Friday, 30th March 2012. Day 1 of school. Orientation. Several letters and email reminders to inform me that if I miss this session, I will not be allowed to attend the course. That’ll be £16,444 down the toilet. I made sure to set my alarm. Several. To make sure I get to school on time. Nay! Early!
At 10am at 15 Bloomsbury Square, 130 new students (apparently!) attending the LCB in London crowd around the small reception area at the new school campus. The school was in Marylebone (not Mary-le-bone or bon, but Mar-leh-bone) previously, but moved to the new campus this year.
There are mainly 3 courses: Basic Cuisine (which is what I’m doing, which is the first of 3 modules to graduate with a diploma), Basic Pastry, or students doing the Grande diploma, which is both Cuisine and Pastry.
We (the Cuisine and the Grande Diploma students) were put into 4 groups: A, B, C or D (the Pastry students went their own way), and a chef instructor took charge of each group and took us on an orientation tour and talk. I am in Group C and had Chef J, who is Canadian and pretty casual. He took us to the first kitchen and that was when I finally, finally got excited! It was a professional kitchen with state of the art equipment. Very very cool. The only thing that I was a little disappointed with was that it wasn’t open fire cooking, but with induction hobs. But I guess I’m Asian and old-school that way. How to get wok-hei? In fact, cannot use a wok on an induction hob! But I guess I will learn to adapt.
Chef went through all the usual schpiel about what to expect from the course, etc, and gave us a tour of the various kitchens and demonstration rooms. Then we headed over to one of the rooms to get our kit! I got my Wusthof knife set. It came in a case and was extremely heavy. I’ve not brought it back yet to fully examine everything that’s in it, but we’ve started using the knives and they are sharp! Very cool. Very exciting!
Also got my uniform, comprising:
my school uniform
- 3 Chef jackets (the double-breasted type), with the LCB emblem
- 2 pairs of checkered chef pants, which are kinda ugly and oddly-sized. The medium was too large for me, but the small was a bit snug around the hips, so I decided to go with the medium and I keep feeling like MC Hammer (can’t touch this!). With so much room around my hips, I could be storing chickens in there.
- 3 aprons
- 3 tea towels
- 2 dish cloths
- 3 chef scarves
- 2 chef caps (not the tall toques which are for the real Chefs)
When people first started to know about me coming for this course, everyone kept asking me, aren’t you excited? And I didn’t know how to respond, because I wanted to be excited. But I had no time to get excited, because there was so much to do. I was working all through till the end of February (it had to be a leap year!), I had to pack up so that the apartment was ready to be cleared out for the great move later in the year, when I’m not around, I have no place to live (my temp lodgings were only confirmed like a week before I left), intellectually, I should feel excited, but I wasn’t as excited as what everyone expected. Stressed, yes. Apprehensive, totally. Freaked out, a little. How could I not be freaked out? I’m going back to school after close to 20 years to start all over again. I have no real plans after, no job waiting for me, and no income. It’s all rather frightening really. And… and… what if I cannot hack it? What if I was only, gasp, average?!!!!
But, seeing the kitchen that moment, I finally got excited. And getting my kit, everything feels real now. This is really happening.
After getting all sorted out with uniforms, knives etc and finding out where our lockers are, it was time for the principal’s speech. Welcome welcome, etc etc, blah blah blah…… and then, she went on about ways to get expelled. Cutting classes and being consistently late. Skipping a demonstration equates to 2 absences. If you have more than 5 recorded absences you will fail the course, etc etc. OK, all pretty standard. And then, she mentioned the internet. It seems people have been expelled for writing unflattering things about the esteemed organisation, and she took care to mention that they have an entire IT department devoted to trawling the internet for postings about the school, because they take the school’s reputation very seriously. Which brings me to why this blog is elceebee, because, while I think what I will say is hardly going to get me expelled (I’m rather exhilarated at that moment to be here, really), but who knows what the IT guy is thinking. (Also, another thought is that, well, part of my bloody course fees are financing these IT guys? No wonder it’s so expensive!)
After the principal’s speech, was the course scheduler’s session. Our first lesson would be on Food Safety and Hygiene. The very next day. Saturday. Great. School has well and truly begun.
elceebee 