Women + Shopping

Shopping used to be a fun thing to do. Going shopping with a group of girlfriends and it's shophopping and trying every single thing out that you like. It was something to look forward to and during the process, it was fun and relaxing.

Now with the internet, this all kind of changed. We tried to shop online together today, since forever21 has a deal 'buy one, get one free'. The problem with these kinds of deals and multiple buyers is that someone will need to do the fitting and matching jobs, so that everyone still feel that they had a good deal and that person end up being me.

Seriously,,,,,now,,,,as a woman myself, I can understand why guys don't like to shop with the ladies. It's so stressful!!! Then it was getting everyone's orders together and since it's a sale, some items were sold out in an instant, so it was picking out another one again. And the worse thing of them all is the fact that forever21 is adding new items to it every now and then. So at some point I really looked like the lady below:


But I've learned my lesson. For the next time, we'll just need to meet up and do the shopping on one location. I mean,,,it's not the shopping sites fault that they'd like to sell more. It's we, the buyers, who should know what we want to buy and not buying it just because it's on sale.
And besides, if we meet up, it's just like old times, with the chitchats and the crazy fun. It's girlfriends fun without too much hassle of dressing up, walking miles to get the right dress and still having the flexibility of choosing the location.

Wine & Tapas Fair: 28 July 2012

The Wine & Tapas Fair is finally over! Here a recap of that night from my point of view.
Since the beginning of the week I was already busy with preparations for our Tapas stand. Not only were some sponsors still a bit hesitating, but because of the lack of space it was not wise to get the sponsored products too early in advance.

The most hectic period started wednesday 25th. I only took friday 27th off for the event, so during the rest of the week I was normal at work till 15:30. Since for the tapas we got assistance from Jiji's Restaurant, I was there nearly every evening. I think that the owner, Jurgen Boodie, got kinda tired of seeing me over there. Wednesday I had scheduled the wine glasses cleaning and everyone from my class was there. It felt really good to have everyone from my class supporting me. Initially I thought to take friday off to have a less hectic day so that I can also rest a bit. I was so terribly wrong. I started the day at 7:30 and was busy the whole day through. It even seemed as if 24 hours a day were not enough. And as if it's not stressful enough to have the tapas on my plate, last minute I had to hear that there's a change of the tapas stand location. I'm not sure if it was fact or foe, but they told me it had to be like that since it was an order from the fire department. And if it's by law, I'll need to follow it, right?

But on the day of the event, some participants already called me to ask what's going on. Since the day before I was told to move some of the stands and I checked with some of my participants, who were willing. But the participants called me to tell me that they were told they could stay. It went really wrong there. I'm responsible for the participants, but I don't even get an update of what will be going on. It really came out very  unprofessional.

My whole F&B crew worked their asses off. Seriously, everyone was working on at least one type of tapa and whenever they were finished, to start with another one. I don't know how we did it after all, but we did it!! We sold about 1100+ tapas and if it wasn't for Jiji's Restaurant crew, I don't think we could've made so many.
You know, many things went wrong within the organization and external factors have not always been on our side, but after all, it was a succesful event. I've asked around and most people were not only impressed with what we've done, they are even asking when the next one will be. And however we did sell lots of tapas, but the biggest compliment for our hard work is when the visitors came to us and told us how marvelous the event was and that we did an awesome job!