Mission to Venus

In a great turn of events, yesterday wasn't THE ending ladies and germs.

In fact, yesterday was the beginning.

The adventures of Calamity Man continue.

To calamity. And beyond!

Click to enlarge

Food rot

Enrico*, my ex-colleague at FNS 399* dropped by my neighbourhood just now to collect the set of keys for the foodcourt that I'd been holding on to.

He'd be leaving the $%^&!!! place on the 6th himself. Couldn't take the pressure of being on a sinking ship any longer. I already saw it coming.

News has it that Benjol*, the guy who brought me into the company who also later become Kungfu's* (FNS 399's parent company) most hated guy, has been asked to leave due to some money-related isuues and his last day of service is on the 19th next month.

Also, FNS 399 is no longer called that ever since they switched to a non-Halal concept in a desperate attempt to increase revenue through the sale of beer. It's called Kungfu 399 now.

According to Enrico, sales has been shyte ever since the conversion as our regular customers, for instance the folks at the mosque, have stayed away.

Ha ha ha. They poured in close to $100,000 to redo the place just six months after its grand opening and the result is even worse than before they started! Stupid, stupid big people at Kungfu.

I'm sure they will not collapse overnight but I, The Calamity Man, have already warned them that this would happen. FNS 399 was slowly gathering momentum and the last thing it needed was for this conversion to screw things up.

No one had the crown jewel's to stand up to the boss and tell him my case scenario. Everybody thought The Calamity Man's viewpoints hold no water, noooooobody wanted to listen to the little guy... .

Sorry, I just had to let it out.


*Obviously names have been changed because I feel like scratching my left foot now.

The best loser

I finally got paid today... but it was deducted by $195 because of the church incident.

There are a million things I think I could do with that amount of money but the funny thing is, I'm not feeling bad about it at all.

In fact, I feel it's a blessing.

A blessing because when I think about it in the greater scheme of things, I was actually the smallest loser of all involved.

1) The church was expecting a 20% discount ($1000ish) but they only got 10.
2) My company (I've decided to call it LC from now on coz I just cannot be bothered to type out something longer than that) not only lost 10% of revenue, they also lost a potential repeat customer. That's $5000ish x n no of years.
3) Phil, my partner in crime at that time lost his job, this incident being the mother of all last straws as far as Don was concerned.
4) I only lost money. No sweat.

Self-reflecting a little bit, isn't it amazing how after being the main culprit in this whole calamity, I still only came out with a scratch?

I get paid fortnightly and the best thing is, I was shocked to see my nett salary when I got it just now. It's the BIGGEST amount I've received in all my sad life for half a month's work. After the deduction, I still received more than my basic nett salary.

Wow.

God is amazing, masya-Allah.

Heart to say

The honeymoon period is over at work and now after three weeks, I think I'm better able to come up with an educated opinion on it.

It worries me that the general concensus among the mortals is that the manager, Ishak*, is a pond scum.

I've not been at the butt of his attacks yet so I've nothing against him. I'm no one to judge but I do it anyway, everyone does but I usually judge people's intentions and not their actions.

This guy has been showing me around on how to act and what to do and all that and I appreciate them. I'm just waiting for him to start picking on me like he has on the other mortals. Perhaps I'm still new, hence I have that immunity.

From what I observe though, he also likes to back stab the others. He likes to make a mountain of a molehill to make him look big in the eyes of the bosses. To him, that's his only motive. Others can die for all he cares.

In my opinion, a manager cannot do that. A manager is a middleman between the bosses and the mortals. He has the power and he should not abuse it. He must strike a balance and not be too skewed in his focus.

For instance, one of the drivers made a mistake one morning and he corrected the guy. The matter should close right there but nooo, Ishak just had to bring it up to Ilsa and then George and then Don, one after the other after then.

I don't get it. Doesn't he think about the consequences of his actions? People have families to feed and all. Doesn't he think of the welfare of these people? Why must he muck around with their rice bowls? People make mistakes, sometimes they forget, it's natural. It's human to err. Show me one human being who doesn't and I'll show you a flying shoe.

The bosses like him. To be honest, when they called me upstairs the other day, they actually told me to mould myself like him. In my heart, I squirmed because I know I'm not that sort of person and I'm under a bit of pressure because I know that if I choose to be like me, it's only a matter of time before I get the boot.

