grasp on the information we need to know every minute before and after the exam.

Oooooor, maybe you knew you did badly, and just want to confirm... which makes you sort of sad.

It goes to show how I don't really believe in people's goodness. In conclusion, anyone who talks after exams are either cocky, arrogant showboats, or disappointing good-for-nothings who may or may not be using self-deprecating humor as a defense mechanism. Boo.

-------------------------------------------------------

My exams are over! I personally try not to bring them up in conversation... but they do, some how, every time.

That means I'm done with high school. For the next two weeks, I celebrate my 18th birthday... I also celebrate graduation. And I also celebrate the coming of summer. More than ninety days of fun until university begins... It's going to be wild.

On September 1st, I should be living and studying in London already. I look forward to writing entries everyday 'til then. Hope you've all been doing well since I've been gone. I'll be blogging more than ever now that I have so much free time. Hehe.

149 - Personal insecurity

In my younger years, I used to be unbelievably shy. I simply would not utter a single word to my classmates throughout the school day, because I thought that these other kids were strange beings, people I could not understand. And because I could not understand them, they were people that I deeply feared. (The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety. - Henry Louis Mencken)

It was only until my mother had picked me up from school and whisked me away that I was suddenly capable of human speech. She would meet me at the gate everyday after school, lead the way to the nearest road, and hail a cab. And it was inside this cab, where I instantaneously transformed into the talkative and opinionated person that you, my readers, are presented with today.

I behaved this way at the time because I only trusted my mother, and did not trust these strangers who worked and played alongside me. I also didn't think I was the best at anything (even though, at the time, all we did in class was basic maths, basic English and drawing). I didn't think too highly of my abilities and I did not want others to know my standards. I wasn't confident. I did not have very high self-esteem.

In retrospect, I believe it was because of this lack of confidence in myself and others that I did not have many friends in primary school. In fact, I am still very much like my five-year-old self, and when I go to school these days, I actually find myself distrusting my own and other people's judgements, and that's what usually separates me from the group.

I know several people who experience unease and nervousness each day because they perceive themselves, or others, as inadequate or worthless. There is a very fine line between being insecure but pretending to be okay, and actually being okay. And it's in pretending to be okay that annoys me, because the person I'm talking to is achingly putting on a fake, confident smile, just for me.

So what can that person do, or what can I do?

I like to attack a problem by first eradicating the source of the problem, like hosing down the stove in a kitchen fire. By that analogy, I mean trying to build confidence is the way to achieve a healthy quantity and quality of self-regard (i.e., remove insecurity).

However, how this can be done effectively is beyond me. These people are so insecure about themselves, that they think they aren't capable of anything, and that includes change for the better. They never feel motivated enough to talk more, or talk to one more person, they never feel like they can actually break out of their usual behavioral habits. And so it's just a horrible paradoxical internal bewilderment that exists within us, a bewilderment that is borne of these strange beings who feel insecure, sort of like a sprinkling into our lives of realistic humanoids that are machined to solely experience doubt, shyness, and feelings of being threatened... it's just another one of those vicious cycles.

I hate it, how are you supposed to build a strong relationship with someone that's insecure? Come on, readers, do you hate it too?

-----------------------------------------------------------

(Do you hate it too? has received a Neno's award, displayed on the right-hand side underneath the Golden Bog Roll. Please check out the link, as I talk about why I love to blog. :D)

148 - People who yell out the manner in which they just accidentally hurt themselves

"OW, I hit my funny bone on the edge of the table!"
"OW, I stubbed my toe!"
"OW, I accidentally touched the edge of the frying pan!"
"OW, I hit my head on the ceiling!"

It's stupid enough that you caused yourself the pain, but must you shout it out loud for the world to hear? That's imbecility that is incredible to me. Why are you telling me how you hurt yourself? Does it relieve the pain? Do you want to be known for clumsiness and thick-headedness? Does it make either one of us feel better?

No! Don't tell me you ventilated like that as part of a reflex reaction. Are you really garrulous and unpredictably verbal to the point where you really do not have any control over your own mouth? I just can't help but think that you deserved to get hurt after such a reaction as yours.

This is probably God's way of having fun. Using the principle of karma, normally, you would be dealt pain that would exact the degree of your wrongdoing, but in this case, you are dealt the punishment first, as God knows you will react by committing that exact sin. Like I said, God's playing with fate, and there's a touch of irony, of a paradoxical relationship.