I'm back... yet again!

Saturday was a tough but satisfying day. I had to make my way to Shenyang Airport which is about 2hours bus ride away. The weather was freezing cold now in this part of China averaging about 5 degrees Celsius not counting wind chill factor. My flight was at 6.30pm from Shenyang to Beijing and thereafter, I have another flight to catch at midnight to Singapore after a 3hr transit in Beijing. The picture shows me in a bus on the way to the airport.

I reached Singapore at 5.30am in the morning at Terminal 1... what an unearthly hour. I still have to make my way to Bedok but in the meantime, I was really starving...

As I write this, I am now back in Bedok. I will take a good rest and on Monday, I have to go for my medical check-up again before I start work at my previous boss location near Buona Vista. I'm really looking forward to working with my previous boss and colleagues again. Later today, I will meet with my ex-colleague who will be leaving Singapore tomorrow. In fact, it is because she had chosen to leave Singapore that I managed to get this job, so I am going to buy her a good dinner, thank her and bid her good bye! I'm going to miss her but I am sure we will keep in touch!

Great News!

Just before I quit my job and came home to China, I received great news from my ex-boss while working at Chai Chee. They called me to say that one of the Chinese girls working there will have her contract coming up for renewal soon, and she (the chinese worker) had decided that she would like to go back to China to get married and will not be renewing her contract. This Chinese worker also happens to be a good friend of mine as well.

My ex-boss wants to hire me to replace her, now that he has one headcount freed up and of course I said "Yes" immediately. Today, I received good news that the application to have me come back to work has been approved and they want me to start work on 1st Nov! Wow!

So I guess part of the secret is out. One of the reasons I decided to quit was because my ex-boss wanted to hire me and I much prefer to work for my ex-boss as I am more familiar with the people and job and I will not be pushed around from one location to another almost on a daily basis. It's really not a big problem but it adds alot of additional cost for me to travel back and forth.

I'm looking forward to coming back to Singapore again. Yes, I incurred some cost having to come back to China and then back to Singapore as the system does not allow me to remain in Singapore, but I had to make that sacrifice for the job I want. These two pictures were taken some time back in Singapore but that is exactly how I would have looked if you can see me now... HAPPY!

See you soon!

We have to pay for a missing ladder!

Recently while working at the Tampines branch of Bread Junction, my boss discovered that an aluminium ladder he had in the shop was missing. He had kept the aluminium ladder at the back of the shop and it is used when we need to keep ingredients, bags etc... in the upper storage areas. Since starting work in the shop, I had never used the ladder before. In fact, it was mostly used by my male colleagues at the back, almost never at the front which is where we work.

What was most interesting was that my boss told one of the guys to go out and buy another one as it was needed urgently. Well, I thought that was it... why kick up a fuss over the loss of a ladder? It must have been either kept away somewhere in the shop or someone must have borrowed it and have not returned it yet. So either borrow one for the time being or buy another one like he did.

It was therefore a big surprise to me when our shop manager announced the next day that she will be collecting eight dollars ($8) from each of us the following day. I told her I did not have any money and if they want me to pay, they will have to deduct it from my next paycheck. The ladder cost $40 and there were five of us working in the shop and hence the $8 each. Needless to say, I was not very pleased with this at all!

"How can this be?" I thought to myself. So if the boss loses money when his business is bad, does that mean we have to pay to run his business? Does he share his profits with us when he makes lots of profits? I bet not! What if after a few days, he happens to find the ladder somewhere in the shop, then what? Would we get a refund of our $8? This is really unreasonable.

Hmmm.... well, beggars cannot be choosers! I'm just voicing my thoughts here and to let readers know what working as a migrant worker is like... the perils we have to go through every day. As I said before, its not all a bed of roses. But if we want to choose to work here, we either accept that we will be $8 poorer the next month or we have to find somewhere else to work!

Bye for now!

23 Oct was my last day in Singapore... for now at least. I have to head to the airport at about 9pm, so I will be busy packing most of this day as well as run some necessary chores. I had a really busy day moving my stuff from Punggol to be kept at my previous landlord's place at Bedok. He had become a good friend after staying there for so long in the past. However, when I first went in to his flat in Bedok, I got a big shock... the place was a complete mess. He had taken in more chinese workers (and I thought the government is clamping down on this) and now there are more than 10 people living in a little 2 bedroom flat. Look at the amount of clothes hanging in the living room!

At lunch, I went to Bread Junction at Punggol to bid farewell to Wen Wen, my new found friend. I was so sad to have to leave her for now at least. We had a good talk and I also bid farewell to some other people I knew from next door, the barber shop. We had become friends too. I was almost reluctant to leave but I had to make my way to Tampines to see my boss the last time to collect my documents and paycheck before I leave.

