It's been an exhausting but awesome first week on the job, and even though it's only been four days for me, I'm already feeling it. Foodwise, I've mainly had a hand in salads, vegetable prep, some stir frying, and deep frying. These are the typical basic tasks that you've got to get right before anyone's going to let you get closer to anything that's more important if things go wrong with it!
Fortunately this week, there has been a cocktail party for 400 or so shiny people and their partners, as part of the Air Force Birthday celebrations. Much like my days of being a waiter, it's good to do function work every now and then for something a little different, but I'm glad I'm not in the kind of job where function work is the norm. A whole team of about ten AC/Ws banded together to make what seemed to be millions of hot and cold hors d'ouvres to be served over two hours in a hangar on the far side of the base from where we normally work.
After the better part of two days spent prepping for the event on Thursday, we were crammed into a ute and driven to the hangar where the magic was going to happen. We got a brief tour of the cafeteria area where we were going to plate up our masterpieces, and I got my first look at a diesel powered fridge. The most impressive part was checking out the hangar setup itself... three Hornets were parked facing into the open hangar, with the sunset of a mild Autumn day creating the perfect backdrop to the central bar area, and surrounding white-clothed tables.
As people began arriving in Service Dress 1A, I couldn't help but stare. I haven't seen this particular getup often enough to get bored of it, and much to my surprise I found out that I'm also entitled to the blue woolen tunic with shiny buttons as much as all these officers were! The whole scene looked like something out of Top Gun, minus the eighties haircuts. We couldn't gape at the hangar setup for too long though, because we had to launch into plating up our finger food feast!
The night was a good chance to see what happens at both sides, because I got to garnish and set up plates of hors d'ouvres as well as jump back in the kitchen and help get food packed up into the van for transit. Function work reminds me of the simple appeal of logistical endeavours, and the satisfaction that comes from seeing a job done efficiently as well as successfully.
Just when I thought that doing Unit PT and then an extra PT class on Wednesday was bad enough, having only four or so hours to get any sleep before starting the early shift at 0500 on Friday became my true source of pain. Perhaps the two were sort of combined in a way, seeing as my arms were quite useless from the only resistance exercise I've done in a couple of months, and my body hadn't slept enough to recover from what I had done to it the day before.
Early shifts are going to be a way of life for me for a while, the rest of the month at least. I think I might get a tiny sleep in the week I'm on sweets, but then again with my inhibitions regarding patisserie work I'll probably be fretting enough to make up for whatever extra rest I could possibly get! The good thing about starting at 0500 is that the working day is over by 1400, sometimes earlier. I actually used to love doing agency work that started early in the morning, because you still have part of the business hours in the day to get your own admin type things done. I also feel like getting up at 0900 on the weekends is a sleep in, then I still have multiple retail hours left in the day to get some consuming done. Fantastic.
One of the cooks took me out yesterday to check out one of the bigger shopping centres in the area. I guess the main problem with not having very much (my boxes arrived from Cerberus on Thursday, but I was in no mood for unpacking on such a beautiful, sunny day) is that you don't really know where to start when it comes to buying things. I also had that weird feeling of being on parole, like I got the first time I stepped off base after four weeks of recruit training. It's weird mixing with civilians and doing ordinary things like window shopping with the general public, when you've spent most of the week in either a kitchen or a beige room.
It seems that the next few months of my life are going to parallel when I first moved out of home, and every minor purchase becomes an upgrade to my room. The same cook that emancipated me also lent me his old 30cm tv, and just like a true prisoner of beige, I was incredibly grateful and surprised at the offer, considering I've gone almost ten months without owning a television, and compared to a clock radio, it had upgraded my Saturday night entertainment considerably.
Never mind the fact that what I did last night was unpack the majority of my worldly goods whilst watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on tv. Now, instead of being trapped by commercial radio, I'm going to be a victim of commercial television. I'm not sure if that means I'm moving up in the world, but I definitely feel better for having a second electrical good in my room.
Everyone's been quite helpful and approachable so far, even though it's only been a matter of days in the workplace. I've been lucky to come here I think, because I've run into other Students of Merit and Duxes combined, and a couple of people that are my age have been good to talk to about whatever it is that twentysomethings talk about, which other demographics just don't get!
It's also great to get to know cooks that actually care about food, that have an interest in furthering their culinary skills and knowledge, and are also willing to teach me a few things. I guess the main problem with trying to learn stuff at TAFE was that everyone was at such different levels of skill and knowledge, and not everyone cared about the finer points of food culture, and with such a limited time to get through whatever we had to do, there wasn't as much of an opportunity to mine the Chefs there for knowledge.
My room feels much better now that I've filled the wardrobe and a whole bunch of drawers with stuff, I've got my own linen on the bed again, my books are all up on shelves, and a handful of photos and postcards have been pinned up on the noticeboard. It's only little things, when I think about it, but even when I come to the mess for meals and keep saying hi to people that are neighbours in the block, it all goes towards making this place feel a little more like home.
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