ENDING THE FIRST YEAR WITH A BANG! – Part 7

CONFESSIONS OF A GLOBAL GYPSY

By Dr. Chandana (Chandi) Jayawardena DPhil

President – Chandi J. Associates Inc. Consulting, Canada

Founder & Administrator – Global Hospitality Forum

chandij@sympatico.ca

Orders by Herr Kollmann

In the early 1970s one of the Expert Lecturers in Restaurant and Bar Service at the Ceylon Hotel School (CHS) was Herr Lothar Kollmann.. He dressed well with white shirts that were fashionably embroidered with a small Black (Schwartze) Rose. As a young man in his late teens, he had served in the German army during the World War II. He had lost two fingers in his right hand, due to a pre-mature grenade explosion. He often came to our class and said, “I need five volunteers”, showing the three remaining fingers from his right hand and two fingers from his left hand. This confused us. As this was for extra hard work, we never wanted to volunteer. Therefore, we would look down to avoid eye contact. Annoyed with this reaction, on one occasion, he waited for one minute and then turned red in anger. He pointed his index finger and ordered, “You, you and three of you, Kommen Sie, NOW!” We quickly marched behind him, obediently.

On another occasion when a group of students were relaxing during our 10:00 AM tea break, he came to us and asked, “Who has a licence to drive?” A third-year student, Walter Perumal, stood with his arm up and proudly announced, “Me, sir. I do”. Walter was anticipating an opportunity to drive the new van of CHS. Herr Kollmann grinned and said, “OK, Walter. Excellent. Now drive this tea trolley back to the kitchen and wash all these dirty tea cups.” That was the last time Walter volunteered for anything until he graduated from CHS.

Missing Cigarettes

Herr Kollmann smoked Rothmans Cigarettes imported from the UK, while students shared locally made much cheaper Bristol Cigarettes. One day we managed to hide his packet of cigarettes, but wondered why he never commented about it. Later we enjoyed smoking his Rothmans after we returned to the CHS hostel. Over thirty years later Herr Kollmann was invited by one my batch mates, Chris Isaac, to dinner at his home in Germany. When he noticed that Herr Kollmann had forgotten to bring his Rothmans, Chris had offered a cigarette to him. Herr Kollmann lit one cigarette and proceeded to put the whole packet of Rothmans into his coat pocket. He then stated, “Isaac, we are now quits!”

CHS focussed a lot in teaching us food production and service. It was able to recruit several expatriate experts with the generous funding from the Carl Duisberg Society and the West German Government. In addition, CHS was fortunate to obtain help from the International Labour Organization (ILO), an agency of the United Nations. The Food and Beverage Service training provided to us by a Swiss national, Mr. Jorge Müller, an ILO expert Maître d’hôtel was very popular. Mr. Müller was a very friendly person and loved to see his students progress in their careers. The ‘hands on’ basics in food and beverage service skills I learnt from Mr. Müller laid a strong foundation for my early career in hotel operations.

Nineteen years later, Mr. Jorge Müller and I became work colleagues. In 1990 we both worked for Schiller International University (SIU) Hotel Schools. He lectu

red at the SIU Hotel School on the Engelberg campus in Switzerland. I ran the SIU Hotel School on the London campus in the UK, as the Acting Director. We became good friends. Every time I went to Switzerland to teach hotel management as a Visiting Professor of the International Management Institute (IMI) in Lucerne, he hosted me to dinner.

I founded the International Hotel School (IHS) of Sri Lanka as the Managing Director, 30 years ago at the Mount Lavinia Hotel. I recruited a few former CHS personalities to assist me in establishing IHS. They included Mr. Eardley Edrisinha (our Vice Principal at CHS in the 1970s) as the Principal, Mr. Jorge Müller as an Adviser and a CHS graduate senior to me, Mr. Kamal Happuwatte (later the Principal of CHS) as the Curriculum Development Consultant. By then I had learnt that for any project to be successful, a leader must wisely surround him/herself with people better than him/herself. IHS will celebrate its 30th anniversary as the second oldest hotel school in Sri Lanka in September 2021.

