Who do you want to be?

Well I'm just sitting here munching on my Hawaii Candy Rice Cakes and turning rather contemplative about my experience here so far and where would I like it to go.

As many of you know, I tend to get philosophical or throw a few sayings around and I think I have a new one for me to focus on while I'm here. The question I had to ask myself today was "Who do I want to be?" and are my current actions taking me to where and who I want to be. One of my old professors, always encouraged my class to focus on inner growth as much as professional growth, and I thought this slogan will be a great way me to check and monitor my progress to my desired goals. It may seem a little odd to some, but hey that's just how I think ;)

So who do I want to be? Well, I want to be a professional and an executive and finally things are starting to move that way and this is my first experience having to actually follow the roles that go along with it. For example I have usually worked as typical non-managerial position (although I do have managerial experience too) and now that I'm moving toward management it's interesting for me to have to find a different comfort level. I noticed that the non-managers don't sit with the managers in the lunchroom or socialize with them outside of work. So I'm always used to socializing and making friends with the non-managers, but now they don't necessarily want to be close friends with me. Everyone has been very nice to me, but the non-managers aren't looking to be my friend out side of work. Hope this makes sense. So I'm in a new situation that I've never dealt with before. I guess that's what this is all about! Things are still going good with Princeville, but I'm sort of thinking out loud.

Sales went well today and tomorrow I'll be working with the Catering and Weddings Manager, PR Manager, and the Dir of Sales. Yay for sales!

Bein' a sales lady . . .

Mother Hen and her chicks enjoying a day at the beach!

Today was my second day in Sales and nothing too exciting happened. Learned more about the department and what each sales managers are responsible for. For example the leisure sales manager is responsible to work with travel agents and their clients, and all groups under 10 rooms. There are two group sales managers that split up the US, one of them takes care of west of the Mississippi and the other handles the east. I was really surprised that international sales is handled by regional sales and Princeville simply tries to focus on the US market. Also I learned that supposedly the hottest group business in the industry right now are the insurance companies who have tons of conventions, incentive trips, etc. Today I mostly dealt with one of the group sales managers and researched all of the destination management companies and updated Princeville's current database.

After work just worked out and ate some Kahlua pork and cabbage with some rice for dinner (not too bad actually ;), reminded me a lot of corn beef and cabbage). I also got to talk to the front desk manager about my time with her next week and she offered me an opportunity to cover all shifts, even grave shift, which I think will be very interesting.

Goodbye Mother Hen and family!

PS- Did I mention that there are chickens and roosters everywhere? Even on the beach!

Memorial Day weekend

Saturday I had a great day off. I thought about possibly working at the restaurant, but I'm so glad I took it off instead. I started the day off with a walk to check out a condominium complex that my parents and sis will be staying at in August. After getting back and grabbing some breakfast at Cafe Hanaelei I headed out to find this so-called secluded beach.

When I first heard about it, I was warned "Well it's a bit of a hill to get down to the beach . . ," but I had no idea that it was going to be quite such a slope. Literally I had to go down this practically vertical hill with some stairs cut out of it. I admit there were handrails, which made me feel like a wimp at some points but it was still a little dangerous (the pictures don't even give the drop justice). Once I got there, the beach was awesome. It was very small and with a few clear spots for swimming and also some great coral for snorkeling. I brought my ipod and an old USA Today, but most of the time I swam or just listened to the crashing waves. The day was perfectly clear so I got some sun and it felt great to relax.