That's Wen Wen in the picture on the left, taken just before I left. Ha ha, she is a little shy...

I went to Bread Junction in Tampines at about 3pm to collect my last paycheck and my Worker's Permit cancellation letter as well as my passport so that I can leave the country. My boss had refused to give it back to me earlier. And to my surprised, he deducted $85 for three Bread Junction T-shirts which was supposed to be our uniform. How can this be? I even brought the uniform back to return them. Should this not be part of his operating cost? And even if he charges it to us, $85 for three shabby T-Shirts is definitely too much! This is a rip-off! Even Giordano charges less for their nice branded T-shirts. Obviously, I knew he was going to pull something out from his sleeves at the last moment, so I was prepared not to be upset. He wanted me to collect my pay and passport on the last day, so that if I were unhappy in any way, there is nothing I could do as I will be leaving the country... dirty tricks just like what the Skye Imperial Hot Pot City did to the old lady and the younger singer I had wrote about before.

After collecting my stuff, I took the opportunity to say goodbye to the nice lady from Shenyang working at the food court. That's her in the picture on the right in pink. Isn't she a nice looking lady? Unfortunately the toilet auntie had not arrived, otherwise I would have loved to see her one final time as well.

Tears welled up in my eyes as I headed back to Bedok to do my final packing for the trip tonight. When I came back, the Bedok guys and gals were playing mahjong and it was another big mess, but I had to slog on and not be distracted as time continued to tick away.

20 October 2010 was my last day working for Bread Junction

Yes, I finally told the boss that I have decided I did not want to work anymore. Some of you may have recalled that I had fought so hard to have a job in Singapore and was elated to have finally got here. So why call it quits? Well, it's too early to tell you why but as a minimum, I have to tell my readers that I have decided to quit. I will be leaving for China on Saturday evening.

However, I will continue to update my blog, Facebook and Twitter account so that my readers will know what is going on. I look forward to being home and taking lots of new pictures.

While this particular stay is short, I have made lots of good friends. The old lady looking after the toilet is one of these and there is another lady selling rice at the coffee shop round the corner. They both have been wonderful friends. I've also got to know the lady clearing the rubbish on the right. Also I must mentioned Wen Wen, my colleague in Bread Junction at Punggol. She's been a motivation for me and a great help as well. I always look forward to being in Punggol so that I can be with her. Interestingly, on my last day, one of my readers nicknamed "Cucumber" came to visit me and we had a small chat as I was also rather busy. It was a nice feeling to meet some of my readers! Thank you "Cucumber", for visiting!

Yesterday (21 Oct), I went back to the see the Old Lady at the Toilet and the Coffee Shop lady and I bought them both a small packet (300g) of Bee Cheng Hiang  barbecued sliced pork. They were both so grateful. We exchanged phone numbers and I promised to come back to see them should I be back in Singapore again. I also took the opportunity to go back to my old work place at Chai Chee to see my ex-colleagues and friends. Many old customers recognized me! It was a wonderful feeling!

So do keep in touch readers... I'll be back!

No Regrets! 不要后悔！

今天我的心情很糟糕，也很内疚，好像有一块石头压在我心理叫我喘不出气来，我想起我婆婆讲给我的一句话，世界上什么都可以买就是买不到后悔药，过去的事情和时间是无法挽回的，我现在要加油去做我喜欢做的事情，不管是成功还是失败我都会坦然面对，哈哈！加油！加油！我一定会成功的，因为。。。。。。

哈哈！我是一位辛福的人

Is this true?

When I first came to Singapore about 2 years ago, my chinese colleagues warned me not to get too close to our female Singapore colleagues. Their experience is that many Singapore women do not like mainland Chinese women. Naturally this piqued my curiosity and I asked them to elaborate.

They told me it's just a feeling from the way they were treated as far as work is concerned. The few Singaporean female workers seem to behave more "bossy" towards them and tend to load them with work, even though the boss has clearly defined the roles.

Personally, I have not experienced such bias towards us Chinese female workers and in fact, quite often, I do get a strange look from my own Chinese colleagues. My personal experience with local women so far has been very pleasant. Most understand that we are far from home and are usually very nice and sympathetic towards us (or me at least).

About half a year into work, I was still curious to know if this was really true, so I gathered up my courage to ask one of my closer local friend whom I met while working.

She explained that this is generally untrue but in some cases, it could be because there has been many stories about how mainland Chinese women "snatched" away the husbands of many local women. If they did not literally "snatched" them away while in Singapore, they "stole" their hearts while they (the husbands) were on business trips in China. This may be the cause of the occasional "hatred" some of us may have experienced.

