icy sparkles -chef school 101

Last night as i was cooking dinner at home after my birthday. I remembered the birthday i had during my practical months at Chef School. A friend and I had been working long hours at a prestigious catering company and after months of long hours and lengthy days, my birthday was coming up and i would have the day off.


Now to have a day off as a Chef is like finding infinite vampire fangs in a chicken’s beak. It ain't happening.So i couldn’t wait for this marvellous day to come. I started to count off the days to my centenary of 20 years (in 2006). The day came closer and i could see in the back of my mind endless cake statues that would be ready and waiting for me at my house that i could devour in the blink of an eye.


As the 27th of October came closer, catastrophe broke loose in my mind, as one of the managers would suddenly get the ‘black lung’ and i had to help with a catering job for 150 people. Having Halloween in the air, i could feel my psyche making up violent comic scenes that involved the pots and pans i was using at that very moment. Reality came to me and i realized i had to work on my birthday and no one cared that i had made plans for a party.


I came to work on the 27th in a wretched mood and did not make eye contact with anyone in the vicinity. One of my best friends, ‘Chef Charlaine-Lee’ picked up the morbid, morose mood and called me aside at our lunch break. She told me that I had forgotten to pick up my clothing in the bathroom of the company and i was in real big trouble. On my birthday! I couldn’t be more furious and the walk to the bathroom felt like kilometres.


As i opened the door it was pitch Black. ‘Could this place not even afford to check the electricity’, i thought to myself? Then all of a sudden lots of sparkles went off. The whole room got filled with the miraculous glow of yellow light sparkles and candles. Right in the middle of the floor, my Chef friend had put a huge piece of Tiramisu-cake that she had taken out of the catering company’s freezer. The room looked like a fairy world.


The cake was half frozen and the toilet sounds were drizzling in the back of the room. We sat on the ground with lights flashing around us and ate our icy cake. It was the best birthday cake that i had ever eaten and for a brief moment we were in another world celebrating the date the brat was born, and i would hear nothing else but the flickering sound of sparkles.