Fill My Cup

Tuesday, 1st November 2011 was Melbourne Cup Day, it was a state public holiday, i.e. most workers in Victoria had their holiday yesterday. By the saying most, I mean some are unfortunate to work when everyone's working, these includes restaurants, supermarkets, and office.

Some might think why some offices still open even though it's a public holiday. The answer to that is because it is not a national holiday, so companies with national or international scale have to force themselves to force their employees to work!

But that doesn't come without compensation, full-time workers can choose between extra annual leave or double pay, whereas casual workers are awarded with triple pay, now that's a lot of money!

As for me, I have no classes as I'll be having exam and I have no work. As a matter of fact, I refused to, as my exam is coming up this friday, I'd better get myself to rest or study. I spent my morning for a yum cha in Gold Leaf restaurant, Springvale. My first time there, as I rarely go for yum cha due to them being pricey. Was pretty surprised with how big the restaurant was, the food was quite oily, but overall it was good. Then I had a Vietnamese Iced Coffee before going back home and spent the rest of the day relaxing. Nothing interesting that day, despite most people getting worked up on the Melbourne Cup and exams, for some of Monash students.

Speaking about CUP, I recalled my conversation with my friends last week about filling someone's cup. And it brought me back to when I was still in home stay, about 3 years ago. Funny simple topic, CUP.

"How much are you going to fill someone's cup?"
"Full? How do you define your full? Overfilling it?"

"Fill my cup!"

(For illustration only. Picture from http://www.aspetto.com/Houseware_Hearts_a_Plenty_cups.jpg)

"Is that the right amount?"

The story starts here...

My friend overfilled my cup that day, I used to overfill when I pour someone a drink.
By overfilling, we fill it so full the liquid almost touch the mouth of the cup!
Our mindset was the same, when want to pour as much as we can to the cup.
And then I realised, maybe that's the mindset for Asians, or maybe only Indonesians, I don't know.

I still remember clearly that how it happened when I overfill my host mother's cup with a tea.
She told me not to overfill cup, maintain some space so when someone's lifting his/her cup, it won't drip easily. I made sense to me, I used to be the very careful one to drink from overfilled cup.

Moreover, my host mother said that if you overfill someone's cup, that means you have something against that person! I was really surprised when hearing that. Talk about manner, maybe that's how European do! Yes they really love drinking tea, they were really a kind of noble and picky people, in my eyes, so I can imagine how you will overfill one's cup if you are mad, angry, or offended.

From that time on, I fill just the right amount of drink, not too much, but not to be seen as less either, just right. And I tried to tell my friends who did the same mistake as mine.

And somehow, I can't get my mind off this music when I heard the word "CUP".