The Red Crew Learnt Something Today

The purpose of us setting up this blog, is not only to publicize our cafe, but also to share with you all how we go about setting up the cafe and get the business running. We wanted to share with our fellow friends and future customers, how sincere we were in running this place, and to show that we really did put in a lot of effort to make this happen.

And so.. it was our second attempt to paint our cafe. Well, not exactly the entire cafe, but there were little corners and display counter that needed to be painted. We spray painted two display boards on Thursday, however, the colour looked pretty uneven on the board. The surface of the boards, however were shiny and we actually liked the finishing of it, it's just that the colour weren't even. A fellow friend even commented that it looked rather professionally done, and we beamed at that comment. So we waited for both the display boards to dry up, and continued our painting and setting up our furniture mission today.

We thought that we should abort the spray paint idea, and so being as amateur as we are, we bought a can of those typical glossy wet paint from a neighbourhood shop. And we also bought a roller, those furry furry kind. And when our Miss Designer laid the roller onto the board, all 3 of us, held our breath in anticipation, hopeful that the paint will actually turn out the way we wanted it to.

But no.. the finishing looked rough, the board actually looked like it was a wall with red paint on. It was almost disastrous. We borrowed thinner from the renovation uncle who was working downstairs, and we tried cleaning the paint off to try again. One of us, even had bloodied looking hands because we had to clean off the paint with thinner. The thinner was stinging his hands too, and we joked that he should go and tell people his hands got butchered. Haha!

It was the third try on the board, and we were almost demoralized by the way the paint was working. It was almost upsetting because you have 2 engineer undergraduates, and one life science major, and non of us could figure out the right way to get the paint done. Until, our saviour uncle appeared at the stair case! He saw the looks on our face, and asked how we were doing. We explained how difficult was it for us to actually get the finishing product that we want, and he being a kind man he is, advised on what brush we should get and how to get the finishing that we want..

Uncle too noticed the look on one of us, and he said,

"年轻人， 不要灰心。"
“Young man, don't be disappointed. It's okay, the paint will work out fine."

At that point, it was quite comforting to hear such words from someone who's more experienced, who's willing to teach us, who's not selfish to share with us.

Our take home message, from our evening of painting, we concluded that, being university students doesn't mean that we know everything in the world. No matter how much chemistry we have studied, no matter how many As we have scored in our examinations, the most important thing is knowing how to apply our knowledge and having the right attitude with the right mind.

It was just a brief encounter with uncle, that managed to lighten us up from the small little obstacle we came across in our efforts of making this cafe a success.

=) I hope I didn't bore you all with our little story here. The red crew is now working on perfecting our drinks!

YAY!