Journal 2

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Finally, the long-waited moment came. I arrived in Sydney in Australia. I remember trembling when the plane almost landed. Not knowing what’s coming next, I was overwhelmed by the excitement and nervousness. I remember saying to myself “OMG, am I really here? By myself? Gosh, I can’t believe it” But you know, everything has it’s first time. 

 

First thing I needed to do was to hop on the train and head to somewhere I could lie down on, given that it was already 9 pm and I was almost drained out all of my energy when I arrived. The train, in essence, is like the one we have in Taiwan. But the structure is so different that I was completely amazed by it at the first glance. I have no idea why I'm so obsessed with constructions with two layers like double-decker bus or train. Maybe it's giving me the vibe of being rich :) It has two floors and the chairs are able to be flipped to the other side, which is quite genius. You'll be able to have more space when no one else is around. I love that train a lot, but only under the circumstances that they don't delay or get canceled out of the blue that much. Just so you know, I was late A LOT OF times because of it despite that I've already throw myself out of my house way earlier than I should have. This " Train Malfunction Chaos" happens so often to the point that if you're late at work and you go " Train again" and everyone would understand. So when I was in Australia, I was kind of always boasting about the punctuation and cleanness of the public transportation in Taiwan. Yeah, we need to be content with what we have sometimes. There are, of course, other transportation such as light rails, buses or ferries to turn to when that happens. But we'll talk about those later. 

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I booked a hotel beforehand when I was still back in Taiwan, which is a backpacker hotel named “Mad Monkey”. Despite its strange name, it’s an interesting place to live. I was there for 5 days and had plenty of precious memories. Since it’s backpacker hotel, which obviously is for the backpackers traveling to that city, I got to know a lot of people from different countries. As far as I could recall, I’ve met people from England, Chile, France, Germany and Spain. Some just simply came for some light travel for a couple of days. But some were there for working holiday, just like I did. There was a girl from French, who has a great sense of humor, treated me a glass of beer when we went to the bar nearby. She was one of the most hilarious person I’ve ever met. I said to her “I’m going to miss you so much” She replied “You would miss a lot of people” And she was right.

 

On the 4th day of me staying there, I met 4 people from Chile, which I’d never thought I’d be able to get acquainted with. But they really are very nice people. We had a great time chatting. Also, they gave me the traditional snack they bought from their country. It’s a pastry-like snack called Manjar, filled with syrup taste like toffee. That was quite an impressive flavor. ​​

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On the last day I stayed there, I met two German girls traveling all the way to Sydney. It was a 16 hours journey and 10 hours jet lag, which made them wide awoke in the middle of the night. We chatted some time, and I went to bed. The other day they told me an intriguing story. Since they have just arrived and needed to get everything unpacked and get themselves cleaned, so they spent plenty of time in the bathroom. They were chatting and laughing and unpacking things for half an hour or so. In the mean time, one of the bathroom door was locked but oddly enough, no water sound. Later they were gone to pick up something from their room. When they were almost there, they heard voices of men and women from that bathroom. And which means they were there THE WHOLE TIME. The two German girls were clearly not expecting this and quietly bursted out of laughter. And so did I when I first heard of this. But was more shocked that the western culture was obviously way more open then I thought...I guess the couple in the room must be so embarrassed and were shouting in their mind " When the hell are you going to leave...."  I left after the other day morning. A few months later, I heard that the two of the German girls went to work in the horse farm in Melbourne, and actually rode on the horse all the time. It's indeed a really cool job. 

 

Although not so willing to leave the hotel, I was not able to afford keep living there. So I went to view the house I found on the Facebook. It is quite far away from central (roughly 2 hours on the train); however, its price was the reason why I chose the house. The environment looks nice also. It had proved that it was a very wrong decision, though. Although the living expense is relatively low if I reside in there, the job opportunity is less. I dropped my resumé to literally every store I saw in the mall nearby and also online website. However, almost no one would choose to hire an employee without working experiences. While I had plenty of working experiences in Taiwan, they prefer someone who is experienced IN Australia. But I was clearly not. Living in remote area had made it worse. However, I'm not a person who gives up easily.

 

In despair, all I could do was to drop resume non-stop and pray. I had no idea of what’s going to happen next and was anxious about everything. But God told me not to worry about anything and he would certainly  help me. He promised he would prepare a job for me and it would come find me itself. At first, I was quite confused by what he said and was like “How is that even possible? How could job come to me itself? Even if it does, it’s because of the resume I dropped.” Turns out I was completely wrong and what happened next was exactly like what he said. 

