#78 - How many pilots does it take to fly an A380?

I was waiting to board the plane when I saw 4 men walk past in what looked like pilots' clothes.  It could be that there was a navigator or a first officer (I don't know if he does any of the flying) or a couple of co-pilots - ages ago a pilot said it took two co-captains to take the place of a captain.  Anyway, I was wondering why they needed 4.  Maybe a couple were relief crew?  It was a 7hour 55minute flight to Singapore, then a 14hour flight to London.

Safely back in London

There was a moment of panic at the airport when I said something about a visa.  Note to self:  let the immigration guy do all the talking.  We managed to get my wording sorted out and he, not wanting to look through an entire stack of documents, looked at 2 pieces of paper, then sent me on my merry way.  You can bet if I hadn't had all the other papers, he would have wanted to see them.  Oh well, better to be over-prepared...

Had to run some errands before heading back to LCB - my first time at the new campus, so my camera was charged and ready to go.  Oh, and I had to get directions.  Lots of little things to do and I saw the amount of stuff I left at my friend JB's place - goodness there's a lot!  Luckily the largest box was full of supplies and ingredients and part of the smaller box had my uniforms.


So the first class was a demo - fun demo - it was the last dish I did back in November before I burned my hand - the practical is tomorrow morning at 8am - back to fish mongery (to be precise) and killing crayfish first thing, then a champagne sauce.  The champagne sauce was good and so was the crayfish one, but the dover sole wasn't my favorite that day.  Maybe because I'd been travelling for so long it was hard to tell which way was up.


30 hours of travelling then having to stay awake for another 15 hours was enough to make anyone pass out at the oh-so-partying-hard hour of 9pm.  You'd think that would help one sleep, no?  Well yes - for three hours anyway.  I was wide awake at midnight and didn't get back to sleep until sometime between 4 - 5am, then awake again early in the morning.  I was pleased to find out the cafe at school opens at 7am...except I didn't go in the side entrance and spent several minutes fighting with the biometric scan which actually doesn't turn on until 7:15.  Yes, they have biometrics - they scan in your fingerprint which opens the gates to admit you to the locker rooms and kitchens.  Um...they have reset my fingerprints several times - index, thumb...I was tempted to give the scanner the middle except that probably wouldn't have worked.

Our new digs are in Bloomsbury Square - opposite some enormous building which looks like it could be a museum or an academic institution of some kind.  I got there early enough to see the milk and other dairy delivery.  I'm not sure if it's a daily thing, but wouldn't be surprised if it were.  I love the idea that it's cold enough that they can leave the milk outside and that it's delivered daily.  There's something so anachronistic about it.


Luckily the cafe still gave me the student discount even though my finger didn't scan - probably because no one would wear the uniform as a fashion statement.  The time difference was sufficient that I actually ate breakfast - and the croissant was still a little warm from the oven.  What can I say, coffee and croissant are definitely worth waking up early.  It's nice to have the cafe - the breads look good and I can attest that the croissant is excellent.  I haven't tried the sweets, but they resemble some of the ones we made for the Superior Tea Party so I'm not really in a hurry to try them, although some of the banana bread type things would be nice to take over to people's houses or good with tea.  Or both.  Why choose if you don't have to?

First practical
I feel like I got started on the wrong foot today.  I got caught with my coffee mug in class (although I had it more for the fact that it was a warm drink which helped with a vicious cough, rather than because I didn't care about not having a hot beverage in class).  Then a surprise:  Chef JW expected me to take part in class from 8am this morning - blown sugar and a few other things.  I was under the impression that I would be watching only (so said my schedule), which was why I didn't have my knife kit or any equipment with me other than my uniform - the uniform being required if you are going to be in the kitchen.  My mistake - I got the knife kit and participated in the second session - a run through of the sugar centrepiece for the final exam, for which I am very grateful.  Verdict:  need a lot of work, but today was the last day of my group's sugar module so I have some catching up to so.


The photos...not so good.  My notes are somewhere between London and Sydney so I had to try to remember things.  The sugar sculpture is literally 3 ingredients:  sugar, water and glucose.  I just couldn't remember exactly when the glucose was supposed to go in.  The induction stoves are amazing - they heat up really quickly.  This is both a good thing and a bad thing:  good because you don't sit there forever, waiting for the sugar to get to the right temperature.  Bad because you could turn your back for a second and the sugar is all of a sudden much too hot (about 10 degrees too hot, although somehow I managed to save it).

