Running out of Ideas....

It's the most tiring time when it comes to meal time. Living in UK now, I have to prepare my own meal for each and every meal as still can't afford to 'pack' from outside as it's very very expensive. Most of the time during lunch at work I'll just prepare sandwiches with ham and sausages. Simple and easy. But when it comes to dinner after work, I hang out quite long in the room, not knowing what to cook for myself. That explain why I only had my dinner at 9pm or 10pm everyday. As everyone knows, I'm not someone who like to cook...haha, Having bought some frozen vegetables, some ham, chinese mushroom, tuna in a can, most of the time, I'll just fried rice, or cook them with pasta and mayonnaise. Or even porridge with vegetables pickles. Now that I have had those food rotating for 2 months, I'm starting to get bore with them. Arrghh....now I need to think what to cook tonight.

Volunteering...

These 4 days off are so far the most fruitful one I have had since I came here. Had been volunteering in a Film Festival Office in London from Monday. Met up with some locals British, interact with them, I quite enjoy it. Frankly speaking this is my first time in England that I had truly interact with the local. As I told you, most of the time, friends that surrounded me are either my primary school mates, or colleagues from Eastern European.
The first day I was there, I was to help them flyering leaflets and putting up posters on a busy streets. They gave me their film festival shirt - a short sleeves t-shirt to wear during the flyering. And that's the very first time I had ever wore a short sleeves t-shirt in London or even UK. Although it's already spring, with sunshine, but it still colds when the wind blows. Surprisingly, I survived. Maybe because there're a lot of people on the streets that make the surrounding warmer. And the next two days, I am in the office helping them on whatever the team needed. The actual film festival only start this coming Thurdays and volunteers will have to be involved in the front desk, ursherer etc. Hopefully this is a good start for me to gain industry contacts in UK.

Besides, Siew gave me a treat in a Belgium Restaurant in Covent Garden called Belgo Central. According to Siew, their mussels are the most popular one. Both of us had Fruity Belgium beer (4.3% of alcohol). I had the strawberry flavour and Siew had her banana flavour. It's just like fruit juice and doesn't taste like beer at all. Didn't get drunk, but feel very sleepy after that. We shared a main course of Lamb Shank and it's delicious. Tried parsnip, a turnip like vegetable (the outlook of it). Love the taste (it taste a bit sweet and a little crunchy) and will get that for my next home-cooked meal =) Waiting for Siew to pass me the photos on her phone and I can upload them. (Click here for the photos - 5 mins after I type this I got the links from her, we have telepathy don't we? heee) Hmm...now I owe both you and Irene quite some meals...keeping finger cross hopefully I could be able to give you a big one soon.

Can't wait for the actual days of Film Festival next week now. London here I come again soon!!!

Devil's horn growing!!!

This morning, our supervisor asked all new comers to be at the front stations when doing checking and packing of products as he wanted to evaluate how fast we can check (scanning of products and putting into different packs according to order). The target is 220 units per hour. Before this, I had never achieved this rate, the most I achieved was 180+ units per hour.

Let me explain the checking process. One boxes is one order. And each order includes a few customers orders. When doing checking, we scan each products and put them accordingly into assigned locations. One location is one customer. After sorting the products for each order into locations, we had to pack each locations into one bags each. And those bags are to go into one big boxes to be dispatch to the main consultant (it's just like direct selling with a consultant selling products to customers at home). After a few weeks there, the tips to get that 220 units per hour is to do orders with as much units at one time. Normally the packing process is slow, depends on how many bags we need to pack into one big boxes. Hence, to have a higher checking rate, it will be good if we can have more units in one order and fewer locations. And only the front few stations people gets to choose which boxes they wanted to do, as the boxes reached them first. And all this while I am always the unlucky one to be assigned at the last few stations. And those boxes that came to me, were usually the 'unwanted' ones from the front stations, which were mostly only few units per order with many locations.

Well, since I need to survive in UK with a job and some money at the moment, today since I get a chance to be at the front few stations, no matter how unwilling I am, I have to become one of them to "snatch' the big order boxes. And for the first time, I got a check rate of 219.39 per hour. But it's definitely not a good feeling for the whole day. So sorry for those who are at the stations after me. But I have no choice, I can't afford to get kick out from the job at the moment, not until I get a proper one.

I feel so devilish.....the horn will continue to grow for the next few weeks until i pass the challenge.......ish.....

Easter Monday

Went over to Brighton this Easter Monday. Easter here is not a big celebration here. Without any public festivals celebrations. According to a friend, easter is just for the kids, to hunt for hidden eggs/ chocolate. However, it's a long holiday for all British including the weekends. Bear in mind, UK has a lot lesser public holiday (they called it bank holiday over here) as compare to Malaysia. Hence this 4 days are regard as long holiday for them. Also, living in a small town, I had to bear with having less access to public transport. There's only one bus running from Littlehampton to Brighton daily at an interval of 10 mins. The cursing part is on Sunday and Public Holiday, the bus only come once in an hour. And the last bus from Brighton back to Littlehampton is at 4pm. Obviously, I didn't manage to catch the last bus. And there goes my journey taking bus to Worthing (half way of the journey) and train to complete the other half. Luckily the train still operate till late, and most importantly it operates during Public Holiday.

Visited Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. Nice sunny weather. It's getting a lot warmer but at times when there's wind blowing, it's still cold.

Got this from one of the art book found in the Gallery.

"The way we see things is affected by what we look at"

"To look is an act of choice"

Do you choose to

look?
to perceive?
OR
to understand what lies beneath?

before you came to a conclusion on what you see?

Ignorant. A bliss or a Curse?

People always say ignorant is a bliss. But to me, it might be a bliss to you but it is definitely a curse to the others. Because of someone ignorance, another had to clear up the mess for the someone. That's why I think it's a curse to the others.

I love my name, Yikyu!!

After all these years, since I'd graduated from the Uni, I am glad that there's someone who can actually pronounce my name right and use it to call me. Yes, call me by my actual name and not my nick or initials, and in fact he's an English. He's my supervisor in the warehouse. Today he told us (me and my friend) that our names are the easiest to memorize and pronounce as compare to the others. For your informations, the other colleagues mostly are Polish. Hence, you can imagine the weird english names they have, even I can't pronounce them properly when I read their names on the sign-in sheet.

So, friends out there, can I have my name back?
Don't ask me again for my initials or English name/ nick name,

can ah?