Thursday, December 27, 2007

This time of the night, my eyelids gain the most weight and cascade like red curtains draping dangerously near the stage floor. This week has been a tiring week.

I think I've lost abit of steam at work and although it doesn't feel anywhere near a drag going to work, it isn't that fantastic and fulfilling either. Maybe it's just this week I suppose.

Have you ever been hit by a certain phrase or sentence that someone else said, totally unexpected and unrehearsed, and felt that you were so damn dumb to not have seen it from THEIR perspective from the start. As I plough through this week, preparing my guests' arrivals, I begin to ask WHY I'm doing it.

At the start of the week, my collegue and I were just chatting over lunch when she said, "You will love it the first 2 months. You will be tired of Guest Recognition soon." I laughed off her cynism and continued munching on my curried rice. But slowly but gradually, I begin to understand what she meant. Like a spell that cast its magic on me, I started to feel unappreciated for my hard work. My highly eloquent boss, whom I started out idolising, suddenly becomes a monstrous character to behold. Everything just suddenly turns bleak, quite bizarre really. So what if I whacked Housekeeping for forgetting to clean the mirrors or chided Engineering for leaving their bulbs around in the room a guest was about to check into? Who would notice?

I guess the nature of my work doesn't yield a proper, exact "performance indicator", unlike how retailers track sales figures and how it shows in a dirty toilet when toilet cleaners don't clean their loos. It's hard to please everyone and when my collegue jokingly said, "You do all the hard work, but your boss will get all the credit.", I become shocked by the fact that I am actually starting to believe it, as my idealistic image of work life (beyond the pristine lobbies and the spectacular stairways) starts giving way to indifference or worse still abject rejection.

Maybe it's just one of those bad days. The rain and long hours and all. O well.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Recently, I read a report of Taipei's growth lagging behind the 4 Asian Miracles. I can't remember, are we (Singapore, Taiwan, Korea and Hong Kong) called Asian Tigers??

But anyway, I kind of liked that Taipei isn't a city that is running too fast for its own good. There're people who can look wide-eyed at Taipei 101, and admire it for its sheer height and care not about the economic yields from this high-end shopping outfit. There are simple night markets, with creaky pushcarts and foods that defy hygiene's call, that sell such a myriad of unpretentious things, with such overflowing creativity and homely hospitality. No donut factory, or pasar malams that sell the same rami burger and cup corn.

That's what PEOPLE FROM ANY PART OF THE WORLD must must must love about Taipei. It is a place that never sleeps. It's not innocent, but just very freshly exuberant. From the coasts of Danshui to the streets of Ximending, the pulse of the city resonates, not pounds, is savoured, not just felt.

Of course, being the food person here, the most attractive part of the trip to Taipei must be *fill in the blanks*. I guess I cannot bring you the taste (poor English already) or the sight (poor computer knowledge) of it. But just let me bring you through what I mean by creativity. Among my favourites:

Sausage slit open, and filled with a choice of 40 fillings/sauces, from wasabi to salads.
Colourful baos that are individually adorned with different decorations. (Think donuts)
Coffin bread, which is deep fried toast opened up to insert more than 10 choices of meat fillings.
Pepper bun (hu jiao bing)
Ah gay, glass noodles wrapped in toufu skin and covered by fish paste, drenched in sauce.
Mochi with yoghurt inside, from strawberry to char siew flavour.

I CANNOT reiterate how much I like the food there. Excellent.

See! I'm so easy to please!

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