Our food for thought this weekend is a short story of inspiration, how a small act of kindness can make an impact in one’s life.

I remember the chilly wind, the kind that makes you stretch out your sweater sleeves to cover the rest of your hands. I believe it was December because I recall seeing people outside their houses decorating for Christmas.

With my backpack on my back, I was riding my bike on my way to school, my hands freezing to the point where I could not feel the tip of my fingers. I could feel the wind hitting my face as I pedaled faster. My hands were gone, I did not know exactly what was holding the handles of the bike or whatever force moved it to the right direction. My nose and my ears were the next parts of my body to disappear. I was breathing fast but every time I inhaled, it felt like drowning. I clutched the handles hard to feel it in my grip as the houses on both sides of the street slid past me. The road was long, and bumpy but I knew better to just look straight ahead.

I was listening to music through my earphones coming from my music player, I would play the same songs every time and I knew that it took me twelve songs to get to school. I was counting how many had played since I left home when I heard a faint sound, I quickly pulled the earphones out of my ear and let my right foot drag the pavement to a sudden halt.

“Hey” I heard it loud and clear this time. I looked around and spotted an old woman approaching me. I was very shy then and I could barely speak English, so I was startled and nervous. I had started to wonder why I had stopped in the first place. As the lady got closer, I started to wonder what I had done wrong. “Hey, little girl, wait there. Just a second” she was trying to walk as fast as she could, she was an old lady, she was wearing white slippers and a robe. I noticed that she was holding something else, but I could not tell what it was.

She bent down to catch her breath and when she looked up, she held out her hand, “this is for you.” I was puzzled but I took it, it was a pair of gloves the color of the morning sky. “I see you every morning and I have been meaning to give you this.” I managed to mutter out a “thank you,” the old lady nodded and walked back to her house. I slid my hands in the gloves and immediately I felt as my icy rock hands came back to life.

From that day on, I wore my gloves to keep my hands warm and every time I passed by the house of the old lady I would smile. I was grateful to her, she did more than to warm my hands, she warmed my heart.

There are so many kind people, angels that are always willing to help others without giving it a second thought. Like the lady that gave me her umbrella because she saw me soaked with rain as I was walking home from school. Even though I shook my head and told her that she needed the umbrella too. After that day I tried to remember what she looked like, but I would not remember. I knew she was tall because it was hard to look at her face through the rain.

Or that time a man knocked on my dad’s car window and gave him the money that he had earned for that day working at a grocery and liquor store so that my dad could get a hotel room. My dad tells us that story all the time, it was when he had just arrived in the United States and could not afford to rent a place so he slept in his car and one day a man knocked on his window and told him “this is my earning for the whole day but you need it more than I do.” 

In this world filled with havoc, kindness flashes a bright light of hope. I have come a long way and through my journey generous people have been there for me, they lent me a helping hand and stood me on my feet when I was on the ground helpless. I am eternally grateful for them, and the lessons they taught me. I can show my gratitude by passing it on.

Two months ago, I decided to drive for Doordash in Vallejo. Despite of the negative reviews I read about this app online, I still wanted to give it a try and experience it myself. I wanted to know if I can really earn decent amount of extra money in my spare time just doing food deliveries.

WHAT IS DOORDASH?

It is a food delivery app. just like Grubhub, Ubereats and Postmates. It’s another way for drivers to make extra money just by picking up food in restaurants and deliver them in the doorsteps of the customers. It’s been well advertised in social media and it became an on demand food delivery service among students and employees. If you are looking for a side hustle or a side job and you are willing to make money through driving, will you take a shot becoming a doordash driver?

Well, here are some of the things YOU NEED TO KNOW on becoming a “dasher” (doordash driver). These are all based on my experience after being a registered dasher for months. These are all based on my opinions and thoughts to give you ideas about what to consider before driving with doordash.

