7. The only male receptionist, A

There were a few male receptionists working in a hotel, Adrian was one of them and he was the only male receptionist in our hotel. I was stunned to see him when I first met him in one busy morning, I thought all receptionists were supposed to be female. And it turned out a few men could be really qualified for the job.

We knew each other when we worked together as partners. We hit it off quickly soon after our first cooperation and had a lot to talk. Judging by his accent, I was sure that he’s not a local.  From our talk, I got to know that he’s actually from Yunan province. Adrian was our manager’s former colleague when he worked as an interpreter in Yunnan. He said the manager phoned him one day telling him there’s a job vacancy in Yangshuo and asking him if he would come by and give it a try as a management associate. He was between jobs then and it sound intriguing. It never came to Adrian that the position was indeed a receptionist until he arrived at Yangshuo and started to work in Aiyuan hotel.

I asked Adrian what he felt when he did the job. He said it was liking being frauded, but he gotta try it out since he’s already here after all. He lived at the dorm offered by the hotel not far, sharing with other two male colleagues. Adrian was an ambitious guy, what he wanted was far more than being a receptionist in this small town so far way from home. He was an earnest young man who did his job very well despite that he didn’t really like it. I never saw he did anything irrelevant to the job during the working shift. He’d tidy up the desk and make it neat. Me, on the contrary, always made a mess.

I admired him for his two bachelor degrees, one in Agriculture, his original major, and the other in English. This was something I wanted to achieved so bad in college, but I didn’t ultimately. With two degrees, he got more opportunities on job seeking. He told me that he's done many jobs, senior sectary for the president of a big company, interpreter and more. I asked if he ever regretted coming to Yangshuo and took the job. He said he was a little depressed at first, but he was able to deal with it very quickly.

Adrian was 7 years older than me, I learned a lot from him when we worked together. We were the only two employees who went to college in the hotel, so we always had so much talk. We discussed our campus life, what boring courses we had to take and what part time jobs we’d done. He shared with me his interesting experiences when he went to Australia as an exchange student which made me so jealous, because I had never been abroad. We made jokes about each other and spoke the same language. It was a lot of fun working with him.