Here are some highlights from my last few days of shifts:
- This purple and red poppy uniform we've got is a real conversation starter! I remember on my first shift ever, within 5 minutes of me wearing it, I've already got people asking me about my role and the Paralympics! This is awesome superpower stuff.
- Waking up for a 6am shift is a b****.
- I love being a Muslim! So far I've had people comment on my headscarf, and I get preferential treatment with the halal food we get at the Workforce Dining Area. So far I've had lamb steak, moussaka and spicy breaded chicken, among others. These dishes aren't served out in the normal buffet so I feel like a VIP each time I get food :D
- On my 2nd shift, I was handed the responsibility of using the walkie-talkie to communicate with the other Team Leaders, woo! I felt so powerful when I radio-ed in :)
- I need to learn Spanish! The amount of times I've been talking to Spanish-speaking athletes who *don't* speak English is quite surprising to me.
Me: "Where do you want to go, sir?"
Athlete: "Que? [insert some long and random Spanish gibberish here]"
Me: Oh God help me.
There was one time I was trying to help out this guy to transport his equipment somewhere but *nobody* could understand where he wanted to go! In the end, we deduced that he was a team official who wanted to send some stuff over to the Athletics venue, so I helped him with his stuff and walked him to the bus stop. All the way there, he taught me how to count one to ten and to spell out the alphabet in Spanish :) I got him on the bus and bid him 'adios!' and that was really cool :)
Unfortunately, that bus turned out to be the *wrong* bus for him, so we later saw him right back to where he started and get on a *different* bus this time.. - On a related note, I practiced my rusty Russian on some Russian athletes and I said "I speak a little Russian" (я могу заварить по-русский немного) well enough that they said my Russian was OK (нормальна). Win!
- It feels like an eternity when there aren't any athletes around. If the bus goes every 15 minutes, we would be watching our clocks all the time and those 15 minutes feel like 50 - each time!!
- I've successfully stalked the Malaysian Paralympic athletes - yay! I now know where they live :P :P :P
- I know which duty to avoid in order to escape from being called up to do housekeeping, i.e. replace duvet covers and bedsheets.
- I can report for my shift TWO HOURS LATE and still be able to go home at the original time I'm meant to go home.
- The people I work with are VERY interesting. They all come from all over the place - Canada, Australia, Scotland, Southampton (yay!), etc. Some of them are really funny, it's a barrel of laughs working with them. Some of them talk so much that it's draining just to hear them talk. Some of them have really interesting stories to tell so it makes the time fly by. Some of them sleep on the job (yes, you read that correctly). Some of them have the same team dynamics as me so I feel like we work very well together. It's a big great mixed bag of people we've got here :)
- I've already signed up for more shifts in addition to the ones I've already got because I love the job so much <3 <3 <3
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