Wednesday, 11 June 2008

Back in S'pore! Having fun plus french lessons

lol, sorry guys that this post took so long to arrive. I was enjoying myself this few days when I got back on the 8th. I had dinner plus movie (Kungfu Panda, really good) with my family. I went to service my laptop too. It was really bad, slow and laggy despite the 2 Gb RAM and 2 Ghz processor. Furthermore, the sound of my fan in the laptop was really really loud. I really hope I can my laptop back to its original settings, real fast and quiet. I also went out with my friends. Really fun, playing LAN (Dota and other warcraft 3 custom games). I ate my favourite food: Cha Siew Rice. Then they stayed overnight. We played some drinking games (really crazy) but fun. Next day, I was just slacking around, and then talked with my girlfriend. Didn't realized that I had a webcam in my house till my dad told me and took it out for me. We saw each another through webcam, I was really happy but sad that she couldn't be with me or me not being with her.

Chaki~, Bogosipo, Sa-rang-he-yo! Your teddy bear misses you! =)

Well, I should be going the PC fair tomorrw then have fun during my break plus exercise plus, I'm taking french lessons to prepare myself for my internship in geneva.

Okay then, Cya guys!

Tuesday, 3 June 2008

YEss...5 more days and Home Sweet Home!

Yea....the day when i'm leaving for home is getting close. Another 5 more days! Actually it's 4 but I spend 1 day on the plane back to Singapore. Woo..I just finished my I. T. and Accounting exams today. It was really good. I'm praying hard that I can get another 10 for I.T and hopefully 10 for accounting too. ^^

I had F and B exam yesterday. It was alright, considering that I had to memorise 20 wine labels plus 5 countries on their regions and wines. Phew...I'm glad I'm done with that. Well, hotel operation's tomorrow. I just got back from shower and had dinner. It's 8.26pm but it's really bright here. Summer's the season now. Sunset's at 10pm, lol. Weird but it sure feels like the day is long.

Kk, I can't wait to get back home. 5 more days and counting......

Thursday, 22 May 2008

End of CBL!

Sorry for the late post, I was busy with school and my F and B wine project last week.

I finished CBL (my service and kitchen practical) !!!!

okay....that was 1 and a half weeks ago. Sorry for the delay. It was fun and interesting, overall. I did 2 days of pastry a la carte and made many desserts....so nice....and no stress compared to hot a la carte kitchen. For the last day of a la carte kitchen, I was in cold kitchen, having fun decorating the starter plates with salad and stuff.

Wow....2 weeks of service and 2 weeks of kitchen....just like that...it's over...I'm really gonna miss it. No school, no homeworks, no projects....just working and working and working...makes me feel like I'm in an actual cafe and restaurant during my practicals.

Hmm, I was looking through my previous post and I don't think I mentioned my 1st week of kitchen practicals. The 1st week of kitchen was quite boring...just cutting and cutting at the kitchen production. Oh yea, kitchen production means cooking for the student population at the cafe....so it's like mass cooking for a lot of people beforehand. A la carte, on the other hand, means to cook for 1 portion per plate when ordered. Of course, I found a la carte kitchen more exciting than kitchen production but still....CBL's over! (Yay and sad)

Now, I'm back to normal school life for 1 and a half weeks already. It's been normal....lessons and lessons...2 more weeks to final exams!!! Gonna study over the weekends....

And then after exams.......HOME SWEET HOME.....Yeaaa =)

Argh, I'm not bringing my gf back though. I think I told some of you that she's coming with me to Singapore for the long vacation but her family seems to be experiencing some difficulties so she needs to go back.

CHA kI ~~, I'm gonna miss you ~~~~

Tuesday, 6 May 2008

Kitchen Practical....phew.....

Wow....i just finished my second day of kitchen practical. I was really disappointed with myself though, I performed really badly for a-la-carte hot kitchen today. It's my second time at hot kitchen because I did that yesterday too and yet.... -.- screw ups... and panicking when so many firing of main course came at the same time. I mixed up garnish and damn, the rice today was so bouncy, I couldn't fix it properly. The decoration of the dishes were really bad and we even had the chefs to help us out.

It was so different yesterday. Amy, Grace and I were really focused on the presentation of the dishes. There were no mistakes yesterday and we were praised by chef Didier for our good teamwork but today was...argh... Sian 1/2Anyway, I was made the chef today because I had experience from yesterday but I don't think I did a good job though. Won't be surprised if I get a bad grade for today.

Oh well, I'll just look forward to tomorrow...I will in pastry making desserts....sweet~~

Oh yea, some pictures that were taken last saturday.

