go away!!
eurghh i don't like all the students being back from summer holidays. now we have random people ringing our doorbells and making prank calls. and the idiots living downstairs are so annoying!! they party til like 5am and make so much noise. they sing and talk drunken crap and bang about so loudly in the middle of the night that i get woken up. arghh. how i wish i could still sleep like a log like i used to.
my first job
on tuesday, van, eelynn, khaiyong and i went to apply at blue arrow, a job agency. i'd heard that they'll call you if they have a job and u can turn them down if you want to, so i thought i could just try it for a while and work when i feel like it. then when we were at they agency, i found out it wasn't as easy as it sounded.
the training itself was so tough. we waited a few hours for the guy, rohit to be free to train us. then he took so long asking so many questions to the china students who were having trouble with their english. finally, he taught us the how to carry 5 plates in one hand. which i found extremely difficult to do coz i couldn't even get a proper grip on the first plate while everyone else could carry 5 easily. after carrying plates, he told us about table settings and a bit about wine waiting, which is separate from food waiting, and only wine waiters get tips if they make the clients happy. all in all, we were in the agency for 7 hours, from 3-10pm. and before even earning money, we had to spend money to fit their very strict dress code - plain white long-sleeved buttoned-up-to-the-neck collared shirt, plain black pants, plain black shoes, and black socks. i couldn't find a cheap white woman's shirt so in the end i got a man's shirt for the three of us.
my first job was yesterday at a horse race course. it was the ayr gold cup weekend or something like that for horse racing and there were marquees set up for the rich people to have lunch and tea. we arrived at the race course at around 8.30 and rohit assigned me and eelynn to food waiting even though he knows i can't carry plates. i spent the first 3 hours polishing cutlery(polishing is just dipping in hot water and rubbing with a cloth), setting chairs, folding napkins and filling milk jugs, which was easy and pleasant enough. the tiring part was having to stand straight for so long when the guests arrived. when they sat down, i clumsily laid their napkins on theur laps. luckily, when clearing the tables i got away with carrying only one plate in each hand. some people were carrying more than 5 in one hand, and so effortlessly! the food served looked so good but i was busy so i only managed to get one spoonful of rice and beef stroganoff from van and it was really good. i had a 15 minute lunch of one ham sandwich(which was given in our lunch bag) at 4pm. i later had a bit of leftover cake and sandwich and grapes while polishing cutlery. and they wasted so much food, throwing away the half-eaten or uneaten buns and cheese and etc.
then, because the guests in my section were not having afternoon tea like in the other sections, we had to become wine waiters. we had to watch out for empty glasses and keep filling them with wine or water, and take orders for drinks. i served this man gin and tonic maybe 3 times and on the last time, he gave me a tip of 5 pounds! (our wage is like 5.35 pounds per hour) at that time, my contacts were irritating my eyes and i was so surprised that i guess i might not have thanked him properly coz when i left, his friend laughed and said he didn't think i looked very satisfied. actually i think i was a bit stunned. haha.
after the last race, i was sent to polish cutlery in the kitchen. do you know how unhygienic they are?! the cutleries weren't even washed! all we had to do was put them in hot water and then wipe them with cloths which had already been used to polish them in the morning. the cutleries were still oily! and if any cutlery dropped on the floor, it was just put back into the pile without cleaning again. and i think the same goes for the glasses and stuff coz when we had to reset the tables for the next day, the cups and milk jugs didn't seem very clean. my goodness!
anyway, we worked for 11 hours. yesterday was silver cup day and today is gold cup. eelynn and van are back there working while i'm lazy to spend another day on my feet. i shall rest for this weekend. i am still sick, afterall. :)
germany
we're back! we went to germany - the land of spaghetti ice-cream and expensive public toilets; and france - the land of really hard buns called
pain.
when we arrived at frankfurt hahn airport, there were no available chairs so we had to sleep on the floor. didn't get much sleep that night. it was too cold and uncomfortable.
the next day, i had diarrhoea so i rested at the hostel while the others walked around without me. frankfurt is small enough to go around on foot. then they came back for me for lunch. we napped at the hostel and then went looking for dinner. this is me with the euro sign which they already took photos with in the morning.
the night market where we had our dinner. the people there are dressed in suits and drinking wine.
their haagen-dazs has more flavors. i got bailey's irish cream.
the old opera house
the next day, we took a train to heidelberg which is even smaller than frankfurt
the s-printing horse
then it started raining. this is the congress house.
on the old bridge
the heidelberg bridge monkey which you're supposed to stick your head into
on the way back to the hostel
the next day, we went to the jesuit church
climbing up to the castle
the big wine vat
we bought wine with the souvenir glasses
we visited the pharmacy museum!
castle ruins
we then spent the night at the train station waiting for the 5am bus to paris.
paris
when we arrived in paris, we spent almost 2 hours searching for our hostel. when we finally found it, we were too tired to go anywhere.
the next day, we went to the red light district for moulin rouge and the erotic museum. the shows were too expensive so we didn't enter moulin rouge.
we did, however, enter the erotic museum. it was full of pictures and sculptures of men and women's private parts. there was also a keris with a penis as it's handle. and on the top floor, there was a man just standing there in an s&m costume whom we didn't dare to look at in the eye. haha. warning: a few obscene pictures ahead.
one of the first porn films. this is a threesome. they were later joined by another guy who gave this guy a blowjob while the girls did the same in the background.
a chair which licks you
the arc of triumph which honours soldiers which fought for france
notre dame cathedral where they had mass while tourists were walking around and watching and taking pictures
the eiffel tower at night
once every hour, for a few minutes, it's lit with blinking lights
an arc outside the louvre museum
the famous pyramid is the main entrance. the museum is so huge that we didn't manage to cover the whole place.
overheard from a tourguide: what's amazing about the mona lisa is not the painting itself, but the big crowd which assembles every day in front of such a simple painting.
crown jewels
satyrs staring downwards for some unknown reason. the descriptions were all in french.
venus de milo
jardin des plantes
mint and lavender
the eiffel tower in the day time, with sylvain who was nice enough to bring(or follow) us around for 2 days. we were going to take the lift to the top floor but he suggested we climb to the 2nd floor coz it would be more fun. fun. right. anyway we all made it to the 2nd floor with me being last and very tired. 115m.
on the 1st floor
on the 2nd floor
on our last night in paris, we decided to stop scrimping and have a french dinner. we had escargot for our entrees. it wasn't bad.
we spent our last day in paris waiting at the bus station for a bus to the airport, and then waiting at the airport for our flight. and finally, because we arrived in prestwick after 12, there were no more trains and buses so we had to wait for a cab to bring us home. i finally went to bed at 3am on thursday morning. what a tiring trip. and now we all have flu. but it was nice.
