Connect with us

Features

HOTEL SCHOOL NOSTALGIA LIVES ON… – Part 21

Published

on

The writer (left) with four senior male graduates of CHS and their wives (second from left to right) Malin Hapugoda, Vijitha Nugegoda, Desmond Fernando and U. C. Jayasinghe at the CHSGA AGM in 2017.

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

The 50th Anniversary of CHSGA

On October 16, 2021 I attended another annual general meeting (AGM) of the Ceylon Hotel School Graduates Association (CHSGA). This week, both CHSGA and I celebrated 50 years in hospitality. As a Past President of CHSGA (1985-1986) I am proud of the work done by all my 27 predecessors and the current executive committee, which includes many of my past students of the Ceylon Hotel School (CHS). They have taken the association to new heights of professionalism, efficiency and innovation.

Usually, the CHSGA AGM is a three-day event of professional, social and fellowship celebrations. Due to the pandemic, we had to settle for less via Zoom; but the show went on. Considering the humble beginnings of CHSGA in 1971 at the CHS hostel with fewer than 50 members, it is impressive that CHSGA now has over 1,200 professional members and is going from strength to strength.

Like many other hospitality institutions, CHSGA is affected by the pandemic. However, its commitment to professional development of its members through centres for excellence and support to the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management (SLITHM) and students continues commendably. CHSHA due to previous fund-raising efforts and projects such as the Hotel Show, continues to be financially sound.

A nostalgic interview

On October 17, 2021, the 3,550-member strong (from over 100-countries) Global Hospitality Forum (GHF) hosted its first-ever online Q&A session. It was organized with the assistance from the International Tourism Volunteers Association (ITVA). I interviewed a CHS graduate of the first batch (1966-1969), who taught me hospitality 50 years ago. As a former student of Mr. Rohan De Silva Jayasundara, it was indeed nostalgic and an honour for me to do this interview. With a view of inspiring the audience, I asked of series of questions about my lecturer’s amazing career in hospitality education in seven countries. Listening to this legend in International Hospitality Education talk about his career in Sri Lanka, West Germany, Brunei, Australia, Cook Islands, Vanuatu, and Marshall Islands was a rare opportunity.

For the benefit of those who missed the webinar, the organizers will post its video clip on Facebook pages of GHF and ITVA. Encouraged with its popularity, it was decided to hold such online Q&A sessions with hospitality legends (with over 50 years’ experience in distinguished careers), every month. On November 14, the Global Hospitality Forum’s Q&A session will be with Mahinda Ratnayake who as General Manager, opened the first ever five-star resort in Sri Lanka in 1982 – Triton Hotel. These sessions are open for anyone interested, free of charge.

Interviews at Hotel Lanka Oberoi

In 1974 I did well at my first interview for a post of chef de partie at Hotel Lanka Oberoi which was getting ready to open the largest hotel in Sri Lanka. After the interview I was short listed for a kitchen practical test held at Hotel Renuka where the Executive Chef of Lanka Oberoi and his senior brigade stayed during the hotel’s pre-opening stage. The practical test was to prepare a full meal from a surprise menu given to the finalists five minutes before its commencement. I thought I did well but was not chosen. Later, I heard that the successful candidate was Das Perumpaladas, the Executive Chef of Hotel Renuka and a graduate of the CHS, three years my senior. I realized that they valued his executive chef experience in a small three-star hotel gained over three years.

A week later I was called for two more interviews – one of them at Hotel Lanka Oberoi. The other was at the head office of Whittall Boustead Ltd./Ceylon Holiday Resorts, the owners of my favourite, Bentota Beach and its sister hotel, Coral Gardens. At Hotel Lanka Oberoi I was interviewed by Mr. Joe Madawela, the charismatic Personnel Manager, who was in charge of hiring over 600 employees for the hotel opening. He told me that although I did not make it as a chef de partie, I would be a good candidate for a post such as a bar supervisor. He also told me that if I do well there, I may get an opportunity in a couple of years to be further trained at the Oberoi School of Hotel Management in India for two years. That was the key to become a hotel manager within this regional hotel chain. I agreed to think about it and get back within a week if I was interested.