Asian Hangout in my room






















































































Chicken curry plus Hainanese Chicken rice thanks to Jer and Ron = Really good food and homesick for S'pore food! haha, 5 more weeks till I'm back!
Cha Siew Rice....I'm coming for youuuu!

Sunday, 27 April 2008

My Singapore, My home....

Sup guys, just finished my service practical. PHEW, I'm done for service..finally...2 weeks of it..but I really learned a loooott of stuff, thanks to the service instructor, Mr Oriol for his guidance. I learned the most when I was waitering in Bellevue, the fine dining restaurant in school. It's not that simple as it looks, just serving and clearing, there's still a lot of other stuff behind like setting up cutlery, crumbing down, serving wine, punching in the orders in the micros system, collecting orders at the kitchen. It was really fun and interesting, although it can be sometimes stressful, considering that I served 7 people in a table for my first day. I served the academic dean on the second day plus another table and I served 2 tables on the third and fourth day. Luckily, the last day was the easiest, only 1 table of 3 and it was my cha-ki's table! ^^

All in all, service practical was really nice, gonna miss it, be it restaurant service or cafe service. Runner, stewarding, waitering....

I just ended my weekend duty in Cafe, service for brunch and dinner. Guess what? On my way back to the room, smelt Singaporean food in Ron's room! (My Singaporean classmate).

Ahhh, Hainan Ji Fan!! Chicken rice! It was really good, hands down to Ron's cooking. The rice was nicely flavored with the chicken stock and ginger, and then I thought, why not listen to Singapore music and eat Singaporean food?

Lol, we started to listen to Singapore NDP songs with Jermaine and Hatta. Ahh..the good old singapore songs...really makes wanna go home as soon as possible. " Count on me Singapore", "My Island, Home", "We will get there", and "Home".

I think "Home" is the best NDP song ever. I'm still listening to it on Youtube as I'm typing down this post. I'm feeling really nostalgic now....This is home~~~, Truly~~~ Where I know I must be~~~

Lol, kk I think I better stop it. Okay, I'm going to shower now and then finish my English project due on tuesday. Au revoir!

Monday, 21 April 2008

CBL starts!!!!!

Ah, just finished 1 week of CBL ( Craft Based learning) Practicals in school. It was fun. CBL is like practical lessons in the hospitaity industry aspects. I started in the service first with my first week (14th April - 18th April) in cafe. It was simpler than the fine dining service since I was serving in Cafe Vennois in school but it was busier and more hectic. Still, I feel that it was really a good experience and I'm really happy with my service group members who were there to support and motivate each other.

OH yea, it was really a long day for last week. We had breakfast, lunch and dinner to serve the school but the key event was during lunch where we had to do setting up of table (mise en place) and announce the soup of day along with serving water. Dinner wasn't so bad since it was buffet style and people helped themselves to everything. Haha, and there were many functions of a waiter in the cafe. Besides waitering, I did stewarding (emptying food waste and arranging used plates and cups in trolleys to be brought to the back of the kitchen for cleaning) and runner (in charge of transporting clean plates to the front and bringing dirty ones to the back). Yea, it was kinda tiring but I liked it.

So, I just did my first day of fine dining service in Bellevue restaurant in school. It was nice. The pace was slower and not so tiring but the service section was more demanding. We served breakfast and lunch. Waitering for breakfast was okay, I only had to pour coffee for guests who wanted it. Lunch was a-la-carte, meaning we have to take orders from guests who are presented with menus for a 3 course meal: starter, main course and dessert. We had to serve bread and butter at the start, take orders, set up cutlery for starter, main and desserts, clear plates, monitor water glasses to see if it's empty and......Smile! I still need to practice on that.

Phew, I'm glad it's over for the day. My very first day and I was given a table of six! In the end, it turned into 7 people (All teachers)! It was a bit nerve recking at the start and I almost messed up since I was scribbling badly on my paper taking the orders but in the end, it turned out well. When I reflected back on the day, it wasn't THAT bad. I didn't make any major screw ups and I only had to serve for breakfast and lunch. So.... I was free at 2 for the whole day..but..still have to wake up at 6am everyday.

Hmm, it's 4.15pm in the afternoon now. I can't wait for kitchen practical to start though. It's nice to serve but I like to make food for people to eat as well.

Well, that's all for today. Haha, and I apologize for the late post. Been busying, mostly lazy but hey, I still posted this right? ^^ Till then!

Wednesday, 9 April 2008

Still Mid term break time!

