 

A few days later, a sister from church I went to in Sydney contacted me, saying that her roommate’s boss was hiring for waitress in their cafe. They heard that I haven’t get the job yet and so they contacted me. They just had the feeling that they need to call me right away and I believed it’s definitely God’s work. I searched for the café and found out it was the very job that I was so desperately wanted to find. Shocked, but at the same time, filled with joy and thankfulness to God, I agreed and started to prepare anything that I needed. 

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In Australia, most of the time you need to go on a trail before you actually get the job. Since they need to make sure you are the right candidate for that position. So the day after that, I equipped myself with the basic information about coffee and the conversation used in the restaurant or café. Also, to know more about the menu. To give it as an example, we need to at least be able to distinguish between Flat White, Cappuccino and Latte. It might all look the same, while the composition is slightly different. Besides, I also need to make sure I know the different types of the alternative milk and syrup. I need to memorize the names of the equipment in the café, such as serviette (napkin) or milk jug as well. Two days later, I finally came there. When I first saw the view, I was totally amazed by the insanely magnificent view it has. It's such a famous tourist spot that even Jay Chou has been there before. Thus, there are always fill with people on weekends and holidays. Eventually after the trail, I got the job. And was so thrilled to work in there. Something good about working there was that I could get free coffee everyday from Barista, and the food from kitchen also. As an extremely heavy coffee drinker, I reckon there's probably no other better benefits. Plus, the cafe is near the Opera house, which means I was able to go to work by ferry and see the Opera House everyday. 

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Something that I learned from this job are we need to care for others, be keen to learn, not afraid of making mistakes and be obedient, or at least, know how to communicate with others.

 

First, I learned how to genuinely care about others’ life instead of just get my job done. In Australia, they have a culture called “small talk”. It basically means you would randomly start a conversation with everyone you encounter, including customers, staff, or even some strangers sitting next to you. Namely, when you order, the staff won’t start off by asking “Hello, what do you want?” Instead, they would say “How are you?” or “How’s your day” or just “The weather is nice today, isn’t it? What can I get for you today? Same as yesterday?” They are trying to start a conversation and want to build the connection with the customers. This was not solely for profits, it's one part of their culture, and I absolutely love that. Through time, we human has became busier and busier. And the relationships between one another became so distant and indifferent. However, “small talk” allows us to have stronger bonds with each other in a society. That's a great reminder to me indeed. 

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Also, there are always new tasks to learn in this job such as cash handling or drinks making, so we need to make sure that we are always eager to embrace new challenges.  Besides, the way I thought of failure was changed completely as well. I used to be a person who constantly worry about making mistakes or not doing things perfectly enough. So I was really frustrated when I first started this job. I made a lot of mistakes...

 

To work in hospitality, someone needs to have excellent memory to not making any mistakes. Unfortunately, I forgot things easily and we waitress need to multi-task all the time. We need to remember 4-5 things at once. Someone would always pops out and ask us for something or we would tell something to each other. At the same time, we also need to remember which table has been taken the order and which hasn't, which table has gotten their meals and which hasn't. All of it was really overwhelming to me. However, I gradually realized that mistakes in hospitality is unpreventable, especially when I wasn't using my native tongue. Later I found out that it's not the mistakes that we should be worrying about. Instead, we should put more efforts in making more progress and not repeating the same mistakes. Besides, someone told me that if  I can't remember that much things, I could just take one order at one time, so I won't forget putting in the order. They said, if someone ask you for something, write it on the paper or tell them to wait. It worked. And I was so glad that I have made some improvement. I also learned a lot more from different experiences, but this one is just one example. 

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Lastly, be more obedient. I was a really independent person who always have my own opinions, or you could say, very rebellious in this case. Having innovative opinions is not a bad thing. However, as an employee, we can't have that much opinion when we first enter the job. To be more specific, when my boss asked me to do something, my first thought would be "Don't you think it's better to be done the other way?"  And thus I sometimes do things in my own way instead of hers. At that time, I wasn't realized that being disobedient was such a serious thing to do as a newbie in a company. I only learned that in a bad way, which is they eventually gave me less and less shifts. By the time when someone told me about this, it's already too late that I couldn't do anything to make it better. I was self-doubting and upsetting about this for at least one week, criticizing myself for not doing good enough after losing my job. But after some time, I figured that was actually a blessing. Everyone has their own weaknesses, or at least, something to be improved. I am glad that I was able to found out mine so early that I won't repeat this in other places in the future. And I am also thankful to those who are willing to tell me my problems, which has urged me to do better. 

 

By the way, I'll give you a little bit recap. I had overcame this problem and had done a great job at other place. (I could say that because many of my coworkers at other place told me so)

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Overall, I really like the experience of working in this cafe and had grown a lot in this job. Despite that I was not really doing a great job in there, the experience of me working there gave me the opportunity to be better. So I think of it as a milestone, which would give me the strength to grow. Anyways, more stories will be told in the next journal, so don't forget to stay tuned!