Eleven years later, I met Joe for the second time. In 1985, he was managing the Queens Hotel in Kandy on a secondment from Hotel Lanka Oberoi. I was then the General Manager of the two largest hotels of John Keells Group – The Lodge and The Village, Habarana. I was also the Founding President of Rajarata Hotels Association (North Central Province). The hoteliers in Kandy were thinking of forming a similar association and sought my advice. To advise them and share our best practices from the NCP, I made a couple of trips to Kandy. I enjoyed chatting with Joe during one of those visits. He had a remarkable memory and narrated details of my interview with him 11 years earlier saying he was disappointed that I did not take his offer in 1974 as he thought that I would have done well with Oberoi. Four years later in 1989, I finally accepted an ‘expatriate contract’ offer from the Oberoi Group and became the Food and Beverage Manager of Hotel Babylon Oberoi in Baghdad, Iraq. Of the ten managers who reported to me, half were graduates of the Oberoi School of Hotel Management in India.

An offer from Bentota Beach Hotel

When I went for the interview at Whittall Boustead, I was immediately offered the post of Trainee Executive Chef (number three in the kitchen) at Bentota Beach Hotel. Mr. Gilbert Paranagama, the Director in charge of their two hotels told me that the management of the hotel was impressed with my work during my recent CHS internship. He made a good offer of a 500-rupee salary and free board and lodging at the executive quarters within the hotel. I was very pleased and accepted the offer. He also briefly introduced me to the Company Chairman, Mr. Sanmugam Cumaraswamy, a well-known Chartered Accountant and businessman.

Leaving Colombo

When I gave notice and handed over my resignation from Havelock Tourinn, the General Manager, Mr. C. Nagendra was very disappointed. He was shocked that someone would leave the position assistant manager of a city hotel to become number three chef in a resort hotel. However, having made my career plan, I was convinced that I was making the right move. Leaving Colombo was not easy. It was my birth place and I lived there for the first 20 years of my life. With my career move, and the desire to live in different parts of Sri Lanka, I knew that I would miss my family, friends, Judo club, many social events and entertainment.

I kept in touch with many of my CHS friends now scattered around the country and students from junior CHS batches who were continuing in Colombo. The friendships that commenced in 1971 at CHS, have now continued for over 50 years. Since 2011, I administered a private Facebook group I founded. It is branded as ‘CHS Lord Veterans’, where nearly 100 CHS colleagues who graduated with the original three-year diploma between 1969 and 1976, are connected around the world. The members of this exclusive group regularly share past, present and future posts. Most are retired now and sadly over a dozen have passed away in recent years. Another recent initiative is a WhatsApp group branded as, ‘Seftonites – 66-76’ exclusively for those CHS colleagues who lived in our good old hostel – Sefton, named after an original expatriate faculty member. This WhatsApp group is very active with several general posts and comments every day. The bonding we made at CHS is very special and the CHS nostalgia lives on…

A Brief Romance in Negombo

In between my departure from Colombo and settling in Bentota, I had a free long weekend. I planned to spend it at the Katunayake airport bidding farewell to my CHS batch mate, Neil Maurice who was migrating to Australia. Almost all our batch came to this farewell and we made it a ‘one for the road’ booze party at the airport to the displeasure of the airport security guards. Our ‘Dutch courage’ certainly helped us to bravely ignore them.

After that, I planned to spend two days at Blue Oceanic Hotel in Negombo with two friends. One of my high school mates, Ruvan Samarasinghe (now the Managing Director at Jetwing Hotels) was the Manager of this first hotel built by Mr. Herbert Cooray for his Jetwing Group. One of my batchmates, Sunil Dissanayake (now the CEO of BMICH) was the Front Office Manager. Like all Sri Lankan hoteliers, Ruvan and Dissa were very hospitable. They hosted me generously.