This was when i went to the food museum during the term break. It's was a school trip meant for going to the chocolate factory but they canceled last minute -.- lol, we playing "masa masa"




















Lol, daniel's hungry...








Jenny's eating too much already...

More mid term break stuffs...Skiiing!





















ME!













My Ski blades!!!














Good views!

































Me and my friend's brother's girlfriend
















Sorry, no flash turned on, andy, me and his bro

Monday, 31 March 2008

Mid term break.....OVer??

Sorry guys for the really late post, it's been like 3 weeks since I last posted. So I promise this post's gonna be long. A looot of stuff happened....lol. I did a presentation on Hotel Operations with my group, turned out well..though we were rushing during the last day to prepare our powerpoint slides but still..we made it. I thought we did good, so I'm hoping for a good grade. That was the week before my mid-term break. My mid-term break was on the 21st March to the 30th March which is yesterday....

The eve of the beginning of the break...

I must be really suay~...

It was after school, in the night. Me and my room mate (Daniel) thought of going down to town to grab a kebab at Paradise (It's really good) since everyone else was out at Black Pearl ( Club in Montreux) So, ok...we went down by the furnicular, walked to the cafe and ate. It was still alright and then, I saw the time: 1230am. So, I thought we had better go back before the furnicular shuts off. We reached the furnicular at 1.10am and I looked at the schedule: Last departure is at 1.30am..so we went in.

Here's where it starts....the freaking furnicular suddenly shuts down at 1.20am! Me and Dan were like Wtf? And then, I thought it'd turn on again at 1.30am to go up back to school. Little did I know that it was still dark at 1.30am...

2am....2.30am...the furnicular won't move...AND WE WERE STUCK FOR THE NIGHT! The worst thing is it shut off its heater and the seats are really hard. And so, we slept with the cold and the hard "bed". I was supposed to wake up early in the morning during the next day to meet my friends at Lausanne for a trip around Switz.

I woke up again at 3am. Couldn't sleep because it was sooo cold, it's like below 10 degrees. Imagine sleeping in your freezer for the night, it's crazy. And i also couldn't sleep because Dan was snoring soo loudly...

It was the worst night of my life.

3.15am. Dan woke up because of the cold also and we decided to just chit chat till it starts to the leave in the morning. (5.25am) So..funny, we were like sitting next to each other, shivering throughout the night.

That was JUST the eve of the break...

kk, it's 1.04am in the morning. School's starting in 9 hours time. I had better go sleep. Promise to you readers I will continue tomorrow!

So......Stay tuned to the sequel of....Casper's Mid-term break special!

^^

Monday, 10 March 2008

Another school day

It's Monday afternoon at approximately 12.20pm. Just had my lunch, before that, I had my Hotel operations exam. It wasn't that bad, hoping for a 8/10. Oh yea, got my accounting exam results last week.....9.6/10. Nice start for me, I'm aiming for a 8.5 or 9 for my average over 10. Must continue to study hard and make sure Singaporeans own the honor roll in Glion, lol! There's another Singaporean in the same class as me, Ronald, Smart arse guy..hahaa. I think he had 9.6 for accounting also and he's the academic support in my class. Any academic problems, he'd be able to solve it.

I'm now waiting for my IT class to start in an hour's time. While waiting, took a picture of the view in the room.....


















云海!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The clouds drifting below the mountains...looks so nice. I still remember mummy being so 在意 about 云海. Lol, somehow, I miss quarreling with my sister, talking animes and games and US dramas with my bro, going out for dinner with my family on sundays.....haii....miss the "gaying" around with de-gua, p-gua, hou gay, tin, yang you (yanyu), niao (bird), jie wen!

Seriously, I can't wait for National Service man, at least I'm back in Singapore and I can book out during weekends to see my family and friends. 1 year and 3 months counting down to graduation of my Diploma!!!!

OH yea, went to Beijing town restaurant yesterday for dinner with my room mate, Daniel (he's from Indonesian). Finally, I got to taste my Fried rice! Though salty, being able to taste it had such a good feeling. Too bad, they didn't have YangZhou fried rice. I would have preferred that.

One of the classes in school just finished their Craft Based Learning (CBL) yesterday. It's like practical lessons in school whereby we have to work in the restaurants and cafe to serve and cook food for the student population. Jermaine, another Singaporean just finished her CBL so my room mate's having CBL now. My class is the last class to do it. Well, it looks fun and interesting but it's tiring...or so I have heard.

Anyway, that's all for now! CYa!

