I am down in the dumps.

I realised, after looking at the requirements for the paper I handed in today, that I missed out an important component. Honestly, I think it's because it wasn't in bold so I overlooked it even though I highlighted it. Of course, my slow going and procrastination didn't help matters.

Just when things seemed to be looking on the brighter side...

Anyone has any money-making schemes?

I AM EXTREMELY IRRITATED RIGHT NOW.

I was supposed to work for the inaugural Singapore Grand Prix, don't ask me as what cos I don't know exactly. I went for a compulsory in-house training session and on-the-job training (OJT) as a banquet server, which from a previous post, you'll see that I nearly died. Then the HR company calls me and tells me that they had to cut down on a few hundred people one day before the practice session due to security reasons. I already had a bad experience with their unprofessional ways when they were trying to settle my banquet server job. And now this.

I had to forego a birthday celebration to attend the compulsory OJT, I had to fork out money to buy a skirt I don't really need and I had to tell a good friend that I wouldn't be able to attend his 21st birthday party due to the F1. I had planned my entire schedule around this job and they tell me they had to drop me. I went through all this crap to get this thing and in the end, it didn't happen.

When I commented that it was so unbelievable that the F1 side would think about security so late, the guy told me it was the organiser's, not F1's, fault. He claims he only knew about the cutting down of people 2 days ago. When I asked how the company decided who to cut down on, he told me it was from feedback during the in-house training and the OJT. The thing is it wasn't fair to rate us on OJT cos being banquet servers wasn't what we were supposed to be doing for the F1. The OJT was for learning how to deal with customers and my dinner guests seemed fine. The guy then offered me a job serving cocktails and wine at the Conrad, which is in the vicinity of the F1 but I turned it down. I don't think it'll reflect very well on Singapore if a first-time drinks server was serving the guests during the actual event. I was trained as a FOOD server, for heaven's sake!

I really needed the moolah, but I guess on the bright side, I get to work on my 50%-due-on-Monday paper.

A word of advice: don't join TCC (not the coffee joint) unless you want to deal with all this nonsense.

You have been warned.

Double double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble

I'm supposed to be furiously working on my Clinical Decision Making paper but I'm troubled by other things.

I talked to my mother over the weekend to ask if it was alright if I did another semester, taking electives that I didn't have a chance to take and she said it was fine. Then I had a nice long chat with one of my lecturers and she reassured me that it was ok to start work in August, i.e. after Rag as most people take a one to two month break anyway. Now another Prof advises me against doing another semester cos I could lose touch with my practical skills and I grudgingly agree with her. She also gave me another bit of bad news. Essentially, doing Rag may not be only up to me but also up to the hospitals cos we have to see when they take in the new batch of graduated student nurses.

I fully concur with Sean that work can wait and I'm all for taking a good break but still, I wouldn't want to miss one of the most important parts of a nurse's life which is the integration into the hospital and the workforce. God, I really hate it that my future is so damn unpredictable. One moment I think "Oh I can do CMB and Rag without any major hitches" and the next, Life throws me another curveball. I told Mdm Liaw straight that if I didn't stay in hall, my university and academic life would be utterly miserable. Hall has kept me sane from the craziness of the course by giving me a chance to do things I wouldn't dream of doing. Hall life is an escape for me, a chance to focus on something else other than school, which I feel is slowly killing my interest for the vocation. I guess I wasn't fully prepared when I took up this course, and that's no one's fault but my own. I don't regret learning what I've learnt though, it's just a pity that the course is the way it is. I think the only way out of this is to do my Honours year, which is a slim possibility but not a likely one, judging from the way my paper is going.

But enough of my whinings! I just found out yesterday that the Science Centre has free star-gazing sessions every Friday. They even have lessons on astronomy, slide shows and talks! I also want to watch Wild Ocean at the Omnimax theatre! Any takers?

My stint as a food server at a banquet at the Swissotel left me feeling so exhausted that any thoughts of continuing this as a part-time thing flew right out the window.

For one thing, the hotel expects us to portion out ALL food, not just the soup, dessert and noodles. Of course being the tortoise that I am, I portion really, really and, I mean really, slowly. I am so bad at it that even though initially the thing that I feared most was dropping the dishes, I became more afraid of portioning out the food than of breaking anything as the night wore on. Then I nearly spilt a few drops of the sauce for the fish on a guest but luckily she was wearing her napkin, which protected her outfit.

Even before the actual event started, we had this mind-boggling briefing on what to do. The manager rattled on about our grooming, what drinks were available, how to portion stuff and even how to portion the fish!

This is how you're supposed to divide it:

At least my mentor was quite nice, so he did most of the work and I mostly helped to clear the plates :) I'll definitely appreciate my servers next time round and won't complain about the food arriving so slowly. I know I was running around like a headless chicken: setting plates, collecting food, portioning, clearing side plates, and going back to step 1.

It's a good thing my event was a Chinese dinner. If it was a Western banquet, I'd have to fiddle about with pieces of cutlery, 3 different glasses cluttering the table and plates which are in the way.

It was a definite eye-opener but never again.