Author Archives: Whitney

Mid Term in Marrakesh

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I have said it before and I will definitely say it again: Switzerland is one of the easiest places to travel abroad from to travel around. This past midterm two friends and I went to Marrakesh, Morocco for our 1 week midterm.

There can be only one word to describe the trip… AWESOME!

Having a passion for travel is something that goes a long way in hospitality as meeting new people and experiencing new cultures teaches you so much. The Moroccan culture was new to me and I had very few expectations when boarding the plane at 6am. I purposely did not research anything as I wanted the big surprise!

I was not disappointed. Marrakesh is a bustling and vibrant city. My friends and I stayed at a private home, called a Riad, within the Medina which is a walled part of the original city.

The Walls of the Medina

Riad Turkwa

The Medina is also home to the souks or markets where both tourists and locals shop and carry out their business. We were called by many a shop keeper to “look in” and told “for you, gazelle, it’s free”.

Lost in the Souk ?

Of course with three girls there was lots of shopping…

And eating…

Mostly, I ate olives!

We also had relaxing massages and spent an afternoon in the very colourful gardens of Yves St. Laurent, who spent his retirement in Marrakesh.

Les Jardins Majorelle donated by Yves St. Laurent

And besides from being tourists and visiting different places, we spent a lovely week of sleep and relaxation which was greatly needed. We’re back in Bluche and ready for the next few weeks of the semester which will be busier than ever!

Whitney

Les Roches Summer Batch

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After the meters of snow and the blistering cold we experienced in Winter Batch never did I imagine that we would have 30 degree temperatures and countless bikini days here at Les Roches in Summer Batch.

Since stepping onto campus at the end of July there has not been a moment to catch our breath. What with the heavier work load of being in BSc S2 and all the activities we have had a very busy start to the semester.

The campus is at full capacity and there is definitely a buzzing energy present here as we work and play together. The lobby is a hive of activity even on a lazy Sunday afternoon with those needing perfect quiet retreating to the Library.

The highlights so far we have been Swiss National Day, the Olympics and our first Mufti Day (Casual Clothes) for the semester. Coming up this week Friday is a Full Moon Party hosted by the Student Social Committee.

With a day off for Swiss National Day and beautiful sunshine we all met up at the pool for the afternoon and finished off the day with an amazing fireworks show in Crans Montana.

This semester is off to a fast start and our challenge will be fitting it all in!

Too much to say

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In Cologne

It has been far too long since my last blog post and so much has happened since then.

We all went off on mid-term break in the first week of April. One of the beauties of being in Switzerland is that travel is very easy and getting around Europe is not difficult at all. I made a weekend stop in Cologne, Germany to visit a friend and then took a train to Paris to spend the rest of the holiday. Both cities were absolutely beautiful. The weather was not great but a little break was good and it is always fun to spend time with friends. I even met up with a Jamaican friend in Paris by surprise!

From the Eifel Tour

We came back to school and went straight into the kitchen at the formal dining restaurant Le Tacot. For two weeks we worked as a small restaurant would. Each person worked in a station and completed a part of the dish all coming together for plate presentation. The first week was lunch service and we created a set menu each day. The second was dinner service where guests choose from an a la carte menu. I helped with cold kitchen, but was in charge of the dessert station, and I can now make very good crème brulée and chocolate mousse. Our proudest moment was receiving 100% for our dinner exam!!

Plates of cold appetiser for a Banquet one evening

After that we had the hottest night of the year: Auction Night. The graduating class makes different efforts to raise money for their graduation celebrations. Auction night involves bidding on each other to share a dinner date. I was “bought” for 175 CHF. The evening is always fun and we had a blast this year dressing up and having a laugh with everyone involved.

The girls at Auction Night

This past weekend a few of us braved the Lausanne 20KM run. Only 5 were brave enough to go for the full 20KM and the rest completed the 10KM. It was a very challenging run for us all but it was a good day and we made it back to Bluche safely.

After all of this and in between all of this we are working towards our final projects, assessments and exams. It would be safe to say that Bluche is very busy at the moment.

Les Roches’ Got Talent!

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Last week Friday we had one of the many fantastic Les Roches Events that will take place this semester. The Bsc S.5 and 6 classes and Student Social Committee put on the first ever Les Roches’ Got Talent. The event was held to raise funds for the charity porteBonheur in aid of Swiss Orphans. www.portebonheur.ch/

The organisers did a wonderful job of transforming the school lobby. There were lounge seats and tables for guests, a judge’s panel and of course a large stage set with lighting and ready for the performers.

Just like the popular talent shows we had a trusty panel of 5 judges who gave the performers feed back some of which was very complimentary and while others were not so lucky.

Of the 15 performers we had comedic acts, dances, singers, a rapper, and a band.

The event went off flawlessly with refreshments and snacks available throughout the evening. In the end the judges chose a winner.

Dorothea, an HOI, sang a beautiful version of Adele’s “Someone like you” accompanied by acoustic guitar. Her performance had both the judges and the audience singing along. She was given the honour of best talent of the evening.