Sunday I started my bussing job at Cafe Hanalei. The night before I told a couple of bussers at dinner that I was going to be starting the next morning and one laughed in my face and said "Oh yeah . . . you're going to do great!" Of course he wasn't quite aware of my background in restaurants but it still irked me and made me even more determined to do a good job. I was really only nervous about carrying the huge trays of dirty dishes, since I have very little upper body strength. Sunday I showed up in my lovely uniform (basically it looks like a house cleaners dress), girls in the cafe are required to wear dresses which goes along with Princeville's traditional style. Basically my shift was 8 1/2 hours of pure running around clearing tables, setting tables, carrying trays, and organizing dishes at the dishwasher station. I swear there is nothing more humbling than diggin through people's dirty dishes! We were pretty slammed and then I didn't realize until later that my section was short two bussers (since I was technically still training and not a real busser) which made my learning experience even better :) In one way it was stressful to be so busy but then in some crazy way I loved it too. I love the restaurant biz and I couldn't but somewhat enjoy the madness. Plus at the end of the shift I got a couple compliments from some of my coworkers about how well I handled being so busy. Inside I was like "HA! Don't mess with me! I do know what I'm doing" :) Plus I made some cash from tips and will be making more once I'm off of "training." I'm so glad I have my background, because again there was little training. People can keep waiting for me to fall on my face because it's not going to happen!

Monday I worked half a day with the sales department and learned about the vital relationship needed between Revenue managers and Sales managers. More fun learning tomorrow!

second week done!

After another day of typing up reservations, I actually started to enjoy putting them into the computer. Its at that point of a new job when you can finally do something on your own and its correct, so of course its even more fun to do. The reservations are neat to see too, because you can get a little snippet of people coming to the hotel. You can see who's here to celebrate a honeymoon, anniversary, birthday, or just plain business trip (etc). Now that I'm more familiar with the hotel and its room packages, I can picture what each reservation should hopefully experience (the type of room, restaurant coupons, golf coupons, champagne, etc).

After finishing up working with Penny and the reservations and phone-operator team, I went and changed to work at Cafe Hanalei. Tonight was the big sea food buffet and it looked fabulous. This is the first night that I had seen it all in person, so of course I had to scope it out. It included a lot and I wish I can remember all the cool descriptions that went along with it but basically it included grilled marlin, ahi, beef sirloin, chicken skewers, and vegetables. Also a variety of specialty salads, fresh vegetables, sushi/sashimi, Hawaiian sausage, crab, shrimp, and of course a variety of desserts. I didn't get to look at all of them but they had an awesome chocolate fondue table with strawberries, pineapple, cantaloupe, cake, and marshmallows (which I had to pass by every time I had to seat a guest . . . talk about torture). The set up was really pretty too with ice sculptures and chocolate statues including of course the usual tropical flowers. The employees at the cafe are really friendly too, so I'm glad I have the opportunity to meet some more people especially outside of the office.

They wanted me to work Saturday and Sunday but I said I wanted at least one complete day off this weekend so they gave me Saturday off. Tomorrow I'm hoping to go for a hike and then lay at the beach to catch a little more sun. There's supposed to be a great secluded beach close by, so I'll have to check it out.

Next week I'll be working with Sales and should be very interesting. I always wondered what the Sales department in a hotel does so it will be a great opportunity for me to see it. Also I want to kind of poke around and try to figure out why Princeville doesn't try to capitalize more on the international market, because they used to but now they mostly focus on the US. Gotta love learning!

who doesn't like coconut?

Some more reservations work today, just making sure that guests' reservations are what they asked for (aka kind of bed, smoking/nonsmoking, what kind of price/package, etc). I'm getting the hang of Galaxy pretty well, but it was hard at first. I'm mostly used to Microsoft programs and short keys but Galaxy is very different. For example something that was a little hard for me to get used to at first was that Galaxy doesn't let you use a mouse, it's all key board functions and you can't use cut/paste. So when you have to put specific items in a reservation you have to type it out every single time. Which it usually isn't too bad, but once you have a group of over 100 different reservations then you really start feeling like a machine.

Today at lunch there was a big coconut/pineapple sheet cake out to celebrate for all of the birthdays in May. Of course I had to try just a little of it :) That's when I started talking with Penny, the reservations manager, and telling her how much I liked coconut and how I have a coconut cake every year for my birthday, etc. She said "That's odd for someone from the mainland to like it so much." Then I thought about it some more and realized the majority of people that I know don't really care for coconut. Once I started thinking about it more, I realized I've always loved coconut (and even as I write this I notice my coconut cookies from Wal-mart on my desk). I even remember the first time I tasted it. I was at my baby sitter's house in Germany and she gave me a Bounty chocolate bar when I was probably around 7. Although it was coconut and chocolate, I still remember taking my time to slowly eat the bar and taste the coconut. I even remember going with my Dad to the grocery store and I convinced him to let me get a coconut. Once I got home I cracked it open and tried to eat it, but realized that raw coconut doesn't take like the coconut I was used to. So after thinking about all of the coconut experiences in my life, I started to think more about how maybe I'm made for the islands :) Oh I also love pineapple too, but that's another story.