This is certainly interesting... and I guess it was only a woman's point of view. What about the man's point of view? Is this true, my male readers?

What's for lunch today?

So you think working in a bread shop is nice? Afterall, we get free bread to eat every day right? Well, think again! While yes, we do get bread to eat everyday, sometimes, I get so fearful just looking at bread every day. Here is what I had for lunch today.

Sometimes, my colleages feel the same too. We see bread everyday, from the way they are made to the time it goes into the oven, to the time when it is all done and just freshly taken out of the oven and onto the display shelves that we prefer to just pay a few dollars to have something else, like a bowl of noodles or a plate of rice. Yes, it's not free, but at least its something different.

Bread smells really wonderful when it is just out of the oven. However, being a non-paying staff has its disadvantages too. We only get to eat the cold ones! Hmmm!

As the saying goes, "Man does not live by bread alone!"

The boutique where I worked in China

Some post back, I mentioned about working at a boutique in China. This is a really nice boutique selling men's clothes, although it is rather far from the country side where I live.

I have to take a bus every morning at 6am to reach my working place at about 7.30am although work starts at 8am. The buses comes once every hour and if I miss the 6am bus, I will be late for work. This picture on the right is how the boutique looks like inside and the two girls were my colleagues when I was working there.

Here is a picture of me in my uniform. It was difficult for me to take a picture of myself in the whole uniform, so this is the best I can manage. I quite like the uniform as it makes us look neat and professional. My colleagues are nice and my boss (lady boss) treats me well (except for the RMB500 which she kept as my first month's pay but I got it back when I resigned at the end).

Here is another picture of the boutique looking out the main door so you know what the view looks like from our work place. Enjoy the view!

My sister works here!

My sister is a beautician in China. While she is very keen to come to Singapore, we have not found a good job for her to come yet. This is the Beauty Salon where she works. The picture on the right is the entrance. Just in case you start to have wild ideas, this salon is only for women! They offer services like body, face and foot massage, trimming of eyebrows, waxing, ear candling, make-up services etc...

The salon is clean and very nicely decorated. Clients have to remove their shoes before entering the premises. Here is a picture of me sitting on one of the massage beds when I visited her. It's so comfortable, I almost did not want to leave. However, most of us country people will not pay for such services out here as it cost as much as RMB100 for a massage. This RMB100 is only SGD20 but it is alot to us when most of our salaries here a just about RMB800.

Here is another picture of my cousin who also works there but she is shy and did not want me to take her picture. Hmm... I wonder why, as she is actually very pretty! You can see her pic on one of my previous post about line dancing. And her uniform is quite cute too... don't you think so?

Line dancing in China!

I know that Line Dancing is very popular in Singapore as I often see it in open spaces at HDB's and even shopping centers. In China, we have our own version of Line Dancing and we have lots of big spaces to do them in. This one shown in the picture was done at a local school. During the off-season (non-harvest), my mother wants to exercise and three times a week, she participates in these Line Dances.

One of the evening, about 2 weeks before I came to Singapore, my sister, cousin and I accompanied my mother to the Line Dance. While we did not dance, we sat there and chit chat as well as watch the dance. It was quite an interesting site. In fact, many people came by just to watch rather than dance.

The picture above shows my sister and cousin eating an ice-cream while watching the dance. For those of us not dancing, it's just gossip and catch-up time. In fact, I met a few of my ex-classmates there too.

You can see that as the evening gets darker, more and more people joined in the dance and despite the light rain, they continued enjoying themselves. Maybe they were shy and needed the darkness to cover for their shyness. Maybe there were just too many spectators around. This picture below shows some guys peering over the wall just to have a better look.

Funny how my mother who is so old enjoys these dances while we younger people just prefer to sit down, relax, gossip and watch!

Generous Singaporeans!

An incident happened some time ago when I first started working in Singapore at Tanjung Pagar's Raeburn Park. A Chinese Singaporean who is quite a regular customer came by one morning to have his usual morning "Kopi O" fix. I turned around to make the "Kopi O" for him and when I handed the cup to him, he smiled broadly and gave me a dollar for the coffee. H tentatively looked around to see that there were no one looking and then handed an envelope to me and said, "This is for you!"

"What is it...?" and before I could finish my question, he turned and walked to the table to drink his coffee. Morning is usually quite a busy time as many of the people come by to have their breakfast and coffee and so, I did not think much about the envelope and just stuck it into my back pocket.

