MULTI-TASKING IN COLOMBO – Part 55

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

Soon after returning from overseas, I became extremely busy. I had to quickly catch up on my outstanding work at the Ceylon Hotel School (CHS) and various other tasks placed on hold. I had been away for three weeks on an important assignment in Singapore and an unplanned holiday in Malaysia. Towards the end of 1982, I was involved in ten different activities concurrently. I was compelled to master the art of multi-tasking.

Teaching

As a Senior Lecturer in Food & Beverage Operations at CHS, while continuing my lectures and practical sessions, I developed new courses on operations management. I enhanced these courses with selected material from my business administration studies at the university and mini case studies based on my management experience. These courses were popular with the fourth-year students. The most popular course I did was ‘Wine and Spirits Theory’, as students loved to hear my stories while sampling alcoholic beverages!

I also adjusted the evaluation scheme for management courses to reward logical thinking and problem-solving skills of the students, rather than rewarding them on their memorizing skills. The Hospitality industry needed ‘hands on’ managers who were knowledgeable with practical experiences and not experts on theories.

My active participation in fun events and round trips with students helped me to better understand students and appreciate youthful trends. The average age gap between the fourth-year students and myself was only four years, and that helped me to have a good rapport with most of them. While annual graduation ceremonies were happy moments, some students were sad to leave CHS and friendly members of faculty.

Events

The fourth-year management students specializing in culinary arts usually produced high quality gourmet food for dinner. The restaurant service practical sessions with flambé service at the training restaurant often were themed dinners. Expressing showmanship of students while preparing classical cocktails at the training bar, which I managed, were a lot of fun. The Principal/Director of CHS, Mrs. Pearl Heenatigala and members of the teaching faculty, regularly invited their family and friends to fill the 40-seat restaurant. Most of them also sipped pre-dinner cocktails, providing opportunities to the final year students in food & beverage management studies to gain practical experience.

Before and during dinner service, teaching staff were allowed to order ‘free’ cocktails from the students working in the bar on rotation. When it was noticed that one of our faculty colleagues regularly consumed a large number of these ‘free’ cocktails, Mrs. Heenatigala introduced a new rule. Her direction was that the maximum number of cocktails per person was three per evening.

There were two female Culinary Lecturers – Marie and Rosie, who never consumed any cocktails. When students informed me that the ‘usual suspect’ was demanding his fourth cocktail, I politely reminded him about the new rule. He then said, “Machan, what I am ordering now is Marie’s first cocktail! I will come for her second cocktail, very soon!”

Towards the start of the dessert service, he came back claiming “Rosie’s first cocktail!” During a usual dinner service, this colleague cleverly continued to consume nine cocktails made with generous quantities of liquor, prepared faithfully following original classical recipes. Fortunately, he was able to hold his liquor. However, his addiction, posed a few occasional challenges for me to balance the liquor stocks, required by law.

At that time, except for those who were in the hospitality business, most Lankans were not very familiar with wines. Cheeses that were available in Sri Lanka were also limited to a few brands. The socialist government in power till 1977 had virtually stopped all imports of non-essential items. Towards the late 1970 when a new pro free-market government lifted all those import restrictions, Lankan hoteliers were pleased.

The first-ever supermarket in Sri Lanka was just opened by the well-known entrepreneur, Cornel Perera. In later years, he became the Chairman of the owning company of Colombo Hilton and also the Chairman of the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management (successor of CHS). Cornel’s Supermarket made a wide range of cheeses available in Sri Lanka, by early 1980s, but these were very expensive. Around the same period, many liquor suppliers grew their businesses by importing a wider range of wines required by hotels.

“Chandana, how about organizing a large-scale Cheese and Wine event at CHS?” Mrs. Heenatigala planted a seed in my mind. “Madam, that’s an excellent idea which will help our students’ appreciation of wines and cheeses, plus boost the image of CHS. Give me a month and I will organize a big event, at the lowest possible cost,” I told her.

