Life is a bitch, so we should be bitchier;

Wednesday, March 17, 2010, 10:08 pm :

Starbucks rambling & Book #10 - The Birthing House

Ok, for my Starbucks book - How Starbucks Saved My Life, I'm supposed to write a book review for the person who gifted it to me. Let me pen it down here before I forget them and have nothing to account for to him.

Let's start with the storyline of the book.

It is actually a biography of a person who had fallen from grace, aka the American Dream, and had to resort to getting a job in Starbucks as a barista. And along the way, he learnt and saw many things that his atas life had sheltered him from and he realised that he was much more happier as a Starbucks barista than when he was a high-flying guy in the advertising/marketing field.

Ok, after getting the facts out, time to put in my X cents worth.

I think that this may not be the conventional self-help genre kind of books but it is kinda in there somewhere. I'm trying not to dismiss it as something that I don't like but I could say that it is not the kind of book I'll rave about.

I have never been a fan of books that relate about a person's self-discovery. And this guy, Michael, known as Mike when he was a barista, kept going on about self-discovery. He was constantly reminiscing about his past when he had been great and almighty instead of focussing on the present. Of course, at the end of his journey, inevitably a happy ending, he managed to stay in the present and discard the past.

But hey, there are also redeeming factors of the book! It is not all that bad... For those who has no idea about how Starbucks works, it is a very good indicator and very telling of the actual situation in the organisation.

From my experience when I was working in Starbucks, I really did enjoy my time there. Just like Mike, I think that Starbucks creates a great space for people to be in. And it's not just about coffee, it is about the people. Starbucks treats us all fantastically. People who are more cynical than me may claim that it is all an act. Well, it could be an act but it definitely is working!

This book is actually strongly recommended for all Starbucks fan and all who wants to know more about Starbucks, this amazing organisation. When you read about Mike's experience as a barista, you will be a little thrilled to be able to identify with all that he mentions. Especially when he starts to relate about some things that he felt was difficult or challenging to him and you think, "hey, I did that before!"

He talks about how hates to do the register, which we call the POS (don't ask me what it is short for, I have no idea) and I quite enjoy doing it. Apparently in the US, they have this amazing machine that counts the money just by the weight, without them having to count it physically!

Then when he finally got to the bar and got confused over all the machinery and drink-calling sequence and so on, it is also exciting on my part to be able to relate to what he is saying.

Ok, starting to ramble. Starbucks is going to take over the world on day!

Book #10 - Christopher Ransom - The Birthing House

Labels: books, Coffee, Work

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Thursday, March 11, 2010, 10:42 am :

Book #9 - How Starbucks Saved My Life

Considering how many books on Starbucks out there, it should come as no surprise that I would eventually read one of them. However, I didn't buy it myself. I was too cheap to do that. My money will only be spent on novels and probably some history books. All these Starbucks-genre books seemed to be too self-help types to me.

But well, a colleague gave it to me and it didn't help that he was quite an ~~eye-candy~~ nice and friendly guy. And he had said that I had to write him a book review after finishing it. Heh.

Of course I would give this Starbucks book a chance!

Book #9 - Michael Gill Gates - How Starbucks Saved My Life

Labels: books, Coffee, Work

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Thursday, September 10, 2009, 1:24 am :

Random Photos

Since I had logged into my Blogger after 10 million years, and these photos were already pre-loaded by me 100 million years ago, save me the trouble to continue loading my Japan photos. I can clear some backlog too. :)

Some dim-sum that we had some time ago at Ah Yat I think (don't even remember when, and with who!). I just remembered that I thought these balls look so globby and gooey, looked that they were going to jump up and eat us all and take over the world after that!

Our Karen-jie and Alan Shin from office. Taken a few days before he left. Hope he is doing so much better now! (And Karen is as black-faced as ever!)

See, we take photos so happy!! And that was when I still had my long hair.

Day of our Quarterly Department Lunch @ Garuda. Serves Indonesian buffet style food. Pretty decent spread and quality is not too bad for the price.

Ok, this is really testing my memory skills since these photos were uploaded eons ago. Can't remember where I took this but I thought that the weighing machine was damn cute. Looks like a robot!

