Peeling onions and potatos

For the past three days I have been working with my cousin's catering business helping out in the preparation of huge pots of Dalca, Kurma and kari ayam among other dishes for the catering orders. I have been doing this eversince I was laid off from my last job at the Jerajak Resort and SPA and it helps to keep me going with the daily expenses. What is more rewarding about the job is the fact that it has become another form of practice towards self observation and discipline from the fact that one has to be up by five a.m. and sweating away for the next few hours while dealing with all manners of human interaction involved in the process of food preparation on a large scale. I have slowly got to know the characters involved from having close interpersonqal communication, their manners and habits their ups and downs. Most importantly i have come to recognize myself in the environment among those who are rellated to me and those who are not and then those who are foreign workers(mostly Bangladeshis).
There are the ladies who runs the kitchen prep like peeling onions and potatoes, preparing the souces and curry mix, cleaning the chicken and prepapring the salad etc. These are the spine of the whole process as without their expertise there would be chaos in the pots boiling over. Then there is the hierachy of men who does the preperation of drinks and one who does the rice, there those who keep virgil over the pots while they are simmering with spicy ingredients making sure that they are well stirred. The delivery guys comes a little later in the morning and begins sorting out what goes where untill everything is being assigned and delivered to their respective locations. My cousin Salleh runs the show and his wife Ana runs the cooking section and they are a great example of harmoniuosoly compatible duo which keeps the business alive and prospering.
The catering business like most food related businesses, can be a very lucrative venture if well planned and managed. It is not an easy task to run such a venture and it demands hard work without doubt and in these days and age most functions utilizes the catering people for their food and beverages, unlike in the older days when food for weddings and such were the worries of the bride and groom's famillies and neighbours. Theere is the good and bad for these changes however the pressures and cost of functions these days seems to favour the caterer than self production. It seems to me the catering business has a bright future in the food and beverages industry as more and more are opting for someone lese to do the preperation and clean up after than to have to be bothered by these themselves.
I enjoy working with my cousins and friends but there are times when the aging body is beginning to rebel against the push for an ounce more of physical force and the tired mind sometimes seems to succumb to quitting before the time to quit. Feeling the heeat from the pots and the wet from soaking onions, reacting to my fellow workers and keeping a straight face over all the vibes around me, it is a great experience in mastering your circumstances and environment. I sometimes keep reminding myself that i had once worked on a fishing vassel in the Bering Sea, off the Alaskan Coast or that i had worked in Downtown San Francisco on the water front or the fact that i had cut meat in Packing houses in Green bay and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this is but just one more vocation and it is just different in nature only the mind dealing with this circumstances is the same mind that dealt with the past vocations.