Today was the last day of work for K and I at the pack house. As usual, we woke up at 630am in the morning and started to get ready for work. For the last 3 years since I started working, I have ever been to work on time. But the 2 weeks at the pack house I have not only on time for work, but early. The stupid assembly line start on the dot at 8am, so if we are a few minutes late the whole box will be over flowing with kiwi fruits.. So no choice..
The day before, a group of 14 year old boys checked into the guest house we were staying. There were 14 of them in total. Apparently, they were all hockey players and had came to Mt. Maunganui for a hockey competition. The whole guest house suddenly became a nightmare overnight, with the boys making so much noise and running around the house. Plus, they left their room doors open and when I walk past, I could see the mess in the rooms. They even place their hockey jerseys on the floor in the main entrance area to dry! The UK couple who was working at the guest house for their free stay had to work like crazy for that one night. Poor things!
When K and I woke up this morning to make breakfast, I got a shock when I walked to the communal kitchen and saw all the hockey boys already there eating their breakfast. They had with them a middle aged lady who was cooking their breakfast for them. The whole kitchen was like a war zone. Imagine breakfast for 14 growing and hungry teenage boys! Anyways, K took our bread and spread to the living room to avoid the kitchen. He had wanted to skip coffee and Milo. But I had to drink my morning Milo, so I braved myself and went into the kitchen to make our morning beverages in the midst of all the people and the mess. = )
At the pack house, I took the usual line beside K, handling all the jumbo size kiwis while k handled the mini ones. After about an hour of packing, the boss himself came over to me and asked if I could go over to do pre-grading. I hesitated, still recovering from the horrible first experience I had with the pre-grading few days ago. When he sensed my hesitation, he begged me. He was like: “Please, please??” I had no choice. And a little embarrassed that the boss had to beg me.. Haha.. K teased me and said I am in high demand. I don’t understand why the boss didn’t ask anyone else cause there were some other packers who had done pre-grading before. K said maybe did a very good job the last time. Which is ridiculous cause there’s no way to measure whether one can be doing a good job at pre-grading. I think it’s because no one else wanted to do it, and maybe I have a face that seems like I am easier to “bully”, so the boss asked me instead.. haha.. = )
So I spent the rest of the day doing pre-grading with a China lady as my partner. As usual, the experience was totally lousy. Despite the additional 50cents per hour, I will do anything to avoid looking at thousands of kiwis rolling past me and having to pick out and throw away the bad ones. Plus, the smell of squashed kiwis is horrible. I was like 1 or 2 hours into the job when I started to feel like vomiting. My head was dizzy from looking at all the rolling kiwis, and I was nauseous from the smell of the squashed kiwis. Fortunately, our shift ended early today at 1pm. I wasn’t sure I could have survived the whole day’s shift from 8am to 6pm doing pre-grading!!
Because work ended early at 1pm, there was no lunch break today, so we had our lunch after work in the pack house canteen. Ah Ming prepared fried bee hoon for lunch. That made my day totally. Especially after the horrible pre-grading experience. Plus, I was just telling K the night before that I was craving for fried bee hoon. Maybe Ah Ming is psychic! = ) There was fish cake, crab meat balls and fried egg in the bee hoon. Totally delicious. It seemed like ages since I last had fried bee hoon!
K and I left the pack house after lunch, and headed to Tauranga town center to walk around. We bought 6 books at 50 cents each at this book store we spotted. Super cheap right!! We also bought 2 international calling cards so now we can call back home at a much cheaper rate.
We headed to the supermarket in the evening to buy groceries for dinner, then headed home to make dinner. We had our first attempt in making clear chicken soup, based on the recipe Ah Ming gave us. We put the chicken bones and the ingredients into a big pot and left it there to boil for about 2 hours, while we went back to our room to watch Ice Age 2. To cut the long story short, the soup tasted like onion soup in water. Nothing at all like the chicken soup Ah Ming made for us! It was very disappointing. Up till now, we still don’t know what went wrong!! K also pan fried chicken meat in spicy butter sauce. That turned out not too bad though. = )
In the midst of preparing dinner and waiting for the soup to boil, we also went into the living room to watch TV. Since we checked in, we have never used the living room much. It’s also being occupied by the UK couple and their couple friend. So when we saw the living room empty, we quickly went in to sit on the couch and enjoy the fireplace. “Joey” was on TV so we watched that and had a good laugh. Not long after “Joey” ended, “Princess Diaries” came on. The UK couple and their couple friend came into the living room then. And one of the couple friend (the guy), took the remote and switched channels without even asking if we were watching. I thought that was extremely rude, cause it was pretty obvious we were watching the TV when they first walked in. I got so pissed I walked out of the living room immediately when he switched channels. K seemed fine with the whole episode, but I kept complaining about how rude the guy was. K says I need to take it easy. Sometimes, I think so too.. Don’t know why I get so affected by the trivial things in life. Oh well, hopefully my stay here will see me change for the better!