Mango cake-jelly thingy from Cafe Brio @ Carlton Hotel. Looks pretty good but tasted pretty awful. Part of the buffet lunch spread when I went there for a PR/EQ course. Course content wasn't half too bad, if only the instructor was less naggy and irritating. He had all sorts of funny habits, for example kept on asking rhetorical questions and kept talking about the past, or rather his past. BORING!

Some pumpkin bun that we had at Ah Yat during one of our lunches. Looks pretty cute, doesn't it?

The chocolates, flower and cup that we bought for 2 colleagues' promotion! The cup is so cute!!

One of our outings to Clarke Quay, I think, because this looks suspiciously like the Liang Court Starbucks. Somehow, we will always end up in Starbucks. Whatever that I earned from them, I had returned to them x 10 million!!

This I remember! It was lunch in Malaysia with my parents, around Chinese New Year time. Gosh, that was like 6 months ago!

Anyway, this is yam paste. Damn yummy! One of my favourite desserts of all time!

This place that we had lunch has a very strange tradition. The boss will make decisions for his customers. Basically, if he says the chicken is good today, you can't say no. And if he says there is no fish today, he really means it. And if you try to over-order (like how I always do), he will refuse to take your additional orders.

Apparently, the day we went it was fried spring chicken day.

And noodles too! Looks gooey but yummy!

And since it was around the CNY period, he 'nicely suggested' for us to 'lou hei' too.

The sister.

Xiao Long Baos from Beauty World Plaza. The stall is sort of tucked in a corner at the top of the plaza, which is a hawker centre. Pretty cheap (I think, since I didn't pay for it) and nice too I recall, although there has been mixed reviews on this. Go try it out yourself!

Ok, first set down. Many many more to go! Argh!!

Labels: Ah Yat, Chinese New Year, Coffee, Colleagues, Family, Food, Friend Meetups, Kuku Gang, M'sia, Photos, Work

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Tuesday, June 16, 2009, 11:59 am :

Part II of Updates

Friday at work was rather relaxed because most of the exam stuff are settled and all that was left was to return the scripts back to the exam department. The entire Friday morning was dedicated to counting scripts, tons and tons of scripts. And that depleted all our energy and brain cells for counting and we just slacked for the entire afternoon. Oh, and I caught a movie on Friday - Land of the Lost.

It is the most brainless comedy that I have seen for a very long time. Some of the parts are really funny I have to say but the rest are just brainless humour. Its like plain, dumb humour. I don't really have much to say about the show but part of the reason why I caught the movie was because they did a promotion with Bear Grylls on Man vs Wild and it was super hilarious. Link is here although I haven't had the chance to watch it. Didn't want to be too blatantly skivving at work but it looks damn hilarious la.

We are finally at the weekend! This should teach me not to update together an entire week's happenings all at once!

OK, Saturday was Museum-day again. Thinking that the Kangxi exhibition was going to end that Sunday but upon reaching ACM, right there on the banner in front of our eyes, it was printed clear as day - EXHIBITION EXTENDED TILL 28 JUNE 2009! All that rush for nothing! Anyway whatever interesting stuff that happened on that day wasn't that. It was something before.

While I was waiting for the bf, I went to the Starbucks at Raffles City Shopping Centre. The smaller one, not the big one out at the entrance. I went in, got myself a seat and went to get myself a coffee. At the counter, there were 2 girls in front of me and the man behind the counter was happily talking to them. So I patiently wait and queue. However, who knows what the stupid man was thinking. I was standing there, behind those girls and he didn't even bat an eyelid at me. In fact, I don't think that he even knows of my existence. He was happily chatting to the girls about some mundane stuff and from the snippets of their conversation I picked up, it sounds like a classic pick-up conversation. He was saying things like "Oh, so you are a morning person, or an all-day person? Hahaha.." It sort of got worse when the girls got down to their orders proper. Its like they have been standing there for ages and they haven't even ordered?!?! Was the guy even doing his job?!?!??? I was mildly irritated and quite amused. He even gave the girls 2 extra teabags and said something that sort of made me cringe slightly. He said, "I wish that I could stay with you till midnight but I can't."