After working with reservations, I went and changed to get ready for Cafe Hanalei. Tonight I learned how to work as a hostess, which I already have some experience in hosting. I'm glad I do though, because they sort of just threw me in. Again, I think it was to see how I would carry myself, but things went well and hopefully they continue too.

Things are great for the most part and now I'm off to bed. The Luau is going on outside my window but will quiet down fairly soon. Never thought I would be living right next to a luau, but as I like to say "never say never!"

Sink or swim

Infinity Pool with the hotel's beach in the background

Just got back from dinner at the oh-so lovely “backstage café” (aka the employee cafeteria) and I’m pretty wiped. This morning I entered in more reservations into the hotel’s system and continued to monitor my assignments from James (my boss).

Drove to Lihue again today and even got to go to Wal-Mart! It’s interesting to me how things here are “American” but then it feels so out of place too. On my drive you can pass a Costco, Shell Station, and Subway but then you look around and you realize that you’re in the middle of a tropical paradise with tropical fruit stands or beaches advertising for surfing lessons. Odd but very cool at the same time.

After coming back to the hotel, I finished up a few things with reservations and then went to talk with the Café Hanalei’s manager to figure out my training schedule for the next couple of days. Its so funny, everyone I’ve told that I want to work in the restaurant they all give me a funny look and say “Well you know . . . it is very hard work.” Maybe I just look like a weakling, but I then assure them that the majority of my experience is in food service. It never seems to quite convince them and they continue to look at me skeptically and say “Well . . . ok.” I feel like I have to prove myself to everyone, which I suppose you need to do when you’re the new guy. I’m staying on top of my toes and so far so good :)

After all of that I went to the hotel’s beach for a quick swim. The water was nice and cool. Of course what would a beach in Kauai be without a couple weddings taking place in the background, but the sky was approaching twilight and it was very relaxing. The beach has some coral patches and even some fish, so unfortunately my swim couldn’t go as far as I would have liked. After playing around for a bit, I moved on to the hotel pool (Infinity Pool), and then finally the hot tub. I was hoping to stick around for sunset, but a couple came into the hot tub and started to complain very loudly about the quietness of Kauai compared to that of Maui. Other than that my little swimming tour of the hotel was very soothing.

More res

James, my internship mentor, left for vacation for the week and left a few things for me to do. It’s a little scary because he wants me to make sure that Starwood's national reservation system matches the hotel's reservation system. I just have to monitor it and make appropriate changes, but if I do something wrong I could potentially either stop the hotel from selling hotel rooms or completely overbook the hotel. Eeep! I guess this is just the beginning of the responsibilities of the work place.

I worked with the reservations manager some more today and I sat in on an Accounts Receivable meeting with the accounting depart. That was definitely an eye opener. I had no idea that accounting has to spend so much time tracking down people to get payments from guests, meeting planners, or booking agents! You would think that once the hotel gets your credit card it should be easy to get enough to get a payment, but its different when you’re bill is over $50,000.

I also got to talk to my friend James, who works for Fairmont Orchid on the big island, tonight. He works as a Food and Beverage management trainee with his roommate Dave. James and Dave both graduated from the hospitality program from WSU a semester after me, so I’m hoping to take a weekend trip to visit them sometime in June. It would be great to be able to check out the big island and see the Fairmont property too (gotta always be keeping up with the competitionJ). I also hope to fit another trip in sometime to go back to Honolulu, but we’ll see how everything pans out.

Tomorrow, I’ll be working some more with reservations and back to Lihue to follow up on my TB test. Good times :)

Hanalei and Reservations

Yesterday I met with the Leisure Sales Manager, Courtney, to help her give a site tour to a travel agent. Unfortunately the travel agent flaked, but fortunately for me that meant Courtney and I could go to the beach instead!