Thursday, 6 March 2008

Snow?!

woo hoo, it was snowing today at school. Sooo niceeee, woke up in the morning and saw the beautiful scenery at my window. It snowed last night on the top of the alps and created a line: top covered with snow and the bottom was forested green. Too bad I didnt take a picture of it.

Anyways, the snowing first started during accounting today. Halfway through accounting lesson, bits of snow started to fall. It was so beautiful, too bad the snow's too small, melted on the ground instantly. There were some areas on neighbouring mountains where it collected snow and it was white. soo nicee. Ah, Crap, there seems to be something wrong with blogspot. I can't insert my video on the snow. I will try and do some other time, sorry guys.


It snowed around 9am and then at noon and finally at around 4pm in the afternoon. It was like snow, stop, snow stop, snow and stop.


I went to the fitness room after dinner, did some workout, mainly cycling to really burn down the fats at my abdomen. And then, I got a call from my classmate: the heater's not working for the tap and the shower. Wtf?!

I went back to room to shower and yea...it was true. It's freezing cold in the showers for the first time, so cold my feet went numb after wetting it for 20 seconds. I stopped the water, couldn't bear the cold temperature. It's seriously like bathing with the cold mountain water outside the school. I tried again. I wet my head with the cold water from the showers, 5 seconds and I gave up. It was like my head was having a brain freeze, just spraying cold water with it. In the end, I just gave up and dried myself.

What happened man...It was like the snow froze the heater for the showers or something.......so upset with it.

Saturday, 1 March 2008

It's the weekend!!!

Hey guys, casper here. Woo hoo! It's the weekend once again. I get to wake up late and have no lessons for 2 days..nice..well I'm just reporting what I did for the week anyway...

Had lessons as usual, hotel operations, F & B, basic accounting and English language. Yea, I know, why am I having English language in a hotel school. Well, the thing is all Sem 1 students had a placement test for the school to assess our English level. It seems that I didn't do well enough to be exempted from English. Apparently, only 2 students in the entire cohort managed to do so. Fortunately, I'm doing Academic English which is the highest level of English course in the school. If I pass my English test this semester, I can get exempted from English for the next semester. Yeaaaa...

F & B was nice. We had wine tasting session and more lessons on the different types of wines. Hotel operations was also fine: just lessons on rooms and calculations on how hotels did on their linen stocks.

I had an accounting test on tuesday, thought that the test wasn't really that hard (considering I had done accounting before). I'm hoping I score for that test to pull up my G.P.A for accounting.

Besides having lessons, the weather's turning better now. It's not as cold as before and the view from my room's getting more amazing each day with the clear weather.



Well, now I'm just slacking in the room waiting for dinner. Don't really know what to do during weekends though, considering the fact that I can't go clubs since I'm underage and shops here close at 5. Maybe, I'll just stay in my room and watch some movies online. The connection in my room's getting better. It used to be soooo bad because my room was at the corner of the building, furthest away from school. I used to get disconnected from the internet like very 10 mins. Now, not only do I get to go youtube (my school usually blocks it on weekdays), I stream videos very fast online. I just finished watching jay zhou taipei concert 2007 yesterday. It was soo good. I'll recommend it to everyone.

So, that's my plan for the week: watching more videos and maybe doing my hotel operations project. Those reading this, you can chat with me on msn if u know my email. I'm basically in my room for the week. Feel free to nudge me if you want, just don't keep doing that. =)

Cya! Au revoir! 再会!じゃな!

Saturday, 23 February 2008

Damn it

It's 1.07am in the morning, 23 February, saturday at Switz which is about 8.07am in Singapore. You must be wondering why I'm blogging at a time like this. Well, you see...the thing is, I was supposed to be at a club now, drinking and dancing (well not so much of dancing, more on drinking). The problem is I got stopped by the bouncer outside the club, Damn!

The reason I couldn't get in was that I was not 18. Well, I am going to 18 this year, just that it's on 13 September, not on the freaking 22 February that he didnt let me in. I don't blame him, he's just doing his job but I just got upset that I could enter 2 weeks ago and now I can't. Maybe it's the crowd that allowed me to enter the club 2 weeks ago or maybe I just wasn't meant to enter yesterday. I went earlier yesterday (Friday, 22 Feb) because it's free entrance before 11 I think and there wasn't any crowd outside queuing to enter.

Anyway the main purpose to be in Switz was for studying and getting good results. At least now, I have Friday nights free since I can't go anywhere (shopping centres are closed at 5pm everyday, damn) so it's a good time to do revision -_-"

I had a half an hour walk from the club to the Funicular to take back up to school and spent my time watching "I am Legend" that I got from my friend before I started on my whining on the blog.

