This is my first visit to Felix Project on their new site in Origin Business Park. They shifted to the new site last week. So most of the things were not set up and in packs. The kitchen was one of them.

As it was a new site, I was given an induction by the staff member. The current warehouse was used by Ocado. So I could see a lot of signs saying "Felix personnel only. Not for Ocado".

The warehouse is enormous but it definitely needs some acoustic treatment as every drop makes quite a lot of noise. The cooler was set up right in the middle of the warehouse. It felt like an alien contamination room from the movies. 5/6 shipping containers are welded together to make this cooler.

Usually, the sorting will happen on the outside, and only the foods stored inside the cooler. But in the new site, the sorting occurs inside the cooler as well. So I had to prepare myself to stay inside a Fridge for 4 hours. I put on some thick jackets and gloves.

If you think the outside warehouse is noisy, then the cooler is even loud. It's impossible to have a conversation inside the cooler when sorting the food. Hopefully, the sorting will move outside once all the things are set up. After an hour of sorting my fingers became numb from the cold, so I took a break and warmed myself with a cup of tea.

When we are not sorting, we are splitting the crates and layering them with newspapers. I was sorting till 11:30 and decided to leave the cooler and do something on the outside.

For the final hour, I paired up with two more volunteers to sort potatoes, jumbo courgettes, and broccoli in pallets. I finished my 4-hour shift with another cup of tea.

It's 12 pm when I split from Kash and Sevan in West Ealing. Is it Lunch time or volunteering time, I asked myself. Why not both said the mind voice. I started walking towards such a place.

This is my second time going for a warehouse shift in the Felix project at Acton. 4th time overall with Felix(Both Poplar and Acton). The shift starts at 1 pm and arrived there at 12:45. After finishing lunch and a cup of tea, I joined the team in sorting out the food.

Took me a few minutes to shift my mind towards working in Felix, as I was still fresh with City Harvest tasks. We took out 15kg bags of potatoes and split them into three trays. After the potatoes are trayed, then came the tomatoes. There are some wonky ones in the bunch.

There were quite a lot of spoiled ones in the batch of oranges we did next. As there were a couple of second-timers and some looking for guidance on what to do next, I used my warehouse experience and did a bit of coordination, when the Felix workers went out to load the vans.

Volunteer - Where does this go?

Me - Let's put that here. And this goes there.

Volunteer - Sure

Me - Sorry, I may not be the right person to say that. I was just guessing. Better ask the Felix team

Volunteer - Well, you sounded confident and know what you are saying. Let's go with that.

While loading the oranges, I was asked to help with loading the crates into the van. We loaded two vans and it came to the end of my shift. I took an iced coffee and had a lemony donut and started walking towards Mr.S for my gardening mission.

This is my first visit to the Felix project. I reached 30 minutes earlier than my slot time only because I got the timings wrong. After signing in, I was asked to wait in the kitchen area as there was one more first-time volunteer visiting today.

I spent some time trying to figure out how to use the coffee machine and luckily a Felix staff member assisted me in getting my morning caffeine in. High vis - check, gloves - check, name tag - check, Safety boots - ???. Felix team had safety boots for everyone. After booting up, I was given an overview of what today's tasks are going to be.

Sorting food by type and use by date. Having done a couple of city harvest missions, I smoothly transitioned to the task. After the first hour of sorting, weighing, and labeling the food, all the volunteers took a short tea break. Then we continued doing the same for the remaining 1 hour.

The only complex thing I faced today was weighing as I had to calculate the average weight of each crate and mention them in the labels. There was a table that I needed to follow and used calculators for doing the same.