She and I hopped into her truck and headed to the Hanalei Bay beach, which is supposedly the nicest beach on the north shore. The cute town of Hanalei is very close to the beach and consists of a soccer field, school, church, and a couple of shops and restaurants. Hanalei is also the location of the largest producer of taro in the world! Well, at least that’s what Courtney told me :) Every year, Hanalei throws a poi (kind of like a taro pudding) festival too. Hope I’ll be around for that one! We drove past Stephen Stills house and allegedly Michael Crighton has four houses in Hanalei too. The beach was beautiful and seemed to be a local hang out. Along with a shave ice and taco truck, the beach had a lawn for camping and BBQs. The surf was fairly mild so it was perfect for swimming and a lot of families brought their kids. Hanalei River was also close to the beach, so besides the swimmers there were a few paddle boats. We were there for about 45 minutes until it started to pour so Courtney and I ran back to her truck. Then 4 minutes later it stopped and was back to sunshine. That’s Kauai for you :)

Today I started working in the reservations department, which basically consists of a bunch of phone operators inside an office. I worked with the reservations manager and learned about the hotel reservation information system called Galaxy. We basically sat and punched in room reservation orders so that hotel’s system could have the rooms set aside for the guests upon their arrival. Everything that the reservation department enters into the system is all the information that the front desk has which makes it a very detail oriented job.

Today I also had to drive to Lihue to get a TB test so I would be eligible to work in Café Hanalei. I was able to borrow the HR director’s car and had a good time driving and listening to the Hawaiian reggae stations. My favorite songs right now are Fiji “Jowenna” and Ekolu “She’s Music to Me.” Great de-stress music!

Charity Walk

Some of the Princeville locals

Around 6 am on Saturday, I went with a bunch of Princeville employees to participate in the Annual Kauai Hotel and Lodging Association’s Charity Walk. The walk was a fundraiser where all of Kauai’s tourist industries got together and walked a 3 mile loop. Afterwards, the local hotels provided Malsadas (Portuguese donut holes), coffee, and a breakfast plate. Each hotel, including Princeville, had a different breakfast entrée and after finishing the walk participants could chose from the different booths. Princeville had a “Hawaiian Breakfast Hash” which was a Kahlua Pork Sausage Hash with a fried egg served over rice and garnished with a tomatillo sauce. The Grand Hyatt had French toast stuffed with cream cheese and strawberries and drizzled with white chocolate. Mmmmmm . . . . I can’t remember what the other hotels served, but these two were the ones that stood out to me.

The walk was a lot of fun and it was cool to see all of the local businesses coming out to raise money for local Kauai charities. Along the actual walk, different Hula groups were stationed and performed different hula dances and songs to the passing walkers. At the end of the walk, the Kauai charities and their groups stood on the sidelines to thank all of the participants. My favorite group was the Kauai Girl Scout Brownie Troops who held up hand-drawn thank you signs and waved to all of the walkers. Even though it was so early in the morning, with everyone acting so happy and upbeat it was easy to enjoy the walk and understand why everyone looked forward to this annual event. The walk showed to me the strong community support of the island and made me proud to participate along with everyone else.

Afterwards, a couple of the employees and I went to Wal-Mart to pick up some essentials and then headed back to Princeville. Later I just hung out at the beach and caught some rays.

Today, I’m just hanging around the hotel and later I will be helping one of our sales managers lead a site tour to visiting travel agents (some of which I met on Thursday). Other than that I’ll be chillin out and getting ready for another fun exciting week and this week I’ll be working in the Reservations department. Yay!

View from my window

Starwood is awesome!!!

Well, I’ve just finished my first week at the Princeville Resort and I’m in love with the whole company. Starwood, Princeville’s management company, is an awesome company and I feel that the potential to grow within is incredible.