Well, that's all for me. Gonna sleep now, See ya guys!

Wednesday, 20 February 2008

School work

Yo guys, It's currently 8.10pm here in Switz. Currently in the midst of my homework. Woah....F&B, accounting, I.T and some academic support stuffs. Most are due tomorrow. So what am I doing now, blogging all this?

Lol, I have no idea either. I just thought that maybe taking a break from work might create some efficiency for the later half. Listening to Jay Zhou's songs, ahhh...brings me back to the days in Spore doing kbox-ing. Aww..man, it was so fun and crazy man...screaming your hearts out, throwing the nuts and snacks that kbox provided to each another....hai....I'm missing all those man, Degua and P-guar. Damn gay LAaa! lol!

Oh yea, since we're on the topic of KTV, it reminds me of KTV that my school (Glion) had. It was on the recent Sunday, organized by the students for students. I hope I'm not offending anyone or anything but the KTV they have here is really quite poor. Unlike Kbox where they show MVs or AT LEAST videos, the one over here just produces lyrics on the screen with black background.

Yea, I know the main purpose of KTV/ Karaoke is to listen to the people singing with the microphone but still...I'm so used to watching MVs from Taiwan artistes which has storyline or something. Here's completely just.....pitch black..NIL, null..nothing..zero.

However, the atmosphere was there. People singing and enjoying themselves, people listening and supporting those who are singing. Most songs were country. Hai, they only had English songs here, if there's chinese...woo...I'll definitely be the first one to sing.

lol, I think that's enough for now, gotta go back to homework.

Thursday, 14 February 2008

More school...plus it's Valentine's day

Hello readers, well today's valentine's day but I still have school....anyway I don't have a valentine so it doesn't really affect me at all. Oh yea, just a shout out to all those couples out there: Happy Valentine's Day guys!

Well, it's actually 2pm now in Switz but I don't have lessons, at least not for another hour and a half. Woohoo...cuz
it's actually health and recreation lesson (H&R a.k.a P.E) for my class but since I'm a diploma student, I don't have that lesson for diploma course...nice. It's gonna free up a lot of time for me since H&R is 2 hours per session and I have it like twice to 3 times a week.

Yeap, I am slacking now. Chatting with people online on MSN, blogging.

Damn, my food is running out of stock, gotta get more. Luckily, there's a Asian supermarket not too far from school, can go there and replenish my stocks.

It's a nice place in campus. Good food from the restaurant and cafe in our school and we have a club that sells snacks. Many activities also in school like ski camps, snowboarding, this model night thing where students participates as models for a fashion show.

Oh, before I forgot, I went for an activity called Asian Food Night last night, made 汤圆, 云吞 : adding the feeling and wrapping it up. It was nice. The Semester 3 students who organised it cooked fried rice and there were also steamboat. Ate quite a lot...ah..gotta workout soon. Lol.

That's all for now, guys. I'm gonna watch Sweet Relationship (美味关系)that I downloaded from crunchyroll. See ya all!

Monday, 11 February 2008

School starts!

Sorry guys to keep u waiting, School started 1 week ago already so I think I better posting before I lost track of time in my blog. Guess I'll post more holiday pictures later.

School was fine. Still adapting to the environment though. People here are like all older than me but still it's a very good chance to get experience from here. My class has like 20 over nationalities, cool hurh...Classes are nice too. Teaching here is so different, lessons are opened to the floor for discussion. It's more like classmates teaching the lessons.

Oh yea, forgot to mention, my classmates has a mix of degree and diploma students (I'm taking diploma). So, actually, almost all my classmates worked before entering the school and their CVs have a lot of working experience and they share their working experience. Therefore, during lessons I get to learn things from them instead from the lecturers...for now.

I saw some of my friends from other classes today doing kitchen and service practicals. Very interesting cuz my campus has a cafe, a restaurant and a club. These places are served by students themselves so you get to see students as waiters and waitresses, cooks, dish washers etc. I'll be doing my practicals after my mid term break which is like last week of march for 2 weeks....so guys..wish me luck during then!

Gotta start researching on some group work I got today, so that's all for now. Miss ya guys!

Monday, 4 February 2008

My Trip in Switz

kk....sorry for being slow. School actually started already but I started on my post on my exploration during the 1 week before school starts.

I think I'll do less of the typing and more of the pictures.
(1 picture= 1000 words)

Lake Geneva






























Chateau De Chillon
(It's a castle)

















































Me Just outside Glion's Reception Deck

kk...I'll stop here for now. Gotta sleep soon, got an early day tmr. Cya!