Categories
Japan life reflection travel

Night before departure.

Sitting here, wondering about what is about to unfold for me over the next three weeks. It has been two years since I have traveled abroad; it has been two years, and a lot has happened since then.

When I booked this trip back in January, I had the intentions of only going back as a vacation. But, with my unemployment status looming large in my window, I became depressed, and soon changed the goals for this trip to become one for me to seek out work there.

Now, I don’t know what will happen. Things happen the way they do, and sometimes situations cannot be explained until much later. All I can do right now is hope that I leap forward and fall somewhere safely.

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Hot Dog Days mistake Work Diaries

Mistakes at work.

Well, the first mistake at work happened on Thursday, and although it was a small mistake, unfortunately it is publicly known from this point forward.

Basically, I didn’t keep the temperature high enough to cook the hot dog meat when the health inspector came by. And although we still got an “A” score, it was not a perfect score, and it was a major offense in the books.

I felt really devastated and freaked out for a moment, but I think we all had to step back for a moment and re-evaluate things, put things into perspective. Nobody is perfect; we all know that. Despite my overall good performance so far at the carts, a mistake was bound to happen sooner or later. Thankfully, my manager and boss both realized this and said that next time I should be more careful; but in the end, we all make mistakes. Mistakes happen so that we may learn from them.

Actually, today it seemed that the issue already kind of became a joke amongst us; seems that things are okay for now again. I am going to be more careful with the temperature now, and seems that there will be new rules/procedures in effect within the next month to make sure that such a mistake will not happen again. We all learned from this incident; now we hope that it will not happen again.

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friends tea time

Tea-time.

Had a makeshift “tea-time” with my friend on this day; I finally bought a spare mug so we could have tea together. She brought over some crackers, salami, and cheese as our hors d’oeuvres.

I found it fun to just relax in the evening and chat about various topics over green tea and small food servings. I feel like such an activity rarely happens these days–people are so much in a rush that they tend to forget to save time for tea, coffee, etc., and just relax for a little bit. Take a breather, enjoy the scenery.

I forget how long we chatted for, but we talked for quite awhile about many things, including our jobs/careers, past relationships, etc. It was relaxing, and it was relieving. I hope for more tea-time in the future.

Categories
Asian-American My San Francisco Chronicles public library quotation race

Jennifer 8. Lee Reading at SFPL

(This post is coming…rather late. Backdating the entry)

Jennifer 8. Lee had a book reading event at the SFPL on March 26, 2008. The room was mostly packed with Asian-Americans; a little surprising and amusing to me. Lee’s slideshow was fun to watch and was basically a short summary of what was all in her book. I had managed to read all except 20 pages left in the book; really good read in general.

One quotation from the book that really struck me was this:

“Look at me, and you may see someone Chinese. Close your eyes, and you will hear someone American.”

This quotation strikes me because of how accurately it describes most of what Asian-Americans experience in this country…probably everywhere else in the world besides their homelands. I find myself always getting confused for a “foreigner”, wherever I go in the US. People don’t seem to believe me when I say I am American; they give me this look as if I’m crazy for thinking that Americans can be Asians, too.

Even in San Francisco, I get mistaken as being “one of them” in Chinatown. Although I guess it makes them less discriminating towards me, at the same time, it gives me an uncomfortable position when I actually have to speak and they realize that my Taishanese is really limited.

I don’t know why it’s such a hard concept–after all, isn’t the US known for its diversity? Yet, I guess Asian-Americans seem like a “new breed” to many people. Who knows.

Categories
observation Starbucks

Starbucks and the bathroom.

While sitting in Starbucks today, I was smart enough to sit near the bathrooms for easy access. What I didn’t know at the beginning was that the bathrooms are locked and people have to enter a code into the keypad in order to unlock it.

After awhile, I became amused and distracted, watching oblivious customers go to the bathroom, struggle with the doors, and then turn around in defeat and ask the baristas for the combination. Every time the baristas replied, they always sounded rather agitated, as I’m sure they get that question millions of times during the day.

“Excuse me, what is the combination to the bathroom?”

“Sigh. It’s (insert the numbers here).”

Some customers were “smart” to just wait in line behind someone who was already in there. I was even smarter by taking down the combination in advance so I wouldn’t have to approach the baristas later and ask them for the umpteenth time.

It was just amusing to me to watch how people would react.