Who says things like that to your customers?!?!?!?? And when it finally came to me, he just did the usual of taking my order and he sort of walked away. Ookkk... The girls were not exactly pretty so it's really weird. I understand that Starbucks values their services standards blah blah but this is kind of overdoing it right? I think it sort of borders on harassment. So strange. And the girls actually stood there and entertained him. What is the world coming to??

Yay, another long post. -.-"

Sunday was SIM Family Day and the venue was at the Singapore Zoo! Of course I went! It is the company's family day and we as staff, should support such activities! :) The only issue I had was that activities started damn early. Like 10am. Well, we reached around 10.30am and registered myself for a goodie bag (which only had an umbrella and a bottle of mineral water) and for the early bird lucky draw. Woo! How many opportunities do I have to qualify for anything that is early-bird? I'm like the last person who would qualify for such things. But I think Providence is trying to convince me otherwise. It is trying to convince me that the early birds really do get the worm because I won! I won $10 Coffee Bean voucher. And the final overall lucky draw, I won too. That was $30 NTUC voucher.

I did take some photos on Sunday so photos will be up soon, hopefully (cross fingers). Getting too tired to blog.

Labels: Coffee, Links, Movies, Museum, Random, Rants, The BF, TV, Updates, Zoo

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Tuesday, June 02, 2009, 11:07 am :

Apparently, there is a National Cappuccino Day (8 November). I should try to remember to drink 10 cups of Cappuccino to commemorate this significant day!

Over the weekend, I just spent about S$500 on tickets. Cw, your free carpark label is very hopeful now. Hah. I bought Stefanie Sun's tickets and Mayday's tickets for their 28 August concert. I think I should be sourcing for a concert-reviewer job so that at least I get paid or something to go do something I enjoy. Well, I did a brief (maybe not exactly brief) recap of the concerts and performances I've been to, and the list is rather long..

Grasshopper Concert - 9 May 2009 Singapore Indoor Stadium
The Lady of Soul And Her Ultimate 'S' Machine - 10 April 2009 The Arts House
Defending The Caveman - 13 March 2009 DBS Arts Centre
Breakout Korean Extreme Dance Comedy - 15 Feb 2009 Esplanade Theatre
Mayday Free Outdoor Concert - 4 Jan 2009 Stadium Green
Eason's Moving On Stage 11 Concert - 26 July 2008 Singapore Indoor Stadium
Shinhwa "State of the Art" in Singapore 2006 Tour - 10 September 2006 Singapore Indoor Stadium
A*Mei Star World Tour - 4 October 2008 Singapore Indoor Stadium
Eason Chan Live in Singapore 2007 Concert - 6 January 2007 MAX Pavilion
Cheer Chen First Concert - MAX Pavilion
Sodagreen First Concert - 11 August 2007 Republic Cultural Centre Main Auditorium
Beyond Next Stage Live 2008 - 8 November 2008 Singapore Indoor Stadium
The Tour of Misia Discotheque Asia - 13 September 2008 Singapore EXPO Hall 1
Lee Guitars Concert - 29 November 2008 Singapore Indoor Stadium
Mayday 'The Reunion Concert' - 25 October 2003 Singapore Indoor Stadium
Euphoria'04 - 9 October 2004 Padang
Mayday Final Home Singapore Concert 2005 - 10 December 2005 MAX Pavilion
The Sound Collector - 25 March 2006 DBS Arts Centre
A Language of Their Own - 7 April 2006 Esplanade Theatre Studio
Gala Concert: Pincha Zukerman Live! - 24 May 2006 Esplanade Concert Hall
Forbidden City: Portrait of an Empress - 28 September 2006 Esplanade Theatre
Rain's Coming World Tour Singapore 2007 - 21 January 2007 Singapore Indoor Stadium
Mayday Jump Concert - 2 June 2007 Max Pavilion
The Phantom of the Opera - 1 April 2007 Esplanade Theatre
Sodagreen 陪我唱歌 Concert - 2 August 2008 Max Pavilion

Obviously, I've kept the ticket stubs. Even with super memory, I can't remember so many stuff that I've attended too. And that is excluding other ad-hoc instrumental concerts and stuff along the way. Imagine the money I would have saved if I had not been to all those performances! I would at least be S$2,000 richer now!