But after mulling over it, I relaxed a bit. I just told myself to get over it, get over the past, get over my mistakes, do my best, move on and leave the rest in God's hands. Why worry? No women no cry. I don't owe anyone a living. I'm good and someday things will fall nicely into place for me.


*name has been changed because my cheeseburger is slow

Ubin there, done that

So it was completely unexpected that I'd be off today but the company hadn't got much orders to fulfil and since I'm pretty much useless, so there.

I worked out with Liana to do something, anything chilled out. I've not had a proper Perth Day for some time now. Jelte and Ann were included but only he made it. She had ooooh... migraine. Ha ha.

Made me think twice about a "happily ever after" ending. Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!! I mean, I want at least four children you know...? LOL!

But I did meet up with her afterwards. Packed some nasi lemak from Changi Village and hand-delivered them to her home for everyone including me. Chatted a bit with Mamu (that's what they call "Uncle" in Pakistan) before we left.

We went to Woodlands for her to send some stuff over to her auntie, afterwhich we went shopping for a bit at the night market next to Causeway Point where I got her a Naruto The Movie DVD, two Mr Bean cartoon VCDs for Mr Ball Ball my nephew and a Masked Rider The Movie VCD for myself just because.

Then we went to Yishun to hand-deliver the Mr Bean VCDs to Mr Ball Ball before we split ways at the train station.

Enough on that. Liana, Jelte and I actually had a great few hours at Ubin. We rented a mountain bike each, cycled to a spot near an old quarry which is now filled with water and had a picnic with the food that mom packed for us earlier when we went over to Yishun to borrow Leita's digicam.

The digicam was for filming Liana and Jelte for their applications to join TV World's Travel and Living.

We did a few takes in between cycling and picnic-ing, had a few drinks at the laid back setting of Ubin which was cool, except for the fact that the government's turned it into another URGH place.

I mean, where did the villages go? Where did the goats and the chickens go? All we saw were dogs wild and tame and one stupid sparrow. We suspect they're gonna turn the island into another commercialized freakshow.

They're screwing with every idyllic spot, dammit. What's up with these people!?

Oh well.

One for the seas

Bye bye mainland Singapore, good riddance!

Relak babe, maintaaain...

Some boring people

We're here!

You can do it now baby, no one's watching

Lai, lai, lai! Don't shy! Curry puff one piece 50 cents!

Hey baby, why do I feel like we're being watched?

Bye bye unblocked-by-highrise-buildings sunset

Hell-#%%^^-o again Singapore

The time has come. I definitely need a new camera. This cheeseburger has served me well but the time has come for me get something faster in between shots, certainly something less chunky and clunky to be lugged around and be slipped into my pocket until needed.

Everything's Ook

Haha *rolleyes* , my mom got me a stuffed toy gorilla puppet as a belated birthday present.

Very funny mom, very funny. Is she trying to tell me something? I mean, how come Liana got a stuffed cat and I got a gorilla? Grrr.

Ok it's a little dark. These guys were waiting for me on my laptop as I got back from work.
Presenting Ook, my new gorilla on Fish who's suffocating Stinky, Liana's rat and also the other kid on the block, Dunhaf, Liana's new cat who's trying to kill my laptop's mouse next to Fondue, the um, some rodent.

Yay, I've got another animal to sleep with tonight. So significant. One represents me and the other represents... Ahem! ;)

The not so ugly

I walked into work today pretending nothing happened but I got a real tongue-lashing from the boss' sister, the HR manager, Ilsa the moment she saw me.

She was like, "Waaah... BIG trrrouble man yesterday!"

I was like, "Huh? What happened?" with a smirk on my face.

I know, I know. It's no laughing matter and I do feel sorry for my moment of folly so early into this job but really, my mantra these days is to just chill out. Things will work out if they want to.

I just continued as usual. The tongue-lashing lasted about three minutes coz I didn't let her finish. I grabbed a trolley and pretended to be busy. Ha ha.

But after lunch, the boss himself, Don, called me upstairs.

Not trying to sound macho or anything but I didn't feel anything. I felt numb. I had no expectations. Que sera, sera.

Ilsa was called in too. So it's the three of us.