All Photo Credits go to Lan Le Diem Tran (BBA)

 

Market Place Kitchen

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Market Place Service (2011)

Last semester when we were all in HOI, or Bsc P1 to be exact, we had Market Place Service for two weeks. We made it to work for 6 am each morning for a week, and for the second week we were the last to leave after dinner.

This semester we are doubly proud of ourselves as we have now completed Market Place Kitchen.

We considered this as a wild and wonderful place last year as none of us were allowed into the Kitchen. This year we tackled it head first and made the most of our time there. As it turns out, all the shiny machinery and large stoves are not as scary as we thought, and it is actually quite a lot of fun.

The time is divided into a lunch shift and a dinner shift. We had menu briefings and each of us was in charge of one element of the meal from salads to soups to large pieces of meat (dessert is taken care of by the pastry team). Each day we had to create a production plan to make sure that our timings and methods for preparing the food were correct.
We worked very hard at cooking and then cleaning. One day I scrubbed four different, very large pieces of cooking equipment, we were all responsible for the cleanliness of our stations.

I am happy to report that my class is still enjoying our good luck in not having too many cuts or burns. Wish us luck in our academic cycle!

Cold Kitchen preparing salads and cheeses

Dinner with the service team

Cleaning up after pan frying 200 pieces of meat

One of our great chefs

the whole team

 

Les Roches Internship Fair

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Each semester one of the proudest moments for the new HOII students or BSC S1s, as the case may be, is the Internship Fair.

It is our chance to show off what we did and where we went on our internships. As part of our internship assessment each student is asked to create a fact sheet about their hotel and experience, a report prescribed by the school and a display of pictures, brochures or any souvenirs they may have.

This is done in two batches and the results were amazing. We had 3-D models, glossy books, branded wines, sand from the beach in Greece, incense, music and various items from all over the world. It was a wonderful representation of the creativity of my classmates.

The fair is also an opportunity for the younger students to hear a bit of what to expect when they go on their internships in a few months. I very much enjoyed talking to my friends and colleagues to find out more about where they went.

Mr. Mioche the Career and Alumni Manager said a few words about the fair: Internship Fair prepared by Students after their first internship

Take a look at the Video below to see some of the displays.

 

Back to Bluche

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So after 6 intense months of being in South East Asia I am now back in Jamaica preparing to return to Bluche for my next semester.

When you go off on your internship you don’t really realize how involved you get with the place until you leave it. Cambodia was such an awesome experience and I have made many good friends who I will hopefully get to work with in the future.

I could not have asked for a better or fuller experience at La Residence d’Angkor.
As a Management Trainee I was able to move through more than one department, gaining a more complete picture of the operational areas of the hotel. I spent the bulk of my time in Food and Beverage, 1 month in Front Office, 3 weeks in Housekeeping and rounded out my time in the executive offices working with the Executive Assistant Manager. As the hotel is small and intimate, I have had the opportunity to work very closely with the managers of each department and to join the heads of department morning briefing, which has been so valuable in gaining insight into the workings of the hotel.

As one of the few foreigners at the hotel, I was able to really get to know the Khmer people. I answered a lot of questions, most about “my country” (not many people knew where Jamaica is) and I asked a lot of questions about how they live. It’s funny how little parts of their culture travel with you when you leave. I have found myself trying to thank people first in Khmer, then in French and finally, the right language for this country, English.
My last weekend there, my dear friend who worked in Malaysia came to visit and I was able to play a real tourist for a bit and then amidst tearful goodbyes I got on the plane back to Jamaica.

The holiday here at home has been too short, but so good to recharge and get ready for the fun we are all bound to have in the Kitchen next semester.

Bon voyage! to all who are returning and Bien venue! to those we will meet for the first time back in Bluche.

Whitney

Time for a Change

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For most of my time here I was in the Food and Beverage Department. I learned a lot about operations, staffing, service and guest interaction and a little bit about the administration of running the department. But after three months, in what is described as a luxury boutique hotel with only a few F&B outlets, it was time for a change.

At the same time, a bigger change was taking place, a new General Manager became a part of the team here. It is has been very interesting to see two very different styles of management.

So for one month, I trained in Front Office and for the remainder of my time I will be training in Housekeeping and very briefly in the Executive Offices.

In Front Office I spent time learning about reservations, guest relations, transportation, concierge, room allocations and some basic reporting. It was both a joy and a pain to interact with guests on an hourly basis, but I was reminded of why I love this industry. You deal with so many guests that smiling and making small talk becomes a chore and your cheeks build some extra muscle.

Then, there will be a guest who really makes your day, like two guests I had from America. Because of the flooding in Thailand, they decided not to visit Bangkok but to fly straight home, I offered my services to help them reroute their plane ticket. This was easier said than done and I spent the greater part of a day on the telephone to people in various countries trying to get the right flights. The guests were of course anxious (they were both in their 70’s) but I did my best at putting them at ease. Had they been different people, I would maybe not have tried so hard to get their arrangements in order but they were just the sweetest people and I wanted to help as much as possible. As a thank you, they gave me a little present and really flattered me with their compliments. It’s situations like these that reconfirm why I want to work in hospitality.

