Chin San - 1st May 2015
It has been more than 6 years since Chin San joined Huber's and he is now fondly known to all of us as San. He lives in the western part of Singapore with his wife while his three school-going children lives in Batu Pahat in the state of Johor, Malaysia with his parents. Weekends are precious to him as it is the only time he gets to spend quality time with his children. Taking on a 90-minutes drive from Malaysia checkpoint to Batu Pahat is a weekly affair for San. As wholesale deliveries are also done on Saturday, it is almost time for dinner when he gets to his children.
In late 2013, Johor's Sultan declared Friday and Saturday as rest days for the state. Therefore, San gets up at 6am on Sunday so as to send his children to school. He then picks them up after school at about 1.30pm before the family takes lunch together at home. The rest of the day is spent supervising the children while they do their homework. On Monday, San leaves home in the wee hours so as to beat the fast-building traffic at the checkpoint. He is usually at the checkpoint by 4.30am so that he could report for work at Pandan Loop at 8.30am.
The saying goes " The things you take for granted are the things someone else is wishing for". San is grateful to his mother for taking care of the three kids so that he and his wife can focus on providing for the family. Instead of expressing this gratitude verbally, he goes against the wishes of his fatigued body and makes deliberate efforts to drive his mother out regularly for grocery shopping or to visit some relatives in Singapore during public holidays. His wife also takes over the cooking from his mother each time they travel back to Batu Pahat.
When San joined us in 2009, Alex (whom we featured in our newsletter sometime ago) was the only other driver doing wholesale deliveries. Today, we have 11 drivers. San starts off the day making wholesale deliveries. By about 2pm, he would be done with his share of morning wholesale deliveries. Then he drives to our retail store and picks up all the online retail orders due for afternoon deliveries. After work, San would rather spend time catching up with his wife on the day's happenings than to watch tv programmes. Would you be surprised to hear that San is allergic to alcohol?