What happened was both of them, especially Don were just being straight up with me on things in general. They didn't nag at me, talk down to me or even tell me what to do. It's more like a slow tempo buttering and I mostly gave my standard response. Nod, grunt and mumble.

On my performance, they said that I've been good. I don't skive, I have potential, those sort of stuff.

They also acknowledged that I'm slowly picking things up and they understand that despite having much FNB experience that this is my first time in catering so it's natural to feel lost in space. But they also mentioned that I need to pick up my speed.

I've passed the first two weeks despite everything, including the gaffe at the church and now I need to prove my mettle as a leader, coz that's what I'm being hired for.

I accept all that. I know that I've been slow but that's all part of my strategy. I don't wanna walk into the job with all guns a-blazing acting like a hero and all when I know nuts.

My strategy when entering a new job environment has always been to watch, learn and do for the first two weeks at my own pace and then honing what I've learned for the next two and a half months. By the end of three months, I should be good.

Despite everything they said regarding this matter, I'm still sticking to my strategy. Sometimes it's better to act stupid than to act smart. You learn more that way.

About my church gaffe, the standard procedure is for the employees responsible to pay up to make up for the discount given to a customer upon complaint but none of them mentioned about deducting my salary or anything. I hope they wouldn't coz that'd mean all my blood, sweat and tears clocking overtime the past few days would be for nought and that certainly would piss me off. We're talking about $500 odd here!

I was also informed that the reason Phil got sacked was not only because of this issue. Turns out that Don has this little black book going on with all his employees' bad record updated as and when necessary and Phil had chalked up 10.

I now have one of my own. What a way to start! Woo! Ha ha!

In Don's own words, Phil was hopeless and he made sure I heard by repeating himself oh, a few million times.

I know the bosses have high hopes in me but I don't really wanna burden myself with other people's expectations of me anymore. I'm just chill as I go from two weeks ago. Come what may, who cares?

I have my own objectives. I'm actually being paid by the very company that I'm spying on for my own future benefit, which is cool. They have nary a clue. Ho ho ho!

In other news, Max called me earlier to say that SMRT has rejected our application to rent the shop space at Eunos MRT station. Boohoo? Nah!

It's all in God's plan. In God, I trust.

The Bad

Well the bad thing is I sort of screwed up at work on National Day. Both me and my colleague, Phil.

I actually see the lighter side of it. I'm not sure if I really care. Ha ha.

What happened was a few of us were sent to a church in Hougang to set up eight buffet stations with about six or seven dishes each as well as four drink and dessert stations for 850 people for their National Day function.

It wasn't really a straightforward thing. We were first attended by this lady who gave us instructions on how to do up the thing and were just going about doing our jobs when we got stopped more than one time by other members of the church's organizing committee who wanted things to be done differently.

Simply put, I believe there is a bit of power struggle going on within their committee and everyone wanted to have a say about the way things should be. I don't know about the other guys but I was pissed. I mean, HELLO, we haven't got all evening!

The lady actually whined to me about how she's been organizing this thing for years as compared to the other members and suddenly they wanna show how good they were blah blah blah.

One person wanted the drinks to all be in front, one wanted to put some at the back and some in front, one wanted all the buffet stations to change directions... . I was like, c'mon man, give us a break already, can we settle on anything!?

The lady complained about how the food portion wasn't enough and all. How some of the dishes filled only less than half of the foodpans in the warmers. I mean like, c'mon, hello Houston, do we look like chefs or people in charge of food portioning? We just deliver, set up, go and come back later to collect our stuff.

Obviously the lady wanted to show that she still had stripes among the members so she took it upon herself to come down personally to our office today to lodge a complain about the food portion issue. She also added fuel to the fire to complain about nobody being there last night to clear the mess.

Ok, this is where Phil's and my mistake comes in. We were supposed to standby at the church premises last night but we couldn't stand being at the end of other people's power struggle that we went to have dinner somewhere nearby instead. Besides, we were hungry.

We had a feeling the more we're there the more they're gonna order us to do this and that and this and that just because they wanna display who's more powerful among themselves. It's freaking annoying.

Today I was off but Phil went to work. To fast forward the story, because of the female dog, Phil lost his job. She actually asked for a 10% refund because of the food portioning issue which was none of our business but I guess Phil got sacked because of our disappearing act.

