Hanging in tough at G.S.

Man, it's been 10 days since my last off day..... and we've been putting in so much in the kitchen. First to set it up (in the 'borrowed' kitchen, cos' ours are not ready), and then move kitchen (to our actual kitchen, finally!!), and then starting to learn the dishes, have a tasting session, and then selected guests, and then to the public!! Within days of opening to the public on Saturday 15th, when we limited ourselves to 20 covers... tonight, we did a whopping 48 covers....!!! All these while we're still getting familiar with the mise en place (preparation in advance), and the final plating. It's been tiring, I can't deny that, 12 hours straight at work for 10 days in a row. To make things worse, 3 of our guys have resigned. Funnily, these are people who have had substantial experience in working in French cuisine kitchens in Singapore! I don't really know what the difference of work could be between their previous place and now... but it is true there's a whole lot of steps and elaboration to the final dish.

I'm not about the quit, the learning process has been interesting as the dishes are, and I believe I've a really good exec chef who's patient and putting a lot of effort himself. So, I'm in the garde manger station, there're 3 of us, but one is kinda 'dizzy' Malaysian Chinese, so he's got pulled out to do something else. The other guy is a young pre-national service kid who's apparently entered some cooking competition, very ya-ya, he wants to put his finger into everything and abandon things halfway (e.g. when a new order has been called out). And when something screws up, the superiors look at me. And he's super kanchiong spider and makes everyone nervous.

I'm happy to be on off tmw, let him do the station, let the others how he makes a mess of things and realise it's been him all along.

What's been interesting also is to see the man himself in the kitchen in the past few days, exchanging some greetings, shaking his hands.