On my first evening at Blue Oceanic, Ruvan invited me for dinner after drinks at the bar. A few young Swedish tourists who were very friendly asked why we were laughing so much and joined our table. A 19-year-old girl, whose nickname was Blondie, asked me, “Chandi, what kind of music is played by the hotel band?” When I told her that it was Calypso from Trinidad and Tobago, she asked me, “Can you dance to this music?” “Yes, I will show you.” I was quick to grab her before my friends got ideas and took her to the dance floor to show her how it’s done. We later went for a long care-free, barefoot beach walk counting fishing boats and the stars on a beautiful moon-lit night.

I met those friendly tourists again the next morning and ended up hanging out with them on the beach the whole day. The next day I had to leave early for Bentota to begin my new job at Bentota Beach Hotel. When I said goodbye, Blondie promised “I will write to you” and did so regularly for the next three years. We became pen pals until she returned to Sri Lanka in 1977 for a three-week holiday in search of her soulmate. Blondie was my first ‘serious’ girlfriend.



Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Features

Have Humanities and Social Sciences muddied water enough?

Published

on

By Maduranga Kalugampitiya

The domain of the humanities and social sciences is under attack more than ever before. The relevance, as well as usefulness of the degrees earned in those fields, is being questioned left, right, and centre. The question of whether it is meaningful at all to be spending, if not wasting, the limited financial resources available in the coffers to produce graduates in those fields is raised constantly, at multiple levels. Attempts are being made to introduce a little bit of soft skills into the curricula in order to add ‘value’ to the degree programmes in the field. The assumption here is that either such degree programmes do not impart any skills or the skills that they impart are of no value. We often see this widely-shared profoundly negative attitude towards the humanities and the social sciences (more towards the former than towards the latter) being projected on the practitioners (students, teachers, and researchers) in those areas. At a top-level meeting, which was held one to two years ago, with the participation of policy-makers in higher education and academics and educationists representing the humanities and social sciences departments, at state universities, a key figure in the higher education establishment claimed that the students who come to the humanities and social sciences faculties were ‘late-developers’. What better (or should I say worse?) indication of the official attitude towards those of us in the humanities and the social sciences!

While acknowledging that many of the key factors that have resulted in downgrading the humanities and social sciences disciplines are global by nature and are very much part of the neoliberal world order, which dominates the day, I wish to ask if we, the practitioners in the said fields, have done our part to counter the attack.

What the humanities and the social sciences engage with is essentially and self-consciously social. What these disciplines have to say has a direct bearing on the social dimension of human existence. It is near impossible to discuss phenomena in economics, political science, or sociology without having to reflect upon and use examples from what happens in our lives and around us. One cannot even begin to talk about teaching English as a second language without taking a look at her/his own experience learning English and the struggles that many people go through at different levels doing the same. One cannot talk about successful ways of teaching foreign languages without recognizing the need to incorporate an engagement with the cultural life of those languages at some level. No reading of an artwork—be it a novel, a movie, a painting, a sculpture, a poem, whatever—is possible without the reader at least subconsciously reflecting upon the broader context in which those artworks are set and also relating her own context or experience to what is being read. A legal scholar cannot read a legislation without paying attention to the social implications of the legislation and the dynamics of the community at whom that legislation is directed. The point is our own existence as social beings is right in the middle of what we engage with in such disciplines. To steal (and do so self-consciously) a term from the hard/natural sciences, society is essentially the ‘laboratory’ in which those in the humanities and social sciences conduct their work. There may be some areas of study within the humanities and social sciences which do not require an explicit engagement with our social existence, but I would say that such areas, if any, are limited in number.

Needless to say that every social intervention is political in nature. It involves unsettling what appears to be normal about our social existence in some way. One cannot make interventions that have a lasting impact without muddying the water which we have been made to believe is clear. How much of muddying do we as practitioners in the field of humanities and social sciences do is a question that needs to be asked.

Unfortunately, we do not see much work in the humanities and social sciences which unsettles the dominant order. What we often see is work that reinforces and reaffirms the dominant structures, systems, and lines of thought. Lack of rigorous academic training and exposure to critical theory is clearly one of the factors which prevents some scholars in the field from being able to make interventions that are capable of muddying the water, but the fact that we sometimes do not see much muddying even on the part of the more adept scholars shows that lack of rigorous training is not the sole reason.