Heh, so maybe tomorrow I'd get the same treatment too. The funny thing is, this is all thanks to one person's pettiness. Sure we disappeared but at most she only had to wait 15 mins. They started eating their buffet some time after 1900hrs and we were back from dinner to clear up at 2000hrs.

And along with Phil and I and our truck, we also had two other trucks and four other people so we made quick work of clearing up.

Curse the female dog! I'd expect people of her standing to have more humility and compassion but I was dead wrong and tomorrow, I'm just dead.

Middle world

Man, the last few days were just so busy at work. It's the National Day period. Most of our orders are coming from governmental organizations - schools, statutory boards, ministries, etc.

I wanna whine about it but I think back and in actual fact I actually have it easier than all the other guys at work.

The bosses and manager are forever busy planning, planning, planning. I really have no idea how they manage to make sense of everything so quickly. Everyone's so fast, fast, fast I actually see myself like the only guy moving in slow motion in an action movie.

The drivers just know when to prepare what in anticipation of the next few orders. I really admire how they can anticipate things three or four steps in advance while I just stand there and freeze in my own world.

There are the Sabahan (people from Sabah, East Malaysia) attendants, who along with all the other foreigners in the kitchen department, are the most sympathetic group as they work so hard without question to back everyone up for less money and more basic hours.

They do 12 basic hours while us Singaporeans do only nine. Anything on top of these are considered overtime.

The kitchen staff (both cooked food and baking) keep on churning food after food after food for thousands and thousands of people every single day in less than dersirable conditions, I'm like wow. How do they do it?

Me, in short, I just float around. When at our premise, I just pick anything up. I used to give orders to people but now I only take orders. What they tell me to, I do. My favourite food these days is humble pie. It's all I eat.

Whenever our customers ask for service staff, I get sent out, most times with at least one other person, either one other driver or Sabahan attendant. That means I get to stay away from the madness at our premise for as long as the customers require and I don't actually work for the entire duration. There's always a lull period in between setting up and packing up.

Personally though, I've been clocking the overtime hours a lot the last few days. I start at 0700hrs or 0800hrs and only finish at 2100hrs or 2200hrs. Most of the rest of the guys do even more. We're all just so tired.

When we're tired, my colleagues and I do crazy things. We spurt out nonsense, sing to the top of our voices, screeeam out to empty space then exchange high fives and whoops, honk our trucks and shout "Happy National Day!" to every babe we pass by while on the road.

It's necessary insanity.

We got to keep our morale high. We look after one another because none of the top people do. It's understood between us mortal workers that the big boss' only concern is that as long as his stuff gets sent out and money comes in, whatever happens to us doesn't bother him. Even if we don't eat.

So we get by with a little street smarts. We nick some of the customer's food at the buffet table while their events are still on or we eat the leftovers or we steal some time off work to eat someplace. Main thing is we stick together.

I actually belong in that group called the "top people" but I feel more at home being down and dirty with all the mortals.

Calamity Man's birthday pics

I've got some time so I'm gonna post some of my birthday photos that I stole from Liana over for the sake of people who wanna ogle, like my sister Lilie in Perth.


Is he coming? I can't see.


I can't see too. The door's too low.


There he is!


And there's the cake. Count the number of big and small candles to know the CM's age.


The thumbdrive that Dick got. Haversack and Michelin Man fatrolls are model's own.


Ok, where's the rest of the presents?!


Kiss our butts!


Wang's so ugly we took his face out of the photo ;)


The wrestlers are too lazy to fight and the referee's not helping.

Can barely bear

I've gone a week without any offday this week and I'm not gonna pretend that I'm not drained out. The thing about me is that whatever I do, my brain starts to shutdown at 2200hrs sharp every night. All my brain cells will queue up and take turns to punch their cards and call it a day.

But last night I managed to boost my morale a little. I told my driver to sneak time off to drop by Holland Village for dinner before we had to hit the road again. We were doing the late shift.

Why Holland V? Coz my cute little kitty kat was there with her brother.

I was mightily uplifted the moment I caught a glimpse of her when our truck passed her by before we found a parking spot. And the moment we got down and when I was only a few metres away from her, I couldn't explain the gush of fuzzy feeling inside of me.

God, she seems to grow more gorgeous by the day even though she's been feeling under the weather for a few days then. Was it because I haven't seen her for almost a week? It's only been a few days. This is one for the X Files.