I met Cornel Perera and the leading wine importers and arranged a few sponsorship deals. As CHS students were not exposed to butter carvings, I demonstrated this skill at CHS, which I had developed when I was an Executive Chef in the mid-1970s. We included a number of large, butter carvings to our event decorations. Encouraged with the success of this Cheese and Wine event, CHS continued with regular special events.

Business

My weekends were devoted to our family business – Streamline Services (Pvt.) Ltd. As a Director of the company, I ran the Streamline Hotel Management Training Section. We had lectures on Saturdays and Sundays. With the increased business and student intake, we organized two award ceremonies a year.

As CHS could not produce sufficient number of graduates, the hotel industry praised Streamline Services for our efforts in educating and training a large number of hotel workers, and future managers. The chief guests of our award ceremonies were well-known hospitality industry leaders such as Mr. Herbert Cooray (Chairman of Jetwing Hotels Group, as well as the Tourist Hotels Association of Sri Lanka) and Sriyantha Senaratne (Managing Director of Gemini Management Services Ltd.).

Recruiting

A businessman I met in Singapore had secured a contract as the student recruiting agent for the Far East and South Asia for an up-and-coming Swiss hotel school – Hotelconsult (now, Hotel Consult Institut Hôtelier César Ritz). He met me when I was a guest at the Goodwood Park Hotel, and later appointed me as the Resident Director for Sri Lanka of his company – Inter-Asia Education Consultants, Singapore. My job was to recruit students to Hotelconsult, and I did well in recruitment due to hard work by Streamline Services.

The student recruitment business grew quickly and through my contacts, a few other European hotel schools appointed Streamline Services as the sole student recruitment agent in Sri Lanka. These schools included the International Management Institute (IMI) in Switzerland, the Hague Hotel School in the Netherlands and the Hotel Schools within the Schiller International University in Switzerland, France, the UK and the USA. Strengthening the business relationships I had built, in later years I secured a few teaching contracts at IMI, Switzerland and the School of Hotel Management at the Schiller International University in the UK (I also became the Acting Director of this school in 1990).

Consulting

Around the same time, a few companies appointed me as a consultant for short-term assignments. I led a team of food & beverage specialists from CHS, to develop and deliver a two-week food and beverage training session for hotel workers at the Holiday Inn in Colombo. This was by invitation of my friend, Imtiaz Cader, the General Manager/Director of the hotel.

I also helped in the initial planning of two proposed hotel projects. My clients were Majestic Holiday Resorts Ltd. which intended to open a hotel near Hikkaduwa and Lee Potter Holdings in the UK, which intended to open a hotel in Passikudah. On the request of one of my batch-mates at the Colombo University who was Personnel Manager of Singer Lanka Ltd., I advised on improving the skills of Singer canteen cooking staff.

Studying

On most weekday evening for 30 weeks, I went to the lectures of the Executive Diploma in Business Administration (EDBA) program at the University of Colombo (UoC). As UoC cleverly arranged experienced industry leaders, well-known economists, leading corporate and industrial lawyers, top financial consultants, human resource specialists, marketing gurus and production managers to teach, I acquired lots of practical business knowledge.

In addition, I also attended four seminars organized by different organizations in Sri Lanka and presented by international experts. The longer seminar was a two-week program in ‘Hotel Management’ by South Devon Technical College in the UK. Each of the other three seminars were one-week long. Those were a ‘Train the Trainer’ by American Hotel & Motel Association, ‘Tourism Marketing’ by Pacific Asia Travel Association, and ‘Operations Management’ by Pannel Kerr Forster Consulting in USA. I was the seminar coordinator for the last seminar. That experience motivated me to organize and present a large number of hotel management seminars in many countries over the next 40 years.