I have now started in Housekeeping and as I move from department to department my understanding is growing. Having a bit of knowledge from each area and seeing the context of its operations helps when you get to the next. I find that the big picture is becoming clearer and it makes me excited to get back to school and continue studying.

One more week to go!

Cambodia Travels
There are a number of villages on the great Tonle Sap Lake that spend a large part of the year completely flooded. They are mostly fishing villages and they carry out their entire lives on the water, transported by boats and canoes around the villages and to land for supplies. It is such a completely different way of life. The houses are all built on stilts that are 5 meters or more. In the dry season there will be no water and in the wet season the water will be lapping at the floor boards. There are schools, police stations, temples and pagodas for worship, shops, guest houses and government offices all “floating”. There was even a pig pen and chicken coops. However, while it was very interesting to visit Kompong Pluk for the day, I don’t think that it would be my chosen place of abode.

Baby Dara (Star) and his sister in the background enjoying a lollipop.

Kompong Pluk

 

 

 

Mobile Shop

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to charge your ever important mobile phone

Hitting the Halfway Mark

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The month of August has been filled with ups and downs.

For the first two weeks of the month the hotel was extremely busy with just about 100% occupancy and what is normally a quiet, calm place became a bustling hive of activity. As part of my internship package, I stay in one of the rooms of the hotel (I am one of the lucky ones) and because the hotel was so full I spent about 5 days staying in a different room every night and one night off property which was kind of fun but at the end I was glad to be settled in one place.

My major project of this month was to create a presentation on Breakages. At Les Roches when we break things (once I saw a whole stack of plates go down in Market Place) we get reprimanded and told to clean up the mess and life goes on. It changes a bit when the cost of the equipment you’re using is related to the expenses of the department and the profit of your employer and maybe even your staff evaluation at the end of the year. So my task was to make this presentation to see why our team was breaking so much and how we could try to fix those issues.

Cambodia Travels

We had a kind of Management Retreat which I was invited to join. I have to say that it is amusing to watch your managers, who would normally be well dressed in shirts sleeves and black trousers, wearing sports gear and jumping around with a badminton racket and playing volleyball. After we played sports we drove out to East Baray.

A Baray is a manmade lake and this one is part of the complex of Angkor Wat, it is not certain whether they were made for symbolic reasons only or if they were used for irrigation as well. We had lunch on the rice fields and spent a lovely afternoon eating and resting in hammocks.

Baray

The Rice Fields where we had lunch

Local Food

I also had the chance to visit Happy Ranch Horse Farm. It was almost like home and I loved sitting around playing with the horses and dogs and chatting with the stable hands (although I’m not sure they understood any of what I was saying).

www.thehappyranch.com

However, towards the end of the month, near to the 3 month mark I started feeling down. Internships are a lot of fun and can be very exciting but that doesn’t stop you from missing home. It isn’t as though you want to go home immediately but I realized that the whole summer had passed and I, for the first time, was not there with all my friends who were on break. It is something to think about when you choose your internship. As my grandmother would say, it’s “character building”!

Time flies when you’re having fun… or working hard

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During the first month in the hotel, things were not very busy as this is low/rainy season but now after the second month there have been a few weeks of full occupancy and I have a taste of how crazy it can get. I barely noticed that another month had gone by.
My major focus this month has been doing some menu revisions and putting together a Pick up Chart for the service team. My wine course came in very handy for this. I had an entire a la carte menu, an extensive wine list, pictures and an ingredients list to work with. It took some long hours of consideration and much back and forth with corrections and revisions between the Chef and me and the GM and me but I finally finished. Having learned the importance of knowing exactly what was on the menu at school, I knew the pressure was on the make sure what I came up with was on the ball.

So now every day in briefing time the whole service team is doing pick up chart training with an emphasis on the wine pairings.

Otherwise, I have been getting more and more used to being here and the different customs of the culture. And as I get more involved in the work itself, I realize just how valuable the little things we learn at Les Roches are. That when you know how to do something properly, it simply makes things easier and quicker. If I could add a word of advice to any new or prospective students: there will be times when you wonder, why am I learning this or how in the world could this be useful? Embrace all of the training that we get because it will be important and I am try to help my Cambodian colleagues who don’t have much formal training to see these little things and ways of working and adopt them.

Cambodia Travels

On one of my days off, I went to visit the BanteaySrey Butterfly Centre where they farm butterflies and provide some local residents with the tools and equipment to participate in this sustainable activity and a small source of income as some of the cocooned specimens are sold and shipped abroad.

I also saw the War museum where local men who fought in the various Cambodian wars have a tour of the old artifacts. There was everything there from fighter jets to landmine shells, most were either Russian or Chinese made.  It gives you a sense of the destruction that took place here,  but as I left, it made me realize how far Cambodia has come in the small number of years they have had war-free.