Muddying the water is no simple matter. To use a problematic, yet in my view useful, analogy, a scholar in the said field trying to make an intervention that results in unsettling the order is like a hydrogen atom in H2O, ‘water’ in layperson’s language, trying to make an intervention which results in a re-evaluation of the oxygen atom. Such an intervention invariably entails a re-evaluation of the hydrogen atom as well, for the reason that the two atoms are part of an organic whole. One cannot be purely objective in its reading of the other. Such an intervention is bound to be as unsettling for the hydrogen atom as it is for the oxygen atom. Similarly, in a majority of contexts, a scholar in the area of the humanities and social sciences cannot make an intervention, the kind that pushes the boundaries of knowledge, without unsettling the dominant structures and value systems, which they themselves are part of, live by, and also benefit from. For instance, the norms, values, and practices which define the idea of marriage in contexts like ours are things that a male scholar would have to deal with as a member of our society, and any intervention on his part which raises questions about gender-based inequalities embodied in such norms, values, and practices would be to question his own privilege. Needless to say that such an intervention could result in an existential crisis for the scholar, at least temporarily. Such interventions also entail the possibility of backlash from society. One needs thorough training to withstand that pressure.

In place of interventions that unsettle the existing order, what we often see is work, which re-presents commonsensical knowledge garbed in jargon. To give an example from an area that I am a bit familiar with, much of the work that takes place in the field of English as a Second Language (ESL) identifies lack of motivation on the part of the students and also teachers and also lack of proper training for teachers as the primary reasons for the plight of English education in the country. This reading is not very different from a layperson’s understanding of the problem, and what we often see as research findings in the field of ESL is the same understanding, albeit dressed up in technical-sounding language. Such readings do not unsettle the existing order. They put the blame on the powerless. Very limited is the work that sees the present plight of English education as a systemic or structural problem. Reading that plight as a systemic problem requires us to re-evaluate the fundamental structures which govern our society, and such re-evaluation is unsettling is many ways. I argue that that is what is expected of scholarship in the ESL field, but unfortunately that is not what we see as coming out of the field.

If what gets produced as knowledge in the humanities and social sciences is jargonized commonsense, then the claim that such fields have nothing important to say is valid. If what a scholar in those fields has to say is not different to a layperson’s understanding of a given reality, the question whether there is any point in producing such scholars becomes valid.

In my view, the humanities and social sciences are in need of fundamental restructuring. This restructuring is not the kind which calls for the incorporation of a bit of soft skills here and a bit of soft skills there so that those who come out of those fields easily fit into predefined slots in society but the kind that results in the enhancement of the critical thinking capacity of the scholars. It is the kind of restructuring that would produce scholars who are capable of engaging in a political reading of the realities that define our existence in society and raise difficult questions about such existence, in other words, scholars who are capable of muddying the water.

(Maduranga Kalugampitiya is attached to Department of English, University of Peradeniya)

Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall thatparodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.

Continue Reading

Features

Selective targeting not law’s purpose

Published

on

By Jehan Perera

The re-emergence of Donald Trump in the United States is a reminder that change is not permanent. Former President Trump is currently utilising the grievances of the white population in the United States with regard to the economic difficulties that many of them face to make the case that they need to be united to maintain their position in society. He is coming forward as their champion. The saying “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” is often attributed to the founders of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Abraham Lincoln, among many others, though Lord Denning in The Road to Justice (1988) stated that the phrase originated in a statement of Irish orator John Philpot Curran in 1790. The phrase is often used to emphasise the importance of being vigilant in protecting one’s rights and freedoms.

