Chapter 198: Manager Heer Dina
“Hong Chang, just hand the kids over to me with peace of mind. I guarantee I’ll bring them over on time.”
“No, Dina, taking care of these kids is my duty as Department Manager. Before the visit to the vegetable planting area starts at nine o’clock, I’ll take them first.”
“No no no, I’ll take them over.”
“No no no, let me…”
In front of the First Canteen door on the Fourth Production Escort Ship, a man and a woman were putting on a scene like a skit.
The Nongda Affiliated High School students heading into the canteen recognized the man among them as Manager Wu, who had taken them to visit the Staple Food Production Department yesterday. Because Manager Wu had acted so unpretentious yesterday while circling around that prominent figure in Class Eight Grade One, the students had grown somewhat used to his demeanor after a day of contact.
Right now, they were more concerned about the new staple food rumored in the Class Group Chat!
The people in Class Eight Grade One had done such a good job keeping it secret that it was only after finishing breakfast that the message came out saying their class’s A Bite of China Club President had come up with a new staple food again!
The students from other classes thought about the new staple food they were about to see, and curiosity and hunger suddenly occupied all their thoughts, so they quickened their pace toward the canteen.
The employees from the Staple Food Production Department and Vegetable Production Department were also walking quickly.
The reason for walking quickly wasn’t because of the new staple food… at least that wasn’t the main reason!
It was because the one standing there putting on a skit-style tugging drama was their own supervisor.
If they didn’t walk faster and their immediate superior discovered them watching, who knew how their own boss would torment them afterward.
Yes, the one performing a neighborhood committee auntie-style back-and-forth tug-of-war with Manager Wu was the manager of the Vegetable Production Department that the first-year high school students from Nongda Affiliated High School would visit today, Manager Heer Dina!
When the Class Eight Grade One students followed Manager Wu out of the canteen, they happened to hear Manager Wu greeting her. It was Class President Lu Daiqing who reacted first; the schedule distributed by the homeroom teacher yesterday included photos of the persons in charge for this three-day visit activity.
However, the blonde woman in the photo looked cool and aloof, like a high-knowledge woman not to be approached, which really made it impossible for them to connect her to the woman currently grinning and trading barbs with Manager Wu.
This was also why the students from other classes failed to recognize Manager Heer.
It was only at this time that Xiang Chuan and Ainuo came out of the canteen.
After just finishing breakfast, she saw the increasingly long line for food, so she pulled Ainuo and ran back into the canteen kitchen to make some adjustments to the porridge cooking operations on the kitchen AI.
So they just happened to miss the beginning.
What’s going on?
She cast a doubtful glance at Ouyang Yating.
Ouyang Yating opened her mouth but ultimately said nothing, only looking at her with a helpless expression.
What else could it be? It must be because of you!
Liang Gong, standing beside Ouyang Yating, had already quietly made up his mind in his heart to message his mother when he got the chance.
As a member of Nongda Affiliated High School, he felt it was his duty to prevent something like the Fourth Production Escort Ship’s some department manager and other escort ship managers fighting over their own club president, which would absolutely become gossip news famous throughout the Production Escort Ship and Agriculture Bureau.
Of course, most importantly, he was worried that if his mother really got into a dispute with people from the Fourth Escort Ship later, he alone wouldn’t be able to stop it.
By a strange coincidence, Manager Hill happened to spot Xiang Chuan standing in the crowd, and her eyes immediately lit up.
“Oh, isn’t this Classmate Xiang Chuan! I’ve heard so much about you! Hello, hello!”
Manager Hill’s eyes gleaming as she quickly strode toward Xiang Chuan; her imposing momentum while walking briskly shocked the surrounding First Year High School Class Eight students watching, causing them to instinctively step back to both sides.
When Xiang Chuan saw the badge hanging on the other person was almost the same as Manager Wu’s, somewhat face-blind, she immediately realized the other’s identity. When Manager Hill looked at her, Xiang Chuan’s first reaction was to immediately hide in the crowd and play ostrich.
She could accept government high officials and leaders going home to freeload meals as her parents’ friends; at least in front of Xiang Weiguo and Lin Minzhi, these government high officials also behaved amiably and approachable, so she could hypnotize herself into seeing them as elders. But yesterday, after dinner, Manager Wu treated her like a 100,000 Whys version of an interactive reader, almost grilling her exhaustively on rice structure and various reaction substances that she knew nothing about, causing her, when dragged out the door this morning by Ouyang Yating and Chou Manman while still sleepy-eyed, to nearly jolt fully awake upon seeing Manager Wu. She even thought Manager Wu had chased into her dream to ask questions.
So it wasn’t strange that Xiang Chuan kept her distance from this Hill Dina, who was also a department manager. After all, from her corporate slave experience, people in the same position facing things that could boost performance in their duties often had the same mentality, even the same attitude.
When Xiang Chuan couldn’t retreat in time and had her hands gripped by Manager Hill, who began enthusiastically greeting her, she once again affirmed her corporate slave experience talk in her heart.
Workplace culture this thing, even 30,000 years later, doesn’t change a bit.
How tragic! While loudly “lamenting” in her heart, Xiang Chuan put on a business smile on her face and began chatting with Manager Hill.
If Manager Wu Hongchang’s attention level toward Xiang Chuan was Level 5, then Manager Hill Dina’s attention level toward her could be said to have reached Level 10!
The managers from other escort ships mostly only noticed Xiang Chuan’s existence from the field training live stream, but Hill Dina was different; she noticed Xiang Chuan from Xiang Xue’s SNS!