At about 9.30am when it is quieter, we normally have our own breakfast together with the rest of the workers. I remembered the envelope and took it out to open it and to my surprise, there were two crisp SGD50 dollar notes inside. I quickly put it back in the envelope as I did not want my colleagues to see as thoughts ran through my mind. "Why did he gave me a hundred dollars?", "What am I suppose to do with it?"... and on and on. As I pondered a little longer, I decided that I have to return the money to him. I had already planned what to do. When he comes the next time, I will hand him the envelope with the money in it and say, "Thank you... but I cannot accept your money!"

The next morning, he came by again but my colleague was standing next to me and I could not carry out my plan. Then again, the next morning, he came by for his coffee fix and I did as I planned. After he paid for his coffee, I handed him the envelop and said, "I cannot accept your money but Thank you anyway!" He looked a little hurt but still smiled and took it back. If not for another lady standing behind him, he might have resisted a little.

That evening, I recalled the incident... and wondered... if I should have just kept it???

Follow me on Twitter!

I've just set up a Twitter account and now my Twitter, Facebook and Blog are all linked together. If you find it hard to following me on my blog or facebook, follow me on Twitter!

My Facebook presence...

A friend of mine introduced me to Facebook recently and helped me to sign on an account. She told me it is a better way to reach out to people. While I am new to this, I am willing to learn, so if you are following my blog, you can add me on as one of your friends as well. Every time I post a new blog article, it will appear in my Facebook as well.

Looking forward to seeing many of you on my facebook account. I promised to update with many new pictures and posting, although you have to forgive me if this is slow in coming as it may take me a while to learn this new toy!

My cooking

Recently for the first time, I had the opportunity to cook my own meal. Here is what it looks like. Nothing exciting actually. I mean, what can you really cook for one person. Just some rice plus some vegetables. More importantly for me, I think it is more healthy than eating out all the time... and eating bread all the time (since I work in a bread shop!). It also cost less too, especially if you cook for more than one person.

Well this time, I happened to be the only one at home so I only cook for myself. Otherwise, if others are home, we will normally take turns to cook. However, my current job hardly gives me any time to be home these days and as such, I do not always get the pleasure of eating home cooked food.

Nevertheless, I am going to enjoy this very simple meal! I haven't had a home cooked meal for such a long while, I am going to savor this one! Join me?

The Old Lady next door!

This old lady looks after the lavatory at the Tampines Central food center and I see her all the time when I use the the lavatory. She is such a wonderful lady, always helpful, courteous and cheerful and she keeps the toilet sparkling clean. Sometimes I will just indulge in a short small talk with her when I am not rushed for time.. like when I have 10mins left after lunch!

The other day, she came to buy a bun for lunch and someone gave me some mooncakes earlier, so I gave her two pieces. She was so grateful that she thank me profusely!

The next day, my boss wanted me to go to their new branch in Sengkang and the day after, I had to go back to Punggol to work. When I got back to the Tampines branch the following day, this nice old lady came by to see me again. She told me she came by the last two days and was looking for me... and she won't buy anything when I am not around. How flattering! She told me she wished she had a daughter-in-law like me but her sons are all married.

She then asked me if I wanted some bowls and some clothes. I was very touched but I told her, "Auntie, you should keep them for yourself as I have lots of clothes. Besides, I am renting a room with a few others and do not have a place to keep too many things."

Life has its twist and turns. Treat people nice and they can turn around and make your day! You never know. This lady sure made my day!

Travelling 15km to take a bath?

Many countries are so fortunate, and particularly so in Singapore. Many houses here have 2 to 3 bathrooms with hot water available at the turn of the tap, 24 hours a day. Do Singaporeans take this for granted at times? Most people who have been to China see the progress China as made over the years. But head into the country side... and you will still see parts of China that is still relatively undeveloped... where electricity and water are hard to come by!

Back home where I come from in the countryside of Liaoning province, we do not have hot water... at least off the tap! When we want hot water, we have to boil it. However, it becomes a problem in winter when you want to shower with hot water. That's because it is freezing cold here and our bathroom is a short walk away. So even if you boiled the water, you have to transport it to the bathroom to take your shower. And if you take too long, the water is going to cool down very, very quickly and you'll end up with cold water again. Not to mention that transporting the water is going to be a very heavy job!

So what do we country folks do?

During the winter, we "dry clean" ourselves with a towel and hot water at home. Even this is a chilling experience as our homes are not heated. And every week or so, we take a bus, go on a 15 to 20 minutes ride to the nearest bath house where we can have a bath. It cost 6RMB to take a bath and you normally do this with friends or family members. Also they have separate sections for male and females. Quite often, since we travelled all this distance (about 10 to 15km away), you'd usually want to savor the moment and stay a little longer to enjoy the space and nice warm water.  After all, you haven't had a bath for one whole week... you might as well have a super long bath and make sure every nook and cranny is sparkling clean!

See how fortunate you are now?