10 THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE DRIVING WITH DOORDASH

1. Check if doordash is available in your country or location. Doordash is mostly available across United States and you can check your location in their official website. 
2. Most dasher’s only earn an average minimum of $6 per delivery or per trip. And in an hour, dasher’s only make an average of 1 or 2 deliveries depending on the demand or how busy the area is.
3. As a driver, you are responsible for your own expenses including gas, car maintenance, insurance etc.
4. Some deliveries will require you to place the order in the restaurant and pay the food yourself  using the red card that doordash will provide. It’s an additional work and longer waiting time.
5. The insulated bag that doordash provides will be delivered separately after you received the doordash red card. It is not necessary to bring the bag at all times since for me, it’s more convenient without it. However, as a responsible dasher, it is recommended to have the food inside the bag so that it will remain hot and fresh upon delivery.
6. There are high demand of orders during rainy days so might as well take advantage of it! You might receive 2 orders at the same time.
7. Make sure to have your phone all the time and have your charger as well in your car. There will be times where you have to call or text the customer if you have any questions about their food or if you are delivering in apartments where it’s hard to find their address or any issues you may have during delivery.
8. Don’t always go to places where the doordash app said to be “hotspot or red zone” because based on my experience, order opportunities in these places are very slow, it might take you an hour to receive just one. Stay and wait to places where there’s a lot of restaurants around.
9. Dash during peak hours like lunch and dinner. Doordash often offers additional tip per deliveries mostly between 11-1 pm lunch time and 4:30-8:00 p.m dinner time. But bare in mind about the conditions or terms on how you’ll be entitled for that additional tip. According to doordash, you must accept 80 % of the delivery opportunities assigned during the said time period.
10. Learn the art of declining orders. Always check for the total mileage you will consume, the kind of restaurant and how much will you earn in a particular delivery before accepting an order. Consider each of these things so you will know which one’s to accept or to deny. You also have to be aware of your ratings, if you keep on denying orders, your acceptance rate will be affected drastically and it’s hard to gained it back.

PROS

• The advantage of driving with doordash is that you are you’re own boss and you get to choose your own schedule.
• The application is easy and the app is easy to understand and easy to use as well.
• Compared to other delivery apps like postmates, in doordash you don’t have to worry about the customer’s receipt, you just have to make sure that you checked all the orders in the app.
• Also, the delivery fee that doordash asked among its customers all goes to the driver, this way dasher’s earn a minimum of $6 per delivery excluding extra tips.
• Another pro about being a dasher is that you can bring a family member with you while you’re doing the deliveries. One can be the driver and the other one can pick up to the restaurants and drop off the food to the customers.

CONS

• One disadvantage of being a dasher would be not earning enough despite all the expenses that you make from  your car mileage, gas, maintenance and etc. It can’t be a full time work since the earning is too low.
• Another con is the waiting time for orders, it’s based on luck how busy a day gets. Sometimes you have to park and wait for a long time just for a single order to come.
• There will be times where you receive an order that has not been placed or paid  at the restaurant yet, so this will be an added work for you and additional waiting time. In my experience, this only happens more often in fast food restaurants. Most of the orders I received was just pick up and drop off.
• Sometimes you have to drive long mileage just to complete the delivery and get that extra tip during peak hours.
• Doordash customer’s service is not a lot of help and slow to respond. There will be instances where customer’s ask to drop off their orders in a different address but then you won’t be able to complete the delivery unless you go to the address they stated on the app. Since doordash app monitors your location through gps, to complete the delivery, you have to contact customer’s support and explain that you delivered in a different location.

Above all, it was a good experience and even though it doesn’t pay much, doordash is a decent way to earn extra income. If you could do other delivery app such as Grubhub, Ubereats or Postmates, 2 at the same time you will probably earn more per hour. Good luck on your adventures! Happy dashing!

It is tough to live in a small village where there are not enough resources to grow, where a job is never enough to sustain a family. Feeling as though the door to opportunity keeps closing. That is exactly what happens in the short story La Puerta by Jose Antonio Burciaga. The author presents the story of the protagonist Sinesio, a man who seeks a better life for his family but like many families in other countries, he is crippled by the lack of education or job opportunities in his country. As the man of the house, he is loaded with a burden that he must do whatever it takes to build a better future for his wife and three kids. Men from his village are forced to leave their families behind searching for better jobs that can help them provide for their families. Sinesio dreads the thought that one day he might have to do the same, that is why he sacrifices his few pesos to buy lottery tickets in hopes that one day he becomes the lucky winner.

The author uses irony, imagery and symbolism such as the lottery, the door and the rainy weather with thunders to illustrates the plot and the story’s theme which is:

“How necessity leads one to take desperate measures to find prosperity.”

The setting takes place in a poor village in Mexico around 1992. Immediately the author gives a short overview of what a small village looks like. Using imagery, he describes it as “[a] busy avenida…the ramshackle colonia where children played in the meandering pathways that would soon turn into a nosy arroyo of rushing water” (133) this detailed description creates a picture of the place and allows the reader to become engaged in the story. The author uses the third person point of view to give the reader a better understanding of the characters’ emotions and how they react to the events in the story. One perfect example of this is when Sinesio comes home and sits quietly on the table trying to figure out a way out of his misery and the author lets the audience know how his wife Faustina, a dynamic character, reacted towards that behavior “Sinesio’s silent arrival always angered Faustina so she glared back.” (133). Also, the third person point of view gives the author the freedom to develop his style and he does this using dialect where he mentions Spanish words such as “nopal” “autobus” “barrio.” Such style enables the reader to grasp the essential theme of the story.  Moreover, it is the bases in which the author approaches the plot.