Learning to Plan Hospitality Events

We learnt a few basic steps in event planning when we were involved in organizing a holiday party at the Ceylon Hotel School (CHS). That event was a success, so some of us continued looking for an opportunity to practice our newly acquired skills in event planning. The idea of celebrating the graduation of the third-year diploma students came up during a booze party at the CHS hostel. Our temporary “Dutch courage” made us ambitiously innovative in our suggestions. After the student representatives presented the concept of a Graduation Ball dinner dance open to public, the Principal and the teaching staff decided to support this idea. The leadership of the event was entrusted to the second-year students. As the first-year students, my batchmates were grouped into various sub committees to support the event.

The top venues for dinner dances in Sri Lanka at that time were three well-reputed hotels established in the 1860s – Galle Face Hotel, Mount Lavinia Hotel and the Grand Oriental Hotel (later Taprobane). These hotels were too expensive for us. Therefore, after we raised a small amount of funds through dance souvenir advertisements, we settled for the relatively inexpensive Samudra Hotel as the venue for the CHS Graduation Ball in 1972. The students did most of the work to organise a memorable event. We managed to raise sufficient f

unds to hire one of the most popular dance bands in Sri Lanka at that time – Gabo & the Breakaways. My good friend, lawyer-turned-musician, Sohan Weerasinghe, was their lead singer.

First-ever CHS Graduation Ball in 1972

In preparing for the big day, some of my batchmates learnt ballroom dancing and practiced at the hostel using broom sticks as phantom dance partners! Apart from learning ballroom dancing, one of the biggest challenges we had was finding actual dance partners. I was pleasantly surprised to be invited to join the table of one of our German-trained lecturers, Mr. Rohan Dias Abeysinghe. Knowing that his beautiful younger sister was attending the dance, I had some hope of partnering her. That plan did not materialise, as her brother was over-protective of her.

My other choice was a British teenage girl staying with her parents at Samudra Hotel. Unfortunately, a handsome CHS graduate who was two-years senior to me, acted promptly to book that girl as his partner. I was still not out of luck, as I finally found an Australian teenage girl holidaying in Sri Lanka, who became my partner. I liked the hot pants she wore to the dance. These were fashionable in the Western countries, but shockingly new to Sri Lanka at that time. With that trendy and groovy attire, my last-minute dance partner quickly became the talk of the event. A few of my poor batchmates who could not find dance partners were hoping to get an opportunity to dance with her, if and when I took a b

reak from dancing. I selfishly blocked any such partner-sharing arrangements by simply dancing non-stop with my partner. We nearly won the Baila dance competition held at the end around 5:00 am.

The first CHS Graduation Ball was a great success and we had lots of fun. We also made substantial profits. This tradition that we initiated has now continued with 25 more CHS Graduation Ball dinner dances held during the last 49 years. This event was rebranded as ‘Gravitas’ since the year 2009, to attract non-CHS hospitality professionals. It is now considered the most popular and prestigious event in the social calendars of the Sri Lankan hospitality industry management professionals. Not bad for an event wit

h a humble beginning that evolved during a student booze party at the CHS hostel in 1972.

The Worst in Class

Soon after the graduation and dance events were over, I received the bad news on the last day of our first year at CHS. I have placed last out of 28 students in my batch during the final examinations of year one. Unlike now, at that time the common practice was to publicly announce class overall positions and display final results on school notice boards. That was a humiliating practice, especially for the person coming last in class! As I was the only student in my batch who did not study at all, my batch mates were not surprised about my poor performance at the year-end examinations. I was too scared to go home for the summer vacation with my report card. When I finally went home, I was happy to hear that my father was away on some government business. My mother wanted to see my report and I told her a white lie, “CHS will send it by mail”. I had some breathing space which I used to hang out with my neighbourhood buddies. However, I felt like a ‘crab in boiling water.’

When my father returned from his trip, he opened the mail and there was an envelope with the CHS logo on it. The letter was from the CHS Principal, Herr Reinhold Sterner, and addressed to my father. The letter referred to my report card, which my father had not seen yet. The letter ended with a forceful paragraph which read, “Do yourself, your family, your son, this school, and the hotel industry of Sri Lanka, a big favour by removing Chandana Jayawardena from the Ceylon Hotel School immediately. He will not succeed in a profession such as hotel-keeping, which requires hard work, commitment and discipline.”