Guiding

One day, Mrs. Heenatigala delegated a short, additional teaching assignment to me. She asked me to deliver three, two-hour sessions of food and beverage essential knowledge and table etiquette, to a group of 40 mature students studying to qualify as Tourist Guide Lecturers. In order to have some clearer context of the whole program, I asked a few questions. She said that it would be a part-time program with 10-hours of lectures a week over a four-month period, conducted at UoC. She also provided me with the full syllabus.

When I read that syllabus, I was most impressed with the comprehensive information the program provided and the high calibre of subject experts who would be making presentations. It covered each segment of the 2,600 years of recorded history of Sri Lanka. Each historic segment was presented in summary form by a university professor who had done a doctoral degree on the subject. My new mentor, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at UoC, Professor Bertram Bastianpillai was one of those history professors.

In addition, the syllabus covered essential information about the geography, economy, industries, spices, cuisine, ayurveda, gems, arts and crafts, tourism, culture, religions etc. Elocution was a subject and the grading for that subject was given during a week-long tour of Sri Lanka, when topics for speeches were given at random to the students in the program. There also were written exams for other subjects.

“Madam, I will teach in this program this year, but I would love to be a student in the next cohort in four months’ time.” I told Mrs. Heenatigala. “You seem to be hungry for knowledge! As this program is organized by our employer, Ceylon Tourist Board, it will be totally free for you. I will enrol you.” She supported my wish. Classes were from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm. Every weekday, I left work at CHS around 3:30 pm and attended the Tourist Guide Lecturer sessions at UoC from 4:00 pm, but left half an hour early to rush to attend EDBA lectures from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. After dinner, I studied and also prepared for my lectures until midnight every day. It was hectic but rewarding.

Supporting me, my wife (who worked for a travel company) and one of her uncles who did tour guiding, joined my batch as fellow students and we had lot of fun. We also studied together before the examinations. In 1982, I lectured in the program, in 1983, I completed the program as a student and passed the examinations, and in 1984, Ceylon Tourist Board licenced me as a Tourist Guide Lecturer. I hardly practiced this profession, but was very happy with the knowledge I gained. It is an excellent program, which still continues.

Volunteering

I served as the Treasurer of the Ceylon Hotel School Graduates Association (CHSGA) for two years. In 1981, I was elected to be the General Secretary of this largest professional association for the hotel industry of Sri Lanka. The position demanded a considerable amount of time, but as all monthly meetings were held at CHS, it was convenient for me.

Acting

As a child actor, having appeared in two Sri Lankan movies and a cinema advertisement in 1960s, I had some experience in front of the movie camera. As a child, I was directed by the greatest movie director in Sri Lanka, Lester James Peries and also a well-known cinematographer and director, Willie Blake.

In the early 1980s, my wife was becoming popular as an actress for TV commercials. One day when I accompanied her on a shoot, the well-known movie director who shot the commercial, D.B. Nihalsinghe and his brother, D. B Suranimala, a TV commercial director, chatted with me. After that they invited me to act in several TV commercials with my wife. I ended up doing nine TV commercials and a some other minor, acting assignments (for catwalk, calendar photo shoot, Christmas music shows and music videos).

Judo

On re-locating in Colombo in 1981, I re-started Judo at my club, the Central YMCA. By 1982, I had improved my Judo fighting and recorded some good successes at tournaments. After practice one day, when Judo colleagues were having some post-practice refreshments at a nearby café, one of the highest-ranking Judokas in Sri Lanka, Kithsiri De Soyza, made an offer to me. He announced that the National Judo Association of Sri Lanka has decided to include me as a member of the Sri Lanka national Judo team to compete in a few international tournaments held in India. A few days later, I packed my bags and left for India for two weeks with nine other national Judokas on an ‘action-packed’ memorable trip.

When I look back, I wonder how I was able to handle all those different activities concurrently, 40 years ago. Being a young man in my late twenties, I guess that I had a lot of energy. I wish that I could still have the same level of energy and enthusiasm to tick all items in my ever-expanding bucket list…