All I know is that I couldn't pry my eyeballs away from her from the first to the last second of our 30 minute dinner. I wished I could have given her a hug and spun her around but we're not at that stage yet.

We were supposed to meet for dinner tonight but I won't be able to make it as I'm doing the late shift yet again. We plan to go to New York Pizza at Harbourfront when we both have time off work in the coming days. Don't know when that will be though.

My company is all sold out on orders right through September. We're talking about orders for 1700 people, 16400 people and it's gotten to the point where the boss had to arrange to subcontract some orders out to other caterers as well as recall some former workers to return and help out for this period, including the guy whom I was employed to replace.

How weirder can it get?

Calamitinized

I've finally gotten my new old Toshiba laptop calamitinized, meaning configured to suit my personal needs.

1) Installed the wireless adaptor
2) Installed the printer's driver
3) Installed Firefox web browser
4) Installed Thunderbird email client (always a headache but I figured it out after some trial and error)
5) Installed Sunbelt Counterspy
6) Installed Sunbelt Kerio Firewall
7) Installed Skype

Took me two and a half hours last night to remove redundant programs from my old laptop and defragmentize it so that I'd only leave the skeleton behind and another half hour this morning to personalize everything that I've installed on this beautiful laptop.

So tired after work and all. Barely had enough energy to do all these things last night and as usual, at 2200hrs, my brain just shut down and it's still not fully awake right now.

Ann called while I was in the middle of calamitinizing but I couldn't keep up with our conversation so I had to hang up the phone. We talked again later for a bit and I apologized for my lack of interest to talk earlier.

Zac, my old pal, ol' pal o' mine called as well to find out how I was doing. He's alright. He's been my best friend for the longest duration. His first child, a daughter just arrived a day after my birthday at 0630hrs.

I'm so happy for him and his family. Makes me wonder things about myself. At the rate I'm going, by the time his kid is in college, mine is just starting out in kindy. Lol! There he is with a baby and all while my hormone's still being wasted down the toilet! Hahahahaha!!!

Baby food

System in chaos

Ok now I'm gonna talk about my new job. Reason why I haven't written about it was because I was short of time but also because I wanted to give myself some time to absorb what was going on.

I've actually been at it for over a week now at this catering company called *Cekik Catering as a supervisor.

Supervisor my pimply ass.

It's a nice enough title for me to tell the world that I'm not some newbie in the FNB industry but the fact of the matter is I'm just a glorified odd job labourer.

That's perfectly fine with me. I've resigned to the fact that I'm stuck for life in this industry in any capacity and I've decided that to obtain some experience in the catering line kinda fits in the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

I know the lowest common denominator when it comes to kitchen operations, service operations, outlet management, dealing with statutory boards, Halal matters, etc and now this. It's like the ingredient that links all that I know together and make me complete.

Catering is not like what most people think. It's just like Just In Time Logistics. It's chaos in there. It's a warzone!

The kitchen prepares the food and drinks while the drivers prepares the logistics like tables, cutlery and stuff, all tailor-made to the customers' orders, just about two hours before they're supposed to be sent over.

I'm not a kitchen staff, nor am I a driver. In fact, they don't even need a supervisor coz they already have a team comprising of the manager and the boss' family members to orchestrate the entire operations.

So I make myself useful by filling up all the gaps. That is such a perfect role for a jack of all trades like I am.

Should the customer ask for service staff, I go there and turn on my waiter mode, should they ask for a satay man, I'm there to fan the satays on the pit, if I'm required to just support the drivers, I follow them on their trucks, when I have nothing to do, I just pick up whatever someone's left behind halfway or help anyone who looks like he needs help.

It's back-breaking stuff. My first three days were a torture. Every muscle in my body was utilized, even my eyelashes. My back hurt so bad I questioned myself if I would survive the next year in this job but I'm glad to announce that I've gotten used to it now.

It's chaotic, yet systematic. Everyone knows their role (except me hur hur). I just plug myself in anywhere. My colleagues are mature people. I'm not really into talking about motor-racing, sex romps, which gang they belong to, how many girlfriends and wives they have, blah blah blah.

I wanna talk about real life experiences. About how people raise their kids, keep things running at home on a meagre salary, what business they've been involved in the past... those sort of thing. I've made some cool friends here.

In my short time here, I've been to the Supreme Court, Ministry of Home Affairs, one of the military airbases and soon even the Istana. How many times can I say I've been to these places before? None. But now I have and more. I've seen nothing yet.

My company is hot at the Istana. People who have functions at the Istana, even government organizations order from us all the time. The people at work say it's a pain in the butt setting up events there but I'm sure they're all secretly brimming with pride.

That's all for now. Overshot my bedtime by twenty minutes.

*Name has been changed to encourage the panda population to fornicate

Lap dance

I've finally gotten my hands on a brand new old laptop.

What I was looking for:

1) <1GHz processor (speed, speed, speed!)
2) In-built wireless (don't want a wireless card poking out of the laptop)
3) <14" LCD screen (because watching porn on a 12" screen just lacks the oomph!)
4) DVD Rom (so I can watch DVD movies)
5) <192MB RAM (just so it'd be better than my old one)
6) 20GB< HDD (which is more than enough but I like the comfort of having that amount of buffer)
7) <2hrs of battery life
8) Windows XP Home/Pro
9) MS Office

What I got:

1) 1.6GHz processor
2) No in-built wireless
3) 15" LCD screen
4) CD/CDRW (no DVD Rom but on the flipside I can burn CDs now, like porn, woohoo!)
5) 256MB RAM
6) 20GB HDD
7) 2hrs of battery life
8) Windows XP Pro (yeah!)
9) MS Office (very crucial for doing work on)

I met the seller, a girl from NUS who happens to be HOT by the way, braces and all, test-drove the laptop for a bit and I felt that all in all, the laptop was value for money.

At first glance I feel that it's been well taken care of, well-maintained, no virus, quick as hell which is a totally nice change from my old 450MHz laptop and the best thing is the 2 hours battery life coz I foresee myself presenting stuff to people in future and I gotta be able to do that anywhere, especially in places with no powerpoints as well as in my planned travels.

It's sturdy, it's tough, it's reliable. Just like The Calamity Man. Ta da da dat ta dah! And it matches the Toshiba thumbdrive my brother Dick got for me coz it's a Toshiba too. Yay!

Now I gotta eat grass for the next month or so. :(

New old

Just a quick one.

Still haven't got time to really sit down and post about my new job.

All I can say is that after starting out here, I hardly have time for the little things that I used to do like reading the papers for instance. I'm such a frog in a well right now.

After work today, I might be meeting someone who wants to sell her laptop. Beggars can't be choosers. It's second hand for me again. Hopefully I can work something out with her to make it more attainable for me.

I kinda need it. I may seem like any other salaryman in the offline world but in the online world, I'm something else, using the Internet for some extra dosh and all and I can't do that when I can only see the bottom 3/4 of my 12 inch screen.

I only did two things differently in the last couple of weeks - the "magic potion" thingy and the "special prayer" thingy.

Things have been on the uphill since those. And since I absolutely believe the "magic potion" thingy was crap, it must have been the special prayer that proves to be the positive difference.

Alhamdulillah, thank God. He challenged me knowing that I could take it. If He hadn't challenged me, I wouldn't have known that I could achieve a higher level in my personal being now.

Arise for King Leo of August!

Yeap, it's my birthday today.

I was intending it to be a low profile affair, went to work, did everything as usual.

But I was pleasantly surprised when everyone appeared at home to ambush me with a birthday song, cake, food and all as I returned from work.

It was nicely planned, especially by Liana.

They were lucky. I actually sneaked some time off work to dump some stuff home two hours before I was supposed to and then hop back to work, when I came across Liana at the lift.

So I just passed Liana my things and scrammed. Two seconds late and I'd have closed the lift door, gone up and discovered the "surprise".

My sisters actually tried to ask Ann to join us but she was called back to work in the evening to cover someone. I had no idea how they got her number coz I didn't see any of them spy on my phone or anything.

It was nice. Great to see all of them here at home. I've not seen my brother for months until last week at Liana's birthday dinner and now I've seen him twice in two weeks!

I got a nosehair trimmer, a sideburn shaver, some underwear, some socks, a couple of shirts and a 1GB thumbdrive which I so need.

It was great. Sorry, no photos. My cheeseburger died coz I forgot to charge it.

Long live the king of August!