I thought the sugar would be ok, but...well, not so much.  I got some good feedback, constructive criticism and a few useful tips, but it just makes me realize just how much I lost by being out of it for so long.  Perhaps I should have repeated Superior after all, but I didn't have the energy to sustain such a pace nor was my hand strong enough to handle it.  But back to the sugar - it was very plain - so much so that it showed all the flaws in the piece.  There was no movement and the whole thing just didn't look very good.  You forget all these little things (like a support for the backdrop) and try new things (which resulted in not having a very good color or assembly of the sculpture in general.  Someone asked me if I had to do the sugar piece for the exam - I'm guessing they asked because of the accident last term.  I told them it wasn't optional.


My group then had a cuisine practical - I didn't go because I had missed the demo for it last week.  I suppose I could have done it but I was a bit done in and I still had to prepare for tomorrow's class.  I decided I'd give the cafe another try - lunch.  This is cream of mushroom soup with croutons.  I assume the green on top of the soup is drizzled olive oil.  The bread which came with the soup wasn't very good though, so I ended up leaving it.  Notes are done and I feel a little more organized for tomorrow morning's class.  It's now a decent hour to go to sleep, so off I go to the land of Nod.


Apologies for any errors in this post - it's late enough that jetlag is making my thoughts extremely silly and disjointed.


So until next time, may you be free from misunderstandings and miscommunication.

#9 - First Day (aka Orientation) - 31 March 2011

So sleepy...I didn't sleep much last night because I was afraid I might oversleep, but am paying the price for it now.

Orientation
Today was orientation at the school.  We got our uniforms, knife kits, ID cards and security swipes.  I think they didn't want to overload us with information, so classes don't actually start until tomorrow (medium day - only 6 hours).  We have 2 - 3 days a week where we are there for 9 hours of class and it looks like we have at least 2 Saturdays a month as well.  This Saturday we have class from 9-4 (slight break - they usually start at 8am) with an exam at the end of the day.  We have to pass it in order to be able to continue the course - food safety.  I guess it's a bad look if we all kill each other off during the course - such bad PR!

As with the first day of class anywhere, there was the usual admin (attendance policy, assessments, filling out your contact details, fiddling with your combination lock for the locker) and some extra admin (checking we had all pieces of our uniform, trying not to die laughing at each other in our uniforms - more on that later) and a practice fire drill.  The fire drill had chefs herding their their groups of orientees (???) down whichever fire stairs were nearest.  All I could think of was how much we all resembled what I imagined the line of ducklings behind Konrad Lorenz must have looked like.  There just happened to be many more of us milling around outside while the chefs counted noses.

Schedule

April is a bit messed up - we get the entire Easter weekend but the royal wedding doesn't keep us from having class that Saturday.  I'm sure it will be a lovely wedding but it really hasn't helped us because we still have to go to class that long weekend.  So much for taking off the 4 days and escaping London.  Maybe I will just make sure I have done grocery shopping (or saved food from class) and hide in the apartment with a good book...

Unfortunately the schedule only goes to the end of this session, so all I know about late June is that we have our first day of the next session on 24 June.  This session ends on 22 June so we have a whole day between terms.  There are a few days where nothing is scheduled so I am hoping that there will be a few unofficial days off , in which case I will make up for missing the second April long weekend and possibly go somewhere.

For the moment, any thoughts of travel (with possibly the exception of the Easter long weekend) have been put on hold.  As far as I can see, we don't have a break until September 9 - September (30?)...

Pretty knives

There is a man at the Bond Street Tube station who engraves everyone's knives and other equipment (except a couple of plastic scraper / spatulas).  He was a bit overwhelmed when 7 girls presented themselves with their sets at the same time.  Luckily TN and I managed to beat the rush so my knives and things will be ready for tomorrow's class.  We don't start until the afternoon (3-9pm) so I even have time to go to ballet in the morning and then have a little nap before class.

I am looking forward to learning - all these important basics.  I think we actually put hands to knives on Monday - tomorrow is demonstrations only and I have no idea what Saturday entails but it is some sort of public health thing so they are bringing in outside lecturers from some government agency to do it.  I've been told that carrying our knife kits around without a lock counts as carrying a concealed weapon.  Or in this case, multiple concealed weapons?  But they are so pretty!  Surely weapons aren't supposed to be pretty?  I'm also wondering what knife skills we will learn in the basic Patisserie - other than cutting croissants (which is in the intermediate course, I think) I don't know what we would be cutting up for bread-ish type things.