Ethnic and religious identity are two powerful concepts by which people may be mobilised the world over. This is a phenomenon that seemed to have subsided in Western Europe due to centuries of secular practices in which the state was made secular and neutral between ethnicities and religions. For a short while last year during the Aragalaya, it seemed that Sri Lanka was transcending its ethnic and religious cleavages in the face of the unexpected economic calamity that plunged large sections of the population back into poverty. There was unprecedented unity especially at the street level to demonstrate publicly that the government that had brought the country to this sorry pass had to go. The mighty force of people’s power succeeded in driving the leaders of that government out of power. Hopefully, there will be a government in the future that will bring the unity and mutual respect within the people, especially the younger generations, to the fore and the sooner the better as the price is growing higher by the day.

But like the irrepressible Donald Trump the old order is fighting to stage its comeback. The rhetoric of ethnicity and religion being in danger is surfacing once more. President Ranil Wickremesinghe who proclaimed late last year that the 13th Amendment to the constitution would be implemented in full, as it was meant to be, and enable the devolution of power to be enjoyed by the people of the provinces, including those dominated by Tamils and Muslims, has gone silent on this promise. The old order to which he is providing a new economic vision is clearly recalcitrant on ethno-religious matters. As a result, the government’s bold plan to set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission as promised to the international community in 2015 to address the unresolved human rights issues of the war, is reportedly on the rocks. The main Tamil political parties have made statements that they will not legitimise or accept such a mechanism in the absence of a genuine devolution of power. Politics must not override policies.

HURTFUL SENTIMENTS

The sense of threat to ethnicity and religion looms too large once again for forward movement in conflict resolution between the different communities that constitute the Sri Lankan nation which is diverse and plural. Two unlikely persons now find themselves at the centre of an emotion-heavy ethno-religious storm. One is a comedian, the other is a religious preacher. Both of them have offended the religious sensibilities of many in the ethno-religious Sinhala Buddhist majority community. Both of their statements were originally made to small audiences of their own persuasion, but were then projected through social media to reach much larger audiences. The question is whether they made these statements to rouse religious hatred and violence. There have been numerous statements from all sides of the divide, whether ethnic, religious or political, denouncing them for their utterances.

Both comedian Nathasha Edirisooriya and pastor Jerome Fernando have apologised for offending and hurting the religious sentiments of the Buddhist population. They made an attempt to remedy the situation when they realised the hurt, the anger and the opposition they had generated. This is not the first time that such hurtful and offensive comments have been made by members of one ethno-religious community against members of another ethnic-religious community. Taking advantage of this fact the government is arguing the case for the control of social media and also the mainstream media. It is preparing to bring forward legislation for a Broadcasting Regulatory Commission that would also pave the way to imprison journalists for their reporting, impose fines, and also revoke the licences issued to electronic media institutions if they impact negatively on national security, national economy, and public order or create any conflict among races and religions.

In a free society, opportunities are provided for people to be able to air their thoughts and dissents openly, be it at Hyde Park or through their representatives in Parliament. The threat to freedom of speech and to the media that can arise from this new law can be seen in the way that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which is the world’s standard bearer on civil and political rights has been used and is being abused in Sri Lanka. It was incorporated into Sri Lankan law in a manner that has permitted successive governments to misuse it. It is very likely that the Broadcast Regulatory Commission bill will yield a similar result if passed into law. The arrest and detention of comedian Natasha Edirisooriya under the ICCPR Act has become yet another unfortunate example of the misuse of a law meant to protect human rights by the government. Pastor Jerome Fernando is out of prison as he is currently abroad having left the country a short while before a travel ban was delivered to him.

SELECTIVE TARGETING

The state media reported that a “Police officer said that since there is information that she was a person who was in the Aragalaya protest, they are looking into the matter with special attention.” This gives rise to the inference that the reason for her arrest was politically motivated. Comedian Edirisooriya was accused of having violated the provisions in the ICCPR in Section 3(1) that forbids hate speech. Section 3(1) of the ICCPR Act prohibits advocacy of hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, violence or hostility. The international human rights watchdog, Amnesty International, has pointed out that in the case of Edirisooriya that for speech to be illegal on the grounds of being hate speech it requires “a clear showing of intent to incite others to discriminate, be hostile towards or commit violence against the group in question.” Amnesty International also notes that “When the expression fails to meet the test, even if it is shocking, offensive or disturbing, it should be protected by the state.”