The day before, a group of 14 year old boys checked into the guest house we were staying. There were 14 of them in total. Apparently, they were all hockey players and had came to Mt. Maunganui for a hockey competition. The whole guest house suddenly became a nightmare overnight, with the boys making so much noise and running around the house. Plus, they left their room doors open and when I walk past, I could see the mess in the rooms. They even place their hockey jerseys on the floor in the main entrance area to dry! The UK couple who was working at the guest house for their free stay had to work like crazy for that one night. Poor things!
When K and I woke up this morning to make breakfast, I got a shock when I walked to the communal kitchen and saw all the hockey boys already there eating their breakfast. They had with them a middle aged lady who was cooking their breakfast for them. The whole kitchen was like a war zone. Imagine breakfast for 14 growing and hungry teenage boys! Anyways, K took our bread and spread to the living room to avoid the kitchen. He had wanted to skip coffee and Milo. But I had to drink my morning Milo, so I braved myself and went into the kitchen to make our morning beverages in the midst of all the people and the mess. = )
At the pack house, I took the usual line beside K, handling all the jumbo size kiwis while k handled the mini ones. After about an hour of packing, the boss himself came over to me and asked if I could go over to do pre-grading. I hesitated, still recovering from the horrible first experience I had with the pre-grading few days ago. When he sensed my hesitation, he begged me. He was like: “Please, please??” I had no choice. And a little embarrassed that the boss had to beg me.. Haha.. K teased me and said I am in high demand. I don’t understand why the boss didn’t ask anyone else cause there were some other packers who had done pre-grading before. K said maybe did a very good job the last time. Which is ridiculous cause there’s no way to measure whether one can be doing a good job at pre-grading. I think it’s because no one else wanted to do it, and maybe I have a face that seems like I am easier to “bully”, so the boss asked me instead.. haha.. = )
So I spent the rest of the day doing pre-grading with a China lady as my partner. As usual, the experience was totally lousy. Despite the additional 50cents per hour, I will do anything to avoid looking at thousands of kiwis rolling past me and having to pick out and throw away the bad ones. Plus, the smell of squashed kiwis is horrible. I was like 1 or 2 hours into the job when I started to feel like vomiting. My head was dizzy from looking at all the rolling kiwis, and I was nauseous from the smell of the squashed kiwis. Fortunately, our shift ended early today at 1pm. I wasn’t sure I could have survived the whole day’s shift from 8am to 6pm doing pre-grading!!
Because work ended early at 1pm, there was no lunch break today, so we had our lunch after work in the pack house canteen. Ah Ming prepared fried bee hoon for lunch. That made my day totally. Especially after the horrible pre-grading experience. Plus, I was just telling K the night before that I was craving for fried bee hoon. Maybe Ah Ming is psychic! = ) There was fish cake, crab meat balls and fried egg in the bee hoon. Totally delicious. It seemed like ages since I last had fried bee hoon!
K and I left the pack house after lunch, and headed to Tauranga town center to walk around. We bought 6 books at 50 cents each at this book store we spotted. Super cheap right!! We also bought 2 international calling cards so now we can call back home at a much cheaper rate.
We headed to the supermarket in the evening to buy groceries for dinner, then headed home to make dinner. We had our first attempt in making clear chicken soup, based on the recipe Ah Ming gave us. We put the chicken bones and the ingredients into a big pot and left it there to boil for about 2 hours, while we went back to our room to watch Ice Age 2. To cut the long story short, the soup tasted like onion soup in water. Nothing at all like the chicken soup Ah Ming made for us! It was very disappointing. Up till now, we still don’t know what went wrong!! K also pan fried chicken meat in spicy butter sauce. That turned out not too bad though. = )
In the midst of preparing dinner and waiting for the soup to boil, we also went into the living room to watch TV. Since we checked in, we have never used the living room much. It’s also being occupied by the UK couple and their couple friend. So when we saw the living room empty, we quickly went in to sit on the couch and enjoy the fireplace. “Joey” was on TV so we watched that and had a good laugh. Not long after “Joey” ended, “Princess Diaries” came on. The UK couple and their couple friend came into the living room then. And one of the couple friend (the guy), took the remote and switched channels without even asking if we were watching. I thought that was extremely rude, cause it was pretty obvious we were watching the TV when they first walked in. I got so pissed I walked out of the living room immediately when he switched channels. K seemed fine with the whole episode, but I kept complaining about how rude the guy was. K says I need to take it easy. Sometimes, I think so too.. Don’t know why I get so affected by the trivial things in life. Oh well, hopefully my stay here will see me change for the better!
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