Wish us good luck!  My current aim is to successfully finish the whole Grand Diplome course AND to avoid food poisoning - causing it or catching it.

Class members

It hasn't been confirmed yet, but it looks like our Cuisine chef will be Chef FJ, who took care of the latter part of orientation today.  There are five (I think) French chefs teaching various modules, plus a Canadian, an Irish and a couple of others.  I thought there would be more male students, but in our group, there is only one man (and he is doing Patisserie only).  The other group seems to have 3 men.  Although they registered about 80 students today, it appears that 20 of us are doing the Grand Diplome, so we have been allocated evenly between two chefs.
My class doesn't seem to have anyone who is already a professional chef - whew!  It's stressful if you think you are the one holding up the whole class.  That could still happen of course, but chances are less than if everyone had already worked in professional kitchens.

Uniforms (aka NOT the reason why I chose to go to cooking school)

We tried on our uniforms in the locker rooms downstairs between the morning and afternoon orientation sessions.  The pants are high waisted, houndstooth (navy blue and white) with elastic at the back.  Sounds oh-so-fresh-off-the-runways of Paris, non?  Let's just say that there is room enough to wear an adult diaper and two sofa cushions in the pants and still have room left over.  And they're long - I think many of us will end up just rolling up the legs because we need to wear them to all lectures/demonstrations/practical classes from tomorrow on.  We are allowed one opportunity to enter class missing an element of the uniform.  (I've never seen anyone wearing the neckerchief.)  After that, we are not allowed to come in and we are marked as absent.  If you miss a demo, you are not allowed to go to the prac (= 2 absences).  5 absences for cuisine = fail that course (i.e. basic cuisine).

No, we're not in kindergarten - but they are trying to teach us to be professional.  And punctual...punctuality is not my strong suit, especially since I stopped wearing a watch.  We are not allowed to wear watches in class.  So I now leave half an hour to get to class, even though class is 7 minutes' walk down the street.  I should say, I will try to leave half an hour before class.

So - we have covered the ridiculous pants.  The jackets - look good on some, look stupid on others.  I belong to the latter category.  TN and I are both short, with correspondingly short limbs.  This means that you can't see our hands when the jacket sleeves are full length.  Following the examples of the chefs, I think we can also roll these up and not bother with alterations.  Altering cuffs take time.

Next - the hats.  Ah the hats - they actually look good on some of the girls with their hair down.  They look good on no on with their hair up.  We all have to have our hair up (if it is longer than shoulder length) and wear a hairnet.  Nightmare visions of tuckshop ladies (cafeteria ladies for us Americans) have been dancing in my head since I read about the hair nets about a year ago, especially once the tuckshop lady had been explained to me.

Obviously none of us will be trying to look anything more or less than ridiculous.  The kitchen is not the place for fashion.  Or makeup.  or jewellery.  Or perfume.  My Dad would love it...I have to say, they are all sensible rules.  Plus, no amount of anything is going to lessen the effect of those hats and those pants...

People have asked why no photos of the uniform, to which I answer - because vanity knows no bounds!  Any lofty idea I ever had about not being vain (and let's face it, who could ever claim to be so, honestly?) have been brutally squashed on confronting the image in the mirror with a hat on its head.  I did say that I was going to share the good, the bad and the ugly.  This is none of those things so I feel no guilt in witholding pictures.  Who said you should always leave them wanting more?

Lastly...

The kitchen is a dangerous place.  I didn't tell them I am clumsy - but I have a cut on my thumb and I have no idea how it got there.  I don't remember using any knives yesterday and today at the engravers, the man showed us our toolkit and all the knives remained in their coverings.

The school says that we must notify the chef of any injury, especially if there is blood - so that they can assess whether we need to be sent to the emergency room.  They must be used to it - in addition to the war stories, they listed 4 - or was it 6? - emergency rooms in the near-ish area.  Thank goodness I already registered for health insurance!  Let's see - NHS:  check.  Private health insurance:  check.  Travel insurance (from Australia for this entire trip):  check.  They can all argue about who's paying for what.

In the meantime, um, Chef?  My finger wasn't bleeding so I didn't tell you about that cut on my left thumb, but when I went to dice the carrot...where did you say the band aids were again?  I promise, I didn't have any wine at lunch...