107. Summer jobs: Love is A Butterfly

Saturday, November 25, 2007


The personable Filipino waitress in her twenties, held a pad and pen and stood beside the young man who had completed his first-year veterinary studies in Australia and arrived home today.

From across the table of four, the white words on her pure black T-shirt sang to me:

LOVE IS A BUTTERFLY
Which when pursued is just beyond your grasp
But if you will sit down quietly
It may alight upon you.


The first line was in bigger fonts and was easier to read. I could read the following 3 lines while she took the orders with a smile. She was one of those fortunate girls who are born with a happy countenance, unlike her lady boss whose facial lines tell of a thousand worries and stress.

"Is love like a butterfly or is love a butterfly?" I asked her. She did not reply but her eyes sparkled as she took the orders.

The boy's mother admonished me: "It is not nice to stare at a lady's chest." Prim and proper.

I had not thought of the sexy implications and the waitress was not Dolly Parton whose bosom demanded attention. I said, "I was reading the words of a poem."

It is always good to make a happy connection with the serving staff as they work very long hours. She could be a student who needed to work. How do I understand their working life?

Well, I was a waitress during the 3 months of summer holidays during my first year veterinary studies in Glasgow University in 1969. I could not go back to Singapore unlike this young man I was dining with. My parents had no money. It was out of question.

At that time, the University bookshop had notices of summer jobs offered. I got a job as a waiter in an upscale hotel opposite St Andrews' Golf Course. After 2 days, I got the sack. Probably too slow to serve or not up to the mark, I guessed in retrospection.

I went back to the University bookshop and applied for another job. A small hotel catering to tour groups accepted me. A small seaside town called Dunoon, in Scotland. I had never worked before I went to Scotland on this veterinary scholarship. In a way, I was like this young man I was dining with.

After the termination of my first job, I decided to work harder. Worked 7 days a week and overtime. The tour groups would come in for breakfast, lunch and dinner and the waiters and waitresses would have to rush in and out fast to serve them. Then they would go out on their tours.

Now, how to serve fast for a table of 10 people? The British way of dining is so much different from the Chinese way which is a communal way of dining. For the British dinner, for example, there was the soup first. Then the main course followed by the dessert.

Each person had his own bowl or plate. So, 10 people would need to be serve 10 plates of the main course. And we had to serve fast as they needed to go for their tours.

The head waiter taught us how to balance the plates for the main course on our left hand. The waiter bent his elbow to hold one plate and his right and left hand hold two plates. A total of 3 plates. That meant rushing up and down to the kitchen 4 times to serve 10 plates per table. Some tables have more than 10 diners and we had to service more than 1 table.

Remembering my premature job termination, I resolved to work harder and smarter. All waiters and waitresses were of my age and undergraduates from various places in the U.K. We improved our serving technique to serve much faster.

After some time, we challenged each other as to how many plates we could serve at one go. We were young and energetic. Do you know how many big plates holding the main course could be served by a waiter?

Give me a number. Say it loud. Write it down.

Now, it is 2007. Almost 38 years had passed. I wonder whether the Glasgow University bookshop still exists and whether there are still vacancies for summer jobs.

The young undergraduate I had dinner was really fortunate that he did not have to work during his 3 months of summer holidays and could come home. His mum missed him a lot, so if I advised him to stay back to work in Australia to understand more about the Australian way of life would cause disharmony with his mother.

Back to the number of plates I could carry. It was 7. Two hands held 2 plates. Of the remaining 5, the left hand's elbow area held 3 plates in tiers. The right hand's elbow area held 2 plates. When I reached the table, the diners would help me to unload. Two trips would do for each table. The customers sometimes clapped their hands. I didn't know my fellow waiters and waitresses and I were so entertaining to them. The folks were the heartlanders and very kind. There was interaction between the customers and the staff and we did some tips at the end of each week.

Occasionally one of us dropped a plate during the rush, but that was not common. In that 3 months of summer job, I went out with my colleagues to the pubs. I witness one young man called Bill.

Once after our drinking at a pub, he stole a traffic hazard warning light and brought it back to our hotel accommodation. A blonde undergraduate waitress taught me what "mascara" meant when I asked her what she was applying to her eyelashes as all of us went to the pub. She would hum to this top of the pop song starting with the lyrics: "They paved paradise and put in a parking lot...".

At that time, I could not understand the slang of the singer till some years later. Sometime to do with yellow taxi and old man dying and taken away.

Recently, the young man's radio played this song which has the "Save the environment" theme. Which brought me back some 3 decades ago to this blonde undergraduate girl.

If you need to know, she was friendly but I did not date her. Love is a butterfly but it did not alight upon me in Dunoon.