Sinesio is fighting hard, he wants to free himself and his family from an oppressed situation, a circumstance under his country’s poor economic condition. It is fair to say that the character faces a Man vs. circumstance external dilemma, where in this case the antagonist of the story is Poverty. Given these points, the author proves these elements through the use of symbolism. For instance, La Puerta or the door whose broken window is shattered and patched symbolized Sensio’s struggle to open a door to opportunity. Every day when Sinesio comes home tired from work and knocks on the door of their shack indicates that his job at the mattress factory is an attempt to fetch money to provide for his family but it is never enough. The rising action of the story takes place when Sinesio decides to leave to go to the United States upon reading a letter from his brother who describes the foreign country as the “country of abundance,” a place that villagers aim for in search for freedom and opportunity. Sinesio reassures himself and his family that he will be absent for only a year. With an ache in her heart Faustina tells him that it is fo­­r the best and says “‘Necessity­ knows no frontiers’” (133) she says this as she notices rain dripping from a hole on the broken door which symbolizes their poor economic situation and their need for a desperate change.

The use of irony­ emphasizes the character’s external dilemma. “‘That miserable, mattress factory will never pay you enough to eat with, we can’t even afford the mattresses you make!’” (133). It is ironic the fact that they cannot afford to buy the mattresses that he makes. The factory that Sinesio works in is supposed to pay him enough to make a living but instead, it becomes another reason for him to leave his family behind. On his way home from his last day of work, he overhears two men talking on the bus; they were talking about someone who had won the lottery but that they had not collected the prize. Upon hearing this, Sinesio remembers that he had bought a lottery ticket two weeks before. He would daydreaming about winning the lottery and ironically, on this day, it was the least thing he had thought of. Sinesio went from being happy to sad when he suddenly realized that he might have lost the lottery ticket and would never know if it had been the winning one. This turning of event is no surprise for the reader because the author foreshadowed it in the beginning of the story when Faustina glares at the lottery ticket and scolds Sinesio for buying it because she believed that he would never win.

The author sets the tone of the story with a stormy weather. The thunder creates a gloomy mood full of tension and anxiety as Sinasio runs home under the rain and once again knocks on the door. It is the author’s way of indicating that the ticket is the door to the life that Sinesio has been longing for. The author’s intentions become clearer when Faustina swings open the door. But getting out of poverty is not as easy as winning the lottery and claiming the price, for this reason, when Sinasio gets inside his house and asks Faustina where she kept the ticket, she has trouble remembering where she had placed it. Both characters cannot find the lottery ticket anywhere in the house until there is a loud thunderstorm that reminds Faustina that she had patched the ticket to cover the hole on the door to stop the rain from coming in. They compare the winning numbers from the ones in the news paper and they could not believe their eyes; it was the winning ticket. The impact of this realization is the climax of the story “His heart pounded afraid it was all a mistake, a joke” (135). Sinesio and Faustina were standing staring unbelievably at the gateway to a better life, the ticket to the future. However, when it came time to peel the ticket of the door, the ticket would not budge, their fingers slipped of off it again and again. The author took this opportunity to demonstrate to the reader that the way out would simply not be easy.

It is important to notice the author’s use of dialog during the falling action when the two characters discuss a solution to their problem. Faustina suggests that they go to the pharmacy to see if they could find something that would unglue the ticket. Sinesio thinks that her suggestion is absurd, the deadline for the lottery is at eight and time is running out. They try all possible ways to get the ticket off the door, but nothing works. Frustrated, Sinesio turns his anger towards Faustina. He accuses her of having little faith, for never believing that someday they might win. Although Sinesio has reasons to be angry at Faustina, he was overreacting. Faustina disregarded the lottery ticket because she deemed it unreliable. She wanted her husband to remain realistic, she knew that their chance of winning was very little. After they had tried everything, Sinesio is left with no choice but to break the door, the author described this event with imagery “he pushed the door out into the downpour and swung it back into the house, cracking the molding and the inside hinges” (135). Not sure if he will make it on time, Sinesio lifts the door, places in over his shoulders and makes his way down to the lottery office.

REFLECTION

 In the short story La Puerta Jose Antonio Burciaga exposed the dilemma of the protagonist Sinesio who got stuck in a situation that he did not want to be in. The author’s writing technique where he incorporated the use of literary devices such as imagery, irony and symbolism helped develop an intriguing story that captivates readers. The author does not deliver a resolution to the story. He leaves it to the reader to determine whether Sinesio makes it on time to claims his prize or becomes disillusioned and goes back to his old life. The ending of the story indicates that there is hope and the author wanted the reader to understand that even though there were many obstacles that prevented Sinesio from getting the lottery ticket, he is still fighting. Sinesio is a hardworking man that would do anything to offer his family with a better life. It becomes hard for Sinesio to keep his life under control, as his quest to escape poverty keeps slipping out of his hands which provides the reader with an important lesson of how one should never stop believing.

I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as you enjoyed my previous essay!