Friday, 9 August 2013

Paying with Large Denomination Bills and Small Denomination coins

Read something interesting on Nikkan-Spa, according to a poll conducted by the website, one of the things that the cashier in the convenience store hates is customer paying with 10000 yen bills! Especially during rush hour or during night time when the cash register is short of 1000 yen bills. 

Another survey among restaurant cashiers shows that they dislike receiving coins for payment. It's inconvenient during rush hour. 

Well, this reminds me of my cashier days around 10 years ago. I worked as a cashier in a supermarket while waiting for my university entrance letter. Apart from meeting a lot of interesting and good people, I met many quirky and difficult customers. I can really relate with the cashiers from the survey.

Number one dislike is customers who bought small stuff (cheap, mainly) that costs less than RM5 and paid with RM100. I think their objective was to get small change, but that would cause trouble for the cashier later. The supermarket would only provide 10 pieces of RM10 note, 10 pieces of RM5 note, 100 pieces of RM1 note and coins worth RM50 every morning as a start up. (*Mmmm, not sure whether this is the correct amount or not, it was kind of long long time ago, but almost there). In a scenario like I mentioned above, I would run out of small change fast and getting a replenishment of small change was not easy, had to wait for the chief cashier! If there's no customer waiting in the queue, I wouldn't mind the wait, but it's not pretty when the customers started to show 'the face' to everybody! 

Saga Balloon Festival 2012

3rd November 2012

After I saw the poster for the Saga Balloon Festival, I wanted to go there. Me and my friends decided to tour Saga and go this balloon festival. Well, the weather did not agree with us. It was too windy! We reached there before 8 a.m. The sky was full of the hot air balloons, so beautiful. We couldn't get a parking space, had to wait for a long time. Finally, we got a parking lot at around 10 a.m. However, due to strong wind, all the hot balloons were grounded. The sky was so clear with no hot balloon, so disappointed!

(*from this incident, I think it's better to take public transport, don't have to worry about parking and have more time to enjoy the view.)
the only photo I have on the hot balloons on air

Saturday, 3 August 2013

Kawashiri Half Day Trip (川尻半日コース)

14 April 2012

Kawashiri 川尻 is a small town in the southern area of Kumamoto City. 川 means river and 尻 means buttock, so Kawashiri literary means river mouth in Japanese. From Wikipedia, Kawashiri was a habour from Kamakura period 鎌倉時代 and it was a port with many traders from foreign countries. There was even a mention of one 開懐世利 in a Ming Dynasty literature. So, it can be considered a historical town.

Kawashiri Station is just one station away from the Kumamoto Station. I worked in Kawashiri, however, I had never walked around the area, I would go straight to the office from the train station, never stray off the route. However, since I would be transferred to Oita, I decided to tour Kawashiri.
Kawashiri Station 川尻駅

Saturday, 20 July 2013

Japanese Calligraphy Class 書道教室

December 2011

My colleague told me about a Japanese calligraphy class 書道教室 in Kumamoto City Community Center for foreigners. Since I had nothing to do on weekend, I decided to join that class. All the teachers were volunteers. They were very kind and funny. It's an activity to make a calendar using Japanese calligraphy, there were 3 classes.

1st Class: learn to draw something using ink brushes
2nd Class: learn to write kanji 漢字 using ink brushes
3rd Class: carve on a mold to make stamp
Kumamoto City Community Center 熊本市中央公民館

Wednesday, 17 July 2013

Public Secrets by Nora Roberts

This book is quite engaging, I finished it in three days. 
Public Secrets by Nora Roberts
the synopsis
It talks about Emma, a daughter of a very famous rock star, Brian. She was born out of wedlock and when her own biological mother threaten to kill her, her father brought her back and stayed with her father's new bride. Then, her stepmother, Bev gave birth to a son, Darren. The family had a really good time, Bev treated her like her own child and everybody adored Darren. Her father's career was soaring high when baby Darren was killed. Although Emma saw the killers, she was too traumatized and forgot about it. After that, Bev couldn't take it and separated with Brian.