On Monday I met James Abihai, the Director of Revenue Management (DORM) and my internship mentor. He’s set up an extensive training session for me to work with all of the hotel departments that directly affect revenue management. This week I worked with James, but for the next 4 weeks I’ll be rotating to work with different departments such as Reservations, Sales, Front Desk, and Accounting. Later in the summer I hope to also work with Housekeeping and Starwood Vacation Ownership (their timeshare service).

Throughout the week I have been meeting and getting to know a variety of employees at the hotel and have been very impressed with how welcoming and friendly everyone has been. Kelly Hoen, the hotel’s general manager has been particularly friendly and helpful. After a general staff meeting, she invited me to go with the Sales staff to a travel agent reception at the Sheraton Kauai in Poipu. It was a great opportunity to meet the staff at the Sheraton Kauai (another Starwood property and a sister property to Princeville) and also some of the top selling travel agents for the Hawaii leisure travelers market. Gotta love networking! I also got an invitation to work with the Sheraton’s Director of Revenue Management for a couple days and then I would be able to compare between the two properties. We’ll see how that turns out I suppose :)

One of the coolest things I learned about Starwood is their focus on internal promotion and advancement. For example, the Sheraton at Kauai had a revenue management trainee and he had only been there 8 months until he was promoted to be a Director of Revenue Management at a Starwood property on Maui. Hmmm . . . I like the sound of that! Already with all of the help from just James and Kelly, I can tell that this internship is going to be a very inspirational experience.

Princeville Shopping Center and more! :)

After having a fabulous first night at the Princeville Resort, I was excited to have a day to explore more of the area. I woke up and headed to Cafe Hanalei again for some breakfast before I headed out on a walk to the local shopping center.

Princeville Resort is located with in Princeville, which I kind of like a gated community for condominiums and time shares. In the middle of Princeville are two major golf courses and a tennis club, surrounded by the condos timeshares. There's a 2 mile path that takes you to the Princeville Shopping center, where you can find the closest grocery store and hardware store. And yes they are just as exciting as they sound ;) Foodland is the grocery store and they have similar things that any grocery store on the mainland would have except with a few other things like huge variety of spam, sunscreen, and tropical fruits. I became a member and got my "Maika'i Card" so I can shop there when I need to.

When I was inside, I noticed an interesting mix of people. On one hand you had the crisply dressed resort guests and on the other hand there were the"beach bums," walking around the store with sun-bleached hair and just their board shorts on and grabbing quick sandwiches to-go. What was so cool, is that everyone seemed to be so comfortable around each other. Kind of like everyone was united by their love of the island. OK, so that was way cheesy, but I would like to think it to be somewhat true.

Walking around Princeville

Soon I headed back to the resort and took a swim on the resort's private beach. I really enjoyed the swim, but while I was swimming I noticed 3 weddings taking place on different spots of the beach. With plenty more to come this summer, the resort's wedding season sure seems to be running strong.

Entrance to the Princeville Resort Infinity Pool and Beach

I finished off the day with dinner at the Cafe Hanalei , where I went a little bit lighter and got an awesome Japanese Bento Box dinner with sushi, Ahi poke, grilled tofu, rice, salad, and somen noodles.

Oh boy, start work on Monday!!!

My first day in Kauai

After I flew out of Honolulu to the Lihue airport, the Human Resource Director of the Princeville Resort, Deborah, was at the airport to meet me. As we drove to the resort, Deborah took the 45 minute drive to Princeville as an opportunity to point out the towns and different local areas of interest. Kauai seems to be much more rural than Oahu, with smaller towns and greater distances between the towns. After leaving Oahu, Kauai seems to be much quieter and more relaxed. With an island population of only around 50,000, you could tell that Kauai had more of a laid back attitude than Oahu. The weather was pretty near perfect with mostly sunshine and clear skies with only a couple instances of light sprinkling.