Labels: Coffee, Concerts/Performances/Shows

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Monday, June 23, 2008, 11:33 pm :

It has been long. I should be blogging about more food!!

But before that, let me lament about my life a little.

Working for about a month has been ~~slack~~ relaxing to say the least. And tomorrow is payday! And I got a cute new watch that looked so cute that it looks like it can be eaten! (its so cute that even my sentence is quite incoherent)

It is ridiculously colourful and cute! And it looks edible!

Ok, on to food from Taiwan!
Some unglam photos of me but the food is good. So ignore my face k. Concentrate and focus on the food!

The huge sausage in Ximending. Which is not very nice by the way. Its just huge.

The ridiculously sweet strawberries from Shilin. And for some reason I'm looking really spaced out so...stare at the strawberries, not me. :)

And my favourite! Mushrooms! Fried! Double the sin! Glutton galore!

Of course, there is no escaping Starbucks ANYWHERE. I think my supposed budget trip was not exactly budget because I kept splurging on Starbucks coffee. But but but...I need my dose of coffee so that is not an expense. Coffee is a necessity!

We saw this vending machine at the 中正纪念堂. It is a really cute vending machine that supposedly vends lollipops! We were so amused that we wanted to try and turn something out of the silly machine BUT it cheated our money instead! It ate our NT$10 and no lollipop came out despite attempts to ~~kick~~ 'reason' with the machine to give me my due, which was an obvious failure since it can't understand me. :(

Pork chop with curry at some cafe along the street. I ate spaghetti. It wasn't exactly the best I've tasted and my spaghetti was not fantastic too. I guess Taiwan is all about street food.

The somewhat Thai food we had in Kending. For some reason, there are alot of thai (alleged) cafes in Kending and honestly speaking, the food was just normal. But the prawn (3rd picture) was great. It is fried prawns without shells (hooray!), doused with generous amount of mayonnaise and candy sprinkles that are usually used for ice cream! It was such a sweet delight. Thinking back on it makes me drool..

Delicious prawns we had in 旗津. Just look at the translucent colour of them, don't you just want to pick them up and suck them dry?! They were live prawns caught fresh and they are cheap. It was so sweet that I threw any reservations towards prawns with their blackish guts out of the window. It was the freshest-tasting prawn I've ever tasted! Of course, I didn't have to do the shelling. (I found out that when I am talking about food, my language somehow gets tangled up in funny structures. Must be the stomach doing funny things to my brain)

Back to street food. They may look bland but hell, they taste heavenly. The rice was so tasty that I think I don't even need the chicken or the pork as side dishes. 10x better than any of the 鸡丝饭 they claim to sell here.

Actually I forgot what this was. Something with mushrooms and pork and stuff. I think it is some dumpling-like thing which I wasn't really fond of. Maybe it was because of the incriminating cucumber-lookalike thing on top of it.

Some form of ji cha meal in Hualian. Fried rice (again!) with tau gay (obviously not ordered by me), some cabbage thingy and sweet and sour pork.

And I got this off the streets too! Some guy just walked up to me and gave me 2 packets of this mushroom-flavoured-mamee-like thing and told me I can give him any amount. I was too stunned to reject him and I thought that he was giving me food for free, it must have been the glutton in me taking control, and I just gave him NT$10, I think. On a side note, it actually taste quite good, just a tad too salty.

With all the Chinese food, I just HAD to indulge myself in some other forms of sausages, the Western- style. Hotdog bun with a generous dopping of cheese. Damn. I'm hungry already.

The enjoyable thing about eating in Taiwan was that I do not have to think at all when I order or buy anything. It is almost definitely to be affordable and cheaper than I've ever paid for anything here.
Well, ending off the post with some melons and fruits. :)

Look at the size of those melons!

Fruit galore! It makes our fruit stall looks like masak. And I think my mum will love this and most probably lug back boxes of *fill in names of fruits*, just like how she made me lug 2 boxes of peaches back from Chengdu the last time we went. -_-"

Labels: Coffee, Food, Photos, Random, Travel

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