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01/07/2003 Entry: "Too many macarons"

Hey thanks for all the congratulatory greetings. :)

Somebody up there must be listening to me. The day Garry left I was crying my eyes out, then I got a phone call from Garry in the evening saying his flight had been cancelled and that he was coming back to my apartment. I couldn't believe it. He's staying till Thursday. Hey, I asked for a day and got 3. :)

It's my second day of work at Pierre Hermé. Seems like my schedule has changed and I'll be working from 1:00pm-8pm most days. Not too bad. I like the French 35 hour work weeks. I think if I had to work more than 7 hours straight I'd die. I feel like a machine when I'm there. We never stop working.

They made me start off by chopping the Valrhona chocolate blocks. I bet they give the intern or 'stagiare' the chocolate each time. Took me more than half an hour to chop a kilo of chocolate. I was trying to figure out how everyone's hands stayed clean while mine had chocolate and coffee paste all over. The rest of the time we made macarons -- 5 or 6 different flavors, about 800 pieces each. I'm starting to think the whole business relies on macarons because that's what we did today too. I hope I won't be doing macarons for 3 months.

My colleagues in the kitchen are pretty cool, although I'm still struggling to make conversation because of my limited French vocabulary. Most of them are young guys in their twenties, some maybe even younger. I wish I could understand the things they talk about -- all I understood today was 'blah blah X-box, blah blah Playstation 2, blah blah Game Cube'. Haven't met Pierre Hermé yet, I doubt if I ever will.

My back and neck are quite sore from standing up all day. It's a lot of menial work, including cleaning the entire kitchen after the day's over. When I say entire -- it means we soap up and wipe down all the cabinets, tables, the floor, heck, even the garbage bin! We move all the machines, and brush, wash, and sweep the floor under them. It's amazing how clean everything is. Pretty impressive I think.