LEETAHSAR THE CHOC TASTER

i just completed my gce 'o' and was waiting for the results..it was a 6 mths wait...what to do?
work lor...and it so happen ALLIED CHOCOLATE once located at tanglin halt got opening for quality control guys. i was staying in q'town...so very near home. i went for the interview...
during the interview, there were a HR guy, a lau kuay bu head of the quality control dept...and her assistant, another lau chiobu...
infront on me was small pieces of chocolate without the wrappers. those wer called NEAPOLITANS..small rectangular piece of different flavoured chocs.
so they tested me on the spot. asked me to differentiate what flavor was what...me got everyone correct...milk, vanilla..and even the orangey one...steady right?
yes...i was hired!
my job: quality control..duties: PAID TO EAT AND TASTE CHOC...EVERY HOUR...i.e 8 X a day.
i was suppose to check on the choc raw material called cocoa massa. it was a piece of possessed raw choc round block. each was like 25kg....all stacked up neatly...
so off i went to the cool room. i lifted a piece to scrap some sample for the rest of the girls quality control team to test...
my god! guess what was below the circular block...a pancaked dried up BAT..yes...and with the round shape background, it looked like BATMAN insignia...yucks!
next piece, i lifted up...worst...a pancaked cat..dunno how low dead and pancaked...next piece...green color ...overgrown with algae...oh my god!!...i was going to puke!...imagine i had been tasting and enjoying all those sample those factory girl sent to the lab for me to taste and write report about it...
and here...i found for my self....dried up pancake bat, cat, algae..and dunno what ...i dread to lift any more....
u know what they do to it?
they throw everything of this yucky massa into a big cooker. melted them, filter them...and mixed in the sugar, milk, cocoa butter, flavoring...and mould it out as chocolate like TWINKLES, NEAPOLITAN, DRAGEES, TABLET...etc...for the consumer...
everything dissolved already...and there u r eating all the extra bits and dunno what inside...yucks!!!.....
the lab did some test on the sample i collected..and u won't want to know the dire results...NOT FIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION