I always have the passion to learn different languages.
After receiving the offer from CX, my heart feels peaceful. Really, I am looking forward to the upcoming challenges. Before the year 2011, my hometown is in Taiwan, mother tongue in Chinese, interested in Japanese, had taken two-year class in Spanish…….and in the near future, I will base in Hong Kong, training course will be conducted in English, new life will be surrounded with Cantonese, passengers in flight will come from all over the world…how excited, isn’t it? In fact, I have attended the first Cantonese class last Friday with my future coworkers; the class is much more fascinating than I imagined. Hopefully the eight-week class before leaving will shorten the gap between Taiwanese and Cantonese and make our daily lives to come easier.
Working overseas, that's just what I expected.
Before I started to pursue the career in aviation industry, I was always eager to devote myself to a position that combines my interests in languages with the passion for meeting people. So I served as the waitress for part-time job during my college days, worked as a salesperson in the overseas division of manufacturing industry after graduation, and now stay in the overseas service department of a consulting company.
Service, I know well that I have the desire to explore this field.
As for my current job, at first, I dream the “overseas service department in consulting company” is a place that allows me to connect with the world—where I can not only polish my language skills & customer service capabilities but also gain the Project Management Professional (PMP) knowledge which prepares me for the better understanding of Business. My supervisor permitted me to attend the workshop/ receive the training that aims at getting the PMP certificate--the tuition fees is wholly subsidized by my company. Sounds great, right? It seems a win-win position no matter where my next stop is—a FA job or a Master’s degree.
Yet the things turned out to be so different than I thought.
In my overseas service department, we received a group coming from South Africa last October, and I was appointed to be the person giving the presentation in English and to be the translator for my supervisor. I could still remember that how happy I was that finally I could speak English…….but soon I realized that it was the first foreign group as well as the last one. The reality is, most of the overseas affairs belong to China, which means I have to contact the people from Mainland China every day reading the simple Chinese and trying hard to understand the various accent with fast speed. This is kind of culture shock for me but I still enjoy it a lot. Yet my fantasy for English speaking environment has totally collapsed, from then on.
As for the Japanese, I have never dared to dream about using it. But one day, our vice-president came and asked that” Oh Kate, you understand a bit Japanese right? Your help would be appreciated if you could translate it for me!” Then I received a document in Japanese from my vice-president. To my surprise, the document was an instruction of fishing reel. Actually, my vice-president’s friend gave him the fishing reel as a gift but the instruction was showed in Japanese so he can’t understand. So, my only chance to use Japanese is to spend a whole morning surfing in the internet, studying how to fish, and looking up in the web dictionary. My task was done, but that’s it.
PMP taught me that lessons learned are extremely important and now I can totally realize it.
The reality often falls short of our expectations. Looking back on the thing and the efforts I’ve done, I found all of them rewarding. People mature with age. Thanks to the people I’ve met, the role I’ve played, the job I’ve tried, the place I’ve stayed….I am so grateful to have all these fortunate encounters in my life. My faith is, every task I’ve undergone just lead me to a better place. Now I make it. I will land a wonderful job before long—Flight Attendant with Cathay, what a dream job! What is service? How to make it service straight from the heart? I’m still learning, and it's my pleasure to find the answer in Cathay. Life is just like this, an unknown journey. I want to live, not just to exist.
（To be continued）
Hello, World!!!!!!
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