Monday 29 March 2010

A Malaysian in Melbourne

Melbourne is a great city. Plenty of things to do here and the weather is great. Their autumn is like summer in the UK.

The Lotus Catering team are always the first ones to arrive and the last ones to leave as we have to set up the kitchen and pack up, so this gives plenty of time for me to explore the places we visit. I went to their Chinatown to see what’s it like. Not much different from London or Manchester’s Chinatown but many more Malaysian restaurants. I was there with my colleagues on the day we arrived. On the way back we all fell asleep on the tram due to jetlag and missed our stop.

Since we arrived, I keep losing track of days and dates. We just got on with work and things get hectic towards the race day. Two days ago I bumped into Lewis Hamilton who took the back alley to go back to his paddock. I guess he was avoiding the press and TV crews wandering around the main aisle. He is so tiny and petite. All the drivers are apart from Mark Webber. He is tall. I also bumped into Schumacher who stayed late before the qualifying day. He walked past in front of me in his white race suit. The experience was surreal. The most talked about figure in the Formula 1 business just walked in front of me! With Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen, there’s no thrill anymore as I see them almost every day but I still get tiny tingle nervous feeling when they start talking to me. How odd.

Anyway about the food, it was commented on the Lotus Facebook page that the food was excellent. So hard work has paid off! This week is not as hard as when I was in Bahrain. It was close for me to decide not to do this anymore as it was really hard. It was not just us in the catering team work so hard, other teams like mechanics, technicians they work hard too.

Tonight I will be flying to Malaysia and I have been warned about the guest list over there but one for all, it will be good and hectic experience. Bye for now.

Sunday 7 March 2010

Lotus Racing in Bahrain!

I arrived in Bahrain at 8pm last night. Never been to Bahrain before so don’t know what to expect. The hotel is good and close to shopping mall. That would do for me. Tried their curries and kebab in the mall, well to be honest I’ve tried better curries and kebab in Northern Quarter, Manchester before but at least I get to know what their food is like.

I went mad with shopping in the mall, they have some nice designer shops. Twice I was mistaken as a salesperson, perhaps because I look a bit like a Philipino. Many Philipinos and Indians work here which explains why.

There’s no time to recover from jetlag. In the morning I went to the race track with my kitchen team, AMAZING. It’s in the middle of the dessert. We all went to the Lotus garage and just to let you know, I’ve ‘touched’ the Lotus car racing (well just the tyre as the car was covered up). None of the drivers and mechanics turned up yet, so the kitchen team managed to get everything set up for the restaurant. In fact, we were the first team to arrive and set up the restaurant. How efficient and everything looks marvellous.

Tomorrow will be a food shopping day and I can’t wait to go to their local market, see what their local market has got to offer. My mission is to find Lemon Grass. Hmmm, that would be interesting.