Ironically, in the past there have been many instances of ethnic and religious minorities being targeted in a hateful manner that even led to riots against them, but successive governments have been inactive in protecting them or arresting their persecutors. Such targeting has taken place, often for political purposes in the context of elections, in blatant bids to mobilise sections of the population through appeals to narrow nationalism and fear of the other. The country’s political and governmental leaders need to desist from utilising the ICCPR Act against those who make social and political critiques that are outside the domain of hate speech. The arrest of Bruno Divakara, the owner of SL-Vlogs, under the ICCPR Act is an indication of this larger and more concerning phenomenon which is being brought to the fore by the Broadcasting Regulatory Commission bill.

The crackdown on the space for free expression and critical comment is unacceptable in a democratic polity, especially one as troubled as Sri Lanka, in which the economy has collapsed and caused much suffering to the people and the call to hold elections has been growing. The intervention of the Human Rights Commission which has called on the Inspector General of Police to submit a report on the arrest and its rationale is a hopeful sign that the independence of institutions intended to provide a check and balance will finally prevail. The Sri Lankan state will hopefully evolve to be a neutral arbiter in the disputes between competing ethnic, religious and partisan political visions of what the state should be and what constitutes acceptable behaviour within it. Taking on undemocratic powers in a variety of ways and within a short space of time is unlikely to deliver economic resurgence and a stable and democratic governance the country longs for. Without freedom, justice and fair play within, there can be no hope of economic development that President Wickremesinghe would be wanting to see.

Continue Reading

Features

Girl power… to light up our scene

Published

on

Manthra: Pop, rock and Sinhala songs

We have never had any outstanding all-girl bands, in the local scene, except, perhaps…yes The Planets, and that was decades ago!

The Planets did make a name for themselves, and they did create quite a lot of excitement, when they went into action.

Of course, abroad, we had several top all-girl bands – outfits like the Spice Girls, Bangles, Destiny’s Child, and The Supremes.

It’s happening even now, in the K-pop scene.

Let’s hope we would have something to shout about…with the band Manthra – an all-girl outfit that came together last year (2022).

Manthra is made up of Hiruni Fernando (leader/bass guitar), Gayathma Liyanage (lead guitar), Amaya Jayarathne (drums), Imeshini Piyumika (keyboards), and Arundathi Hewawitharana (vocals).

Amaya Arundathi and Imeshini are studying at the University of Visual and Performing Arts, while Gayathma is studying Architecture at NIMB, and Hiruni is the Western Music teacher at St. Lawrence’s Convent, and the pianist at Galadari Hotel, having studied piano and classical guitar at West London University.

They have already displayed their talents at various venues, events, weddings, and on TV, as well (Vanithabimana Sirasa TV and Charna TV Art Beat).

Additionally, the band showcased their talent at the talent show held at the Esoft Metro Campus.

The plus factor, where this all-girl outfit is concerned, is that their repertoire is made up rock, pop, and Sinhala songs.

Explaining as to how they came up with the name Manthra, founder member Hiruni said that Manthra means a word, or sound, repeated to aid concentration in meditation, and that the name was suggested by one of the band members.

Hiruni Fernando: Founder and leader of Manthra

She also went on to say that putting together a female band is not an easy task, in the scene here.

“We faced many difficulties in finding members. Some joined and then left, after a short while. Unlike a male band, where there are many male musicians in Sri Lanka, there are only a few female musicians. And then, there are some parents who don’t like their daughters getting involved in music.”

With talented musicians in their line-up, the future certainly looks bright for Manthra who are now keen to project themselves, in an awesome way, in the scene here, and abroad, as well.

“We are keen to do stage shows and we are also planning to create our own songs,” said Hiruni.

Yes, we need an all-girl group to add variety to our scene that is now turning out to be a kind of ‘repeating groove,’ where we see, and hear, almost the same thing…over and over again!

Continue Reading

Trending