Feliz Dia!
That is Feliz Hotel’s very own greeting to our guests and to fellow employees. Sometimes guests get confused and ask what it means, it simply means “good day”. It is also what we want our guests to have while they stay here at the hotel, whether it be for an actual night, or even just a simple meal. We want them to have the greatest and most memorable experience possible.
That is definitely something I agree with.
If you had to ask me why I joined the hospitality industry in the first place, it is because simply love making people smile -- and what a better way to make someone smile than to make them smile with food.
Before all of this started, I remember being so nervous because it was the first time I was going to work somewhere that I was familiar and unfamiliar with at the same time. When I was younger, I would visit Boracay for vacation with family or friends, but... it wa different this time.
This time I was waking up everyday going to work, and then going back home, Sure, I had roommates and all, but I did NOT have the safety net of my family being there or those close to me.
The first two weeks were actually okay... I think. I would wake up at around six or seven in the morning, two to get down from the bunk bed without falling backwards or slipping and landing on my butt, then get make myself breakfast (or at least whatever canned goods from Budge Mart I had in my closet that I had enough energy to cook). Three flights of stairs later, also known as my morning cardio part one, I finally reach the common area of the staff house and cook breakfast and reheat rice. One of the main struggles about eating, yet alone cooking, a somewhat home-cooked meal at the staff house was the presence kitchenware, rice cookers, plates, storage unit and Tupperwares, and cutlery -- or should I say the lack thereof. You see, there was a rule by HR that if you wanted to cook or eat at the staff house, you would have to use your own rice cookers, Tuppwerwares, kitchenware and cutlery. If you did have your own utilities, you would have to label and hide them, otherwise they would go missing in about two to three days because someone would take them, hide them, and say that it belonged to them.
Luckily Kat Ong, (Enderun batchmate, friend, alumni and former Assistant Front Office Manager) helped me out with where to buy groceries: SM Savemore, where to go for laundry: Speedwash, and just giving me advice with a side of catching up and joking around.
IN PHOTO (L-R): Kat Ong, Me
After the daily morning struggle, it was time to shower and get ready for work. I figured that, makeup wise, I might as well do it when I get to the hotel since it would be a lot easier to apply. Getting to the locker rooms required a secondary three flights of stairs, hence, why the first three flights were morning cardio: part one. Oh the struggle. Now it was time for the fun art: work (I actually mean it when I say fun because I genuinely enjoyed working).
The route was usually: exit the auxiliary building, head to the back of the hotel, enter the employee entrance, and then make my way to the restaurant and listen to the mid morning briefing before starting my shift. La Plaza is the hotels’ main restaurant, serving Spanish and Latin American Dishes. The other restaurant of the hotel, Buenavista, is the hotel’s rooftop restaurant that serves comfor food, including homemade pizza. Buenavista overlooks the whole of Boracay and has the perfect view of the world famous Boracay sunset. Occasionally, I would get station at Buenavista, but only when Chillan (head bartender) would go on break and there was no one else to cover for him; or when they would let me trade sports with Chillan so he works downstairs and I manage the bar upstairs. Mind you, if you get cold easily, then you might now want to spend your shift on the rooftop bar because how chilly it can actually get with the strong cold winds that start blowing by four in the afternoon.
By nighttime I would get to start bartending after upselling cocktails to guests while they wait for the food to be served. This was fun because they would let me experiment and make them cocktails that would range from being straightfor, to light and refreshing, to rich and velvety. Dinner time would also be the time when we would get a surge of guests who would want to dine along the Al Fresco portion of La Plaza so that they could watch the fire dance while eating. To be fair, the fire dancers were very creative when it came to choreography and song choice -- this was much more creative compared to ow the fire dancers were ten years ago when it first tarted getting popular around the Boracay scene. Sometimes I would stay up until closing and help clean up and set up the tables and the rest of the restaurant for the breakfast buffet the following morning.
The end of the day would mostly be composed of me reheating adobo I cooked the day before or the week before, along with the rice that I would make ahead of time and just reheat it in the same pan I warmed up the adobo in. Once or twice a week, I would stay up a bit later than usual to work on weekly journals and other internship report requirements before washing up and going to bed.
This became my daily and weekly routine that was a lot of hard work and coming in on days I was supposed to have as my rest day; this was much more work than I expected but I honestly never felt tired of it.
Looking back at everything now, I can definitely say I learned a lot and it was all worth it. This internship has taught me a lot about being independent, management, how a hotel operates when it is in its soft opening phase, and what happens to a hotel when running while a (now) pandemic has affected the entire industry worldwide. In the end though, I would say that it was worth all the laughing, the crying, the long endless days of hard work, and it was definitely work making people smile -- even at a time like this.
Would I have wanted things to have happened differently? Yes.
Would I change how everything actually went? Nope. Not one bit -- with the exception of COVID-19, because now the world has been put on hold.
It’s an interesting time we live in nowadays, but I guess that is how everything is now. This is the real world, and this is by far one of the most unusual welcomes I have ever experienced when entering a different chapter in my life. Now it is all just a matter of what to do next.
Until next time.
STAY FELIZ!