So after arriving at the hotel and settling into my amazing room, with a partial ocean view, I headed to Cafe Hanalei. As part of my internship I receive food and lodging at the resort, and as many of you may have guessed, I'm definitely going to be taking advantage of it. Here are a couple snippets from the menu and my first meal at Princeville:

BLUE PINCHER CRAB-TARO DIP SERVED WARM WITH LAHVOSH

STEAMED SNAPPER ON OKINAWAN SWEET POTATO HASH, CILANTRO, SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS, AND FRESH GINGER WITH A SPLASH OF HOT PEANUT OIL

MACADAMIA NUT TART WITH A BOURBON FILLING SERVED WITH COCONUT ICE CREAM

After my incredible dinner and socializing with some of the guests I was exhausted and went straight to sleep.

On the road to Princeville Resort, Hanalei Bay

Exploring Oahu

Since I had never visited Oahu before, my cousin June and I went for a mini tour around Honolulu and the Eastern side of Oahu. We started out going to the Nuuanu Pali Lookout. An incredible view and June told me that the Lookout was also considered to be a spiritual place by the Hawaiians. It was pretty windy, but we were able to get a gorgeous view of Honolulu.

Nuuanu Pali Lookout

Then we continued on to Kailua and eventually Lanikai. After sitting on the Lanikai beach for a short spell, we drove on to Waimanalo and then Hanauma Bay. Eventually we ended up back in Honolulu and headed toward Waikiki Beach and then back to June’s house in Pacific Heights! Phew, what a tour! But I definitely have a better understanding of Oahu and I must say it’s a pretty cool island!

Hanauma Bay

TADAAA! I made it!

On Thursday evening, I left for Honolulu. It was weird even boarding the plane in Oakland, because I could already tell that I was entering into a different world. I can't exactly put my finger on what about it was different, but maybe it was the variety of people on the plane, all with their Aloha shirts and Locals flip flops. There was definitely a different vibe on the plane than there was in the Oakland airport. My family had just recently been to Oahu and Maui and they were all stoked for me to go and experience similar things. A number of my family members and friends were concerned with how I would like the local Hawaiian scene or if I would be bored with Hawaii. My Mom was convinced that I would love Hawaii, but I questioned my feelings about it practically the whole plane ride there. Would I like it? Would I get bored? I have survived in Pullman, WA, for over 5 years so I think I can handle just about anything now, but I still had some questions in my mind. Plus that I was nervous about my job, probably was why I had so many questions running around in my mind.

When I landed, I was off the plane for just 5 minutes and knew immediately that I would love it in Hawaii. Things just felt right for me, the atmosphere of the people and the air just really hit me, from then on I let go of the idea that I would get bored. Who gets bored in a new exciting place with so many things to explore and try out?! Shoot, majority of my time here I'm going to be having a hard time pronouncing everything that I won't even have time to be bored :)

I arrived in Honolulu where my cousins June and Matthew picked me up. Matt was the first one to greet me with a lei and then he helped me with my bags to meet up with his mom June. Before we headed to their house, we stopped by a local Zippy's restaurant and picked up a haupia cake and some donuts for the next morning. I can already tell this trip is going to be amazing :)

A vanilla chiffon cake with haupia filling (made from coconut milk). Finished with more haupia and coconut flakes.

Then we arrived in Pacific Heights to June and Matt's home where I met Vic (June's Dad) and we exchanged family stories late into the night. I went to bed with a window next to my bed where the soft Hawaiian breeze and sprinkle of rain sang me to sleep.

Yes indeed, this summer is going to be incredible.

~L

Sunset from Vic, June, and Matt's lanai

Last night in WC

Tomorrow evening I will be leaving for Hawaii and finally on my way with my internship. I can't believe its finally here, it seems like forever that I've been looking forward to it. I arrive on thursday and will be staying in Honolulu till saturday afternoon, where then I'll be flying out to Lihue, Kauai. In Honolulu I will be staying with some of my mom's cousins June, Vic, and Matthew. I'm stoked to finally meet them and get to visit Honolulu. Should be interesting how the first couple days pans out! Aaah! Can't believe its here, but I guess the ride has to start somewhere. Here I come Hawaii!!!

first timer!

Well here we go! I just finished up at WSU for the year and am now just hanging out for a couple days in Walnut Creek. I even got to sleep in for the first time in like a month this weekend and it felt great! Just tryin things out, so this is my first one and can't wait to talk to everyone later!