Back then, when Xiang Chuan started messing around with dough drops and yeast at home, Xiang Xue would occasionally post these unfamiliar gourmet foods made by her sister on her social media platform during meals, nicely satisfying her desire to share.
Of course, considering that Xiang Chuan hadn’t reported to the Information Turbulence Office at that time, at first Xiang Xue very conscientiously set it to visible to select friends.
And by a fortunate coincidence, Manager Hill’s Niece is one of Xiang Xue’s good friends.
After Xiang Xue posted the photo of Tomato Egg Dough Drops on SNS, Manager Hill’s Niece instantly became envious, and then she immediately thought of Manager Hill, who serves as Manager on the Fourth Production Escort Ship.
At that time, Manager Hill was worrying over preparing to reduce the Production Escort Ship roster for the Third Fleet. To relieve the pressure, she, who rarely checked private communications during work hours, unusually opened her niece’s chat window at that moment.
At this glance, she couldn’t look away at all.
Her niece thoughtfully also screenshot and sent over Xiang Xue’s accompanying text, and the dish name marked on it made Manager Hill question life itself.
Tomatoes? Eggs? She was very familiar with these. Tomatoes were from her department, eggs from the neighboring Animal Husbandry Department. She had seen the sight of these two things fused together countless times while observing the manufacturing of Solid Food and Liquid Food—the image of the squeezed tomato pulp hanging with sticky Egg Mixture could only be described as utterly unappetizing.
But the tomatoes and eggs in this photo before her eyes were different. The tomatoes were cut into chunks and immersed in the soup, the eggs—honestly, at that time Manager Hill strongly suspected whether the yellowish solid objects on the soup were really eggs—and together with the tomatoes they formed red and yellow colors. Not only did it not look disgusting, it even made her involuntarily swallow her saliva at the time.
The appearance of Tomato Egg Dough Drops greatly encouraged Manager Hill. She was convinced at the time that as long as this Food Manufacturer (the concept of Chef had almost vanished by then) could continue this kind of cognition-subverting Food Manufacturing, it would certainly point out a broad path forward for the Production Escort Ship’s predicament.
From that time on, Manager Hill’s Niece received an extra sum of pocket money each month. At the same time, she also gained some new tasks—forwarding the various Gourmet Food that Xiang Xue showed off to Manager Hill.
After all, many of the things that Xiang Chuan recreated from recipes searched on Geegle were first or second tried on family members at home, and there was still a long process to go before they could be officially released to the public. It was also from this time that Manager Hill learned that her niece’s classmate’s sister was actually a once-in-many-years Information Turbulence Contactee for their Third Fleet, and the Food she made turned out to be all Ancient Gourmet Food.
Thinking of the Twelfth Fleet stirred into a creation frenzy by an ancient text, Manager Hill was convinced that this Ancient Gourmet Food would surely become a major weapon to change the Third Fleet.
When the field training live stream of the Nongda Affiliated High School new student began, it formally confirmed Manager Hill’s conjecture.
When various “weeds” from the Nature Reserve were included by the Agriculture Bureau in next year’s planting plan list, the roster reduction issue that once gave headaches to each Production Escort Ship was no longer mentioned by anyone. Some even joked that if Xiang Family’s young lady visited the Botanical Garden or Nature Reserve a few more times, the Agriculture Bureau might even propose to the higher-ups to expand the Production Escort Ship roster.
Of course, expanding the Escort Ship roster is a major matter. The construction cost might even require the surface resources of two to three small planets. Without the group meeting approval of the Twelfth Fleet, it couldn’t be built easily.
But this kind of teasing also proved how shocking the Ancient Gourmet Food brought by Xiang Chuan was to people.
This also gave the practitioners on each Production Escort Ship a common wish: to chat with Xiang Chuan.
Although Xiang Chuan had been conveying through the uncles and aunts who came to the Xiang Family Mansion to “freeload meals” to the Government Departments that she actually didn’t understand complex agricultural knowledge, and many of the Dishes she made appeared to agricultural scholars as products where the “what” was known but the “why” was not, this couldn’t stop their impulse to communicate with Xiang Chuan.
The reason was none other than—Xiang Chuan was the only Information Turbulence Contactee among those who had appeared in the Twelfth Fleet so far who knew the history of Ancient Gourmet Food and ancient Agriculture.
The emergence of Yue Xiang Restaurant directly changed the dietary trend on the Third Fleet Main Ship, making the previously disregarded Agriculture become the focus of the Third Fleet Residents who already valued Agriculture.
In less than a month, the ancient knowledge that Xiang Chuan had contacted and publicly released to the Yue Xiang Group and to society was enough to make the fleet leadership collectively abandon the plan to adjust the Escort Ship roster.
She took a stroll around the nature reserve, and freshwater fish and overlooked ginger became hot commodities; she took a walk in the botanical garden, and the staple food department was about to cooperate with Yue Xiang Group to add new crop planting areas.
Even just yesterday, she walked a few steps in the staple food processing plant, and rice, which was originally not favored, suddenly became the hottest staple food.
Each production escort ship, especially the managers of the various departments among them, all wanted to lure Xiang Chuan to take a stroll and exchange ideas in their own department’s planting areas or factories—maybe they could come up with some new gourmet food?
So when the visit location for the first year high school students from Nongda Affiliated High School was set at the Fourth Production Escort Ship, Captain Mark Bay received no small number of “warm greetings” from captains of other production escort ships.
But who cares?
Manager Hill enthusiastically put an arm around Xiang Chuan’s shoulders and led her toward the area of their own vegetable production department.
Completely ignoring the resentful look Manager Wu cast from behind.
