Superior Cuisine

I touched down at Sydney airport on Sunday morning and damn...it was freakin' cold. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and I was almost freezing to death. To make things worse, there was an extremely long queue at the taxi stands and I waited for about 15-20 mins for a taxi. I was glad to be back...coz the next day would be the start of my Superior Cuisine course...and I was damn excited about it. I was so excited that I had a hard time falling asleep. However, the downside about this semester is that I have to get up before 6am so that I'll be on time for class which starts at 7:30am. Nevertheless, I was very motivated...even if it was a freezing morning, I would still make it a point to get up on time and go to college.

For this term, I had pretty good chefs. Way better than last term's. The only disappointment was that Chef Ross wasn't one of our chefs...he teaches only the Thursday-Saturday batch....which was kind of a blow for my batch. However, I am extremely contented with my chefs this term...they are all great teachers and very professional, especially Chef Tristan, who is my practical chef...he's pretty awesome. I gotta say...he's quite a serious chef...I mean he does joke with us once in a while...but he's pretty stern most of the time...in a reasonable way of course. He loves being extremely organized that he prepares some of the ingredients in little tubs for each one of us, so that we don't have to go get it ourselves which can be very inefficient at most times. In general, I like Chef Tristan....I believe that I'm gonna learn a lot from him this term.

Did I mention that I will be cooking in a real-life commercial kitchen for the college's training restaurant, whereby each student is in charge of a certain section?? I'm actually very excited about this element of the course...coz this is the opportunity where I can push myself to the limit and see what I can come up with. My restaurant chef is Chef Marcus....the chef whom I was never really a big fan of...just becoz I heard negative comments bout him from other students who had him as a chef previously. But surprisingly, he's actually quite a good teacher. He's very thorough and organized....and I learned a lot from him today when he ran my practical class. I guess you can never trust other ppl's comments completely...coz sometimes it's just up to you to judge for yourself. And for me, Chef Marcus is a great chef...however, not as AWESOME as Chef Ross!! Lol...Ross is still the Boss for me!!

So Chef Marcus has divided all of us into our respective sections according to our strengths. Not that he knows what our strengths are, especially since he only taught our class today...but he has put me in the most difficult section...the MAIN COURSE section, together with Roberto the Brazilian surfer dude and Sally aka Sonic, coz she's just so fast. However, I'm kinda glad that Chef put me in this section becoz I believe that the main course is kinda like my strength, as compared to entrees and desserts. I would totally suck in the dessert section...lol...I'm just really terrible with desserts.

Roberto and Sally is like two of the best students in my class...and I'm only average. I guess what I'm afraid of is that I can't keep up with the both of them...and they end up doing most of the work and I'm just gonna be standing there, folding my arms, doing nothing. You could say that I'm a little intimidated by them...but then again, it also motivates me to keep up with their standards and at the end of the day, I get to improve myself even more. So it's a bit of a mixed feelings teaming up with them....but I think I'm gonna try to make the best out of it, even if it requires me to work under them. Coz I believe that Roberto and Sally would be the ones taking turns to take charge...and I'll be the underdog that just follow their commands. I'm not saying that I wanna take charge or anything like that...but I do wanna be heard and I want my suggestions to count. I just hope that they wouldn't leave me out in the decision process...coz it would really annoy me if they did. I hate being treated like I'm invisible.

Anyway, I'm gonna do as much research as I can on the two main course dishes that we'll be serving...so that I would be on top of my game and there won't be room for mistakes....and I won't give anyone a chance to spot my errors...coz there won't be any!!

Enough about college!! Just now, me, Zalfa, Angeline and Gerald went to this place called the The Belgian Beer Cafe at Balmain for dinner and WHOA....we had an entree tasting plate, 4 pots of mussels for our mains and Belgian waffles for dessert. That was a lot of food...but we managed to gobble em up. I had a really great time and I enjoyed our conversations very much. Sometimes I get really amazed at myself becoz even though there was a generation gap between myself and the 3 of them, I somehow still managed to hang out with them. It's really weird....I don't understand how I do it...but I actually enjoy hanging out with older people than with people of my age. I find that there's more stuff to talk about with them....I've always thought that I was born in the wrong era...I guess I was right after all!! I think I would've enjoyed life even more if I was born in the 60s or 70s! That way, I get to witness live 80s rock and roll music....wear funky bell bottom jeans....and perm my hair real puffy!! Lol...that would be so fuckin' awesome!!!

So this week has kinda ended for me...especially that I'm still out of a job...my Thursdays-Sundays usually consist of 24 hours of TV and movies. I know I need to get a life...sigh. OH BTW...I just received my tax bonus of $900 bucks!! WOOOHOOO....I'm so happy coz I've been really tight with cash these days....but now that I have the $900 bucks, I can use it to get things that I've always wanted to get but just too broke to purchase it. There are actually a few items in my mind atm.

Nintendo Wii???

Camcorder??

Guitar pedal??

A good quality Japanese chef knife??

A vacation to Melbourne??

Gosh...I really have so many things that I intend to buy. I guess there's always gonna be opportunity costs that I need to for-go...that's just the basics of economics!! Sigh...how I wish life doesn't work this way. Anyway...I think I'm kinda leaning towards the camcorder or the trip to melbourne! Whaddaya think??? Give me some suggestions!!!!!!

Any-hoo...I gotta go now! I'll catcha guys later! Cheers!

-VeRoN-