catching up with my blogs

Between Tuesday 10 October and Monday 30 October 2006, I worked on a temporary basis at a 3-star hotel chain in Causeway Bay. I was representing the Hong Kong Trade Development Council although I was employed by an agency. October is the busiest month for Hong Kong in terms of the number of trade fairs held. What the Hong Kong Trade Development Council did was place computer kiosks at participating hotels to enable in-house guests to register as buyers to any of the current and/or upcoming trade fairs. For 10 hours each day (only had a mere 30 minutes to gobble down lunch), I manned and helped people navigate the touch screen machine which was really quite easy to use. I would say that on average, I dealt with 1 customer every hour so I believe the program/exercise was a complete waste of public funds!

Overall, it was a good experience. But I can't help complaining about the air conditioning in the hotel lobby. The temperature was set so low that it felt like the arctic. I mean, the lobby staff were in woolies and even the guests moaned! Not to mention, what a waste of energy! I found it funny that although I was not in lobby staff uniform, most of the guests still thought I was a hotel staff member. But it didn't worry me one single bit because most of the time I was so bored that I literally jumped everytime someone came within 3 metres of my workstation. Also, I get great satisfaction from helping people so I helped guests to the best of my ability despite the fact that most of the queries were outside the scope of my work requirements .

I met some interesting people, made some friends and made a few observations about human behaviour. For example, the vending machines from left to right contained 2 columns of soft drinks and 6 columns of water. I observed that when people purchased water, more than 50% of the times, they picked the water column farthest left. Is this pure randomness/coincidence or have we humans been programmed to do things in a certain order (ie always go from left to right)? Perhaps it's a bit of both but I believe it's the latter. I also noted with amazement the number of quality designer carrier bags that gets chucked in the rubbish bins, such a waste!

Just to name a few of the interesting people that I met, in my 1st week, the electronics fair was held, I met a Canadian duo who gave me their final pair of (sample) silver cleaning gloves. I met a Melbourne man of Russian descent who gave me a Chinese lucky card for which he paid $100 on the street without knowing what it was. I told him that he got seriously ripped off. He suggested that I do sourcing. I also met a Sri Lankan who gave me his spare breakfast coupons so I got to taste the complimentary hotel set breakfast as well. He also suggested that I do sourcing. He further said that they should put me at the exhibition rather than at the hotel because I spoke better English than those at the exhibition.

In my last week, the lightings fair was held, I met a group of approximately 20 Taiwanese Amway representatives. They were in town to attend a conference. They were extremely friendly and 2 of them just wouldn't stop talking to me. Despite the fact that I was dressed as an OL, they told me that I looked 18. They seemed genuine but I wasn't completely sure if they were being friendly because they sniffed a chance of converting me to Amway although I have told them that I had no interest whatsoever in network marketing. They asked for my contact details. At 1st instance, I kindly refused. However, they persisted and I gave them my name and e-mail address. Then, they asked for my phone number. Again, I kindly refused. They asked why I didn't want to be friends with them. I said that wasn't the case. So, I ended up giving them my mobile number as well and repeated that I did not wanted to be contacted about Amway. The day immediately after I finished working at the hotel, I received a telephone call from 1 of the ladies. She said that they thought that I'd still be at the hotel. I explained that I finished the day before. She asked if I was available that evening as they wanted to buy me dinner. Although I had nothing on that evening, I told her that I was busy and turned her down. Then, she asked if I would be available the day after for lunch. They were flying back home in the afternoon. Again, I turned her down. She was disappointed but I promised to meet up with them the next time they are in town (which would be in at least 6 months time).