Exams time.

Bah.

Got bored, so I made this banner.

6 months

Oh yes.

The weird things you encounter at work.

Being in Australia, I've seen some things which are a major cause of concern while you don't hear much of them back at home. For example, whether students on concession tickets (like myself) should give up seats to perfectly healthy 30 year old adults on adult tickets during peak hour is a constant debate topic over at the mX newspaper, which is like the Today newspaper back at home.

At work, you see a lot of weird things too.

You see people with less than half a mind placing cold stock on shelves, allowing things like milk to go bad. You see people who cannot read the price tags and ask for discounts when the offer is clearly for another item (Never mind that the price is rather ridiculous. The price of a 1kg pasta is cheaper than that of a 500g pasta?).

But yesterday, something topped them all.

While filling eggs, I saw a boy, roughly 5 or 6 years of age walking around, looking down every aisle calling "mommy". Clearly a lost child situation, I asked a female colleague to bring the boy to the service desk (information counter for you and me back at home). Female colleague because my experience with lost child situations are not the best.

Within seconds, the service operator announced to the stall that we have a lost child situation and to ask the parents to be reunited with their child at the service desk.

The parents came within seconds, but where a smile or a very relieved look was what I expected, they came with a frown.

"Why didn't you just leave him there? I was worried because you took him away!" was the first angry outburst from the mother.

O_o

Yes. Apparently, WE are the ones who are being blamed for her losing contact with her child. Not a single thank you, not a single "Thank god". Nothing. All we got from that parent was verbal abuse for bringing her child to safety and calming him down so he won't get scared in a crowded Thursday supermarket (Thursdays and Saturdays are the crowded days. Go figure). Never mind that the child was safely and swiftly brought to the service desk by us and not lead away into the outskirts of Northern Queensland by some pedophile.

Never mind that.

It's all our fault for bringing the kid.

Then again, many things we do is all our fault. The lack of supply. The lack of money in the cash registers. Et Cetra.

Now, even failures of parenting is our fault.

I love my job. :>

The pictures.

As requested by Xin Lan jie for many times, here are the pictures. (Home computer has a shitty upload >_>)





Heading to Lone Pine with Eric.


Cai Ling and Gil.



Koala is looking at you. :)







All the birds that can be found at that place. From top: Emu, an owl and an eagle.






The grey kangaroos. They are the cute ones, but they are also the lazy ones. The red ones are the ones that will hop to you for food.




As shot with me an Gil. <3

Hmm...

Firstly, I want to thank everyone for giving me such an enjoyable and memorable birthday at Lone Pine and Darra. I would also like to thank Xin Lan and Fengzhi for SMSing me wishing me happy birthday. :D

Most of all, I would like to thank my girl, Gil for organising everything and even planning for a surprise birthday party at the Bridge club. Thank you. <3

My birthday started off with all of us heading down to the Lone Pine sanctuary where it is home to the most number of koalas in captivity. Having gone there twice when I first visited Australia and Brisbane 10 years ago, that place was full of many fond memories of me hugging the kangaroos and koalas.

Funny thing was, as with one of my friends, Fibby said, "十年前是和你家人去。十年后就和你potential 家人去。" That did make a laugh out of me.

After ten years, Lone Pine has not changed one bit. Other than the picture taking area going digital (it used to be Polaroid), everything else was still the same. The koalas, the emus, the kangaroos sitting under the tree because the weather was insanely hot (It was over 30 degrees that day). Nothing has changed.

After watching a birds of prey show (No falcons though. But then again, Falcons don't usually reside in Aussie/QLD) where we watched owls and eagles flying around, we headed straight to the kangaroo roaming area where we are allowed to feed the kangaroos.

The kangaroos here are pretty funny creatures. If you feed one of them, a few more will hop over and smack you to ask for food. However, the grey kangaroos can't really be bothered with you as they continue to sleep under the shade.

Lazy creatures.

After a few pictures with the Koalas, we went to Eric's house for a game or two of Mahjong because the sushi bar I wanted to go was fully booked. Not my fault if they loses my business, so we decided to head down to Darra for seafood instead. Seafood in Australia is very rare because of Aussie's love for fillets (Most supermarkets sell only fillets because they are the only thing which sells well. A whole fish generally does not sell too well. I know. I've worked in the seafood department). Moreover, the fish there was fairly cheap as compared to what you can get in other places such as Chinatown (Cheating tourists' money) and Sunnybank (Chinatown V2). We had a lot to eat and by time the night was over, everyone was happy and full.

So, home we went, since Gil and I got work the very next day at 6am.

Ah well.

Just one day.

But hey, it was a fun day :D

The things people do to relieve stress etc...

What I do, is make a new banner.

:)

Song of (whatever) changed to Get you Cornered from the Maximum Tune 3 OST.

Oh yes...

It's interesting to see the bosses sweating once in a while.

It was yet another typical thursday at work (people here goes shopping on Thursdays and stay at home during the weekends. Go figure.). I got to work half an hour early and saw all the managers sitting in the office in a huddle.

Figuring that it was some weird team talk, I just prepared for work and clocked on.

"Hey. The area manager is coming over." was the first sentence my boss told me the moment I reported for work.

Ah ha.

After the area manager utter destroyed another stall a little under half an hour drive away, I was not surprised to see my boss, along with others, looking as if an exam to testify their existance has suddenly popped up.

However, being on of the cooler places in Brisbane, I can still say we were pretty much prepared for anything. It's not as if everyone was slacking off and eating ice cream while nothing is filled. All everything needs to be done is to be fully stocked and everything looking pretty good when they arrived.

Before long, the area managers arrived. You can tell that they are the ones everyone were referring to simply because most, if not all, of us peons are people my age, while managers are usually the people who are older (save for the meat section. There are some weirdos there). Detecting the manager simply took my memory skill of remembering all the managers' faces and realising that the new guy was not in.

Interestingly, he was holding a folder and a pen. Ticking off things, maybe?

As my area was pretty close to the deli/seafood section, I spied out of the corner of my eye as I pretended to be busy of him talking to the manager and the deli 2-IC.

Turns out later that he was not happy with how the seafood was presented.

Oh well.

And that's not all. During my break (which came shortly), the guys from Long-life (everything else in the stall that does not need to be kept in the fridge, like can food and stuff), did not look happy at all. Seems like one of their things were not presented as well as the area manager liked.

All in all, the stall had few flaws, but it was not as bad as the world coming to an end for us.

But, I really do feel for the managers, as moronic as they are sometimes.

Everyone here is just trying to make ends meet. I really don't think there is a need to really crush the managers, or anyone, for that matter, when it comes to things. To see the seafood and long-life manager totally deflated the next few days was not nice at all. While every shop should be run to the top perfection, I think the managers should be allowed to be given a free rein when it comes to what they want to do. Being told off is something no one likes and is necessary at times, but when everyone is working so hard, a telling off just because things aren't the way one likes it is not the way to go.

Then again, my company doesn't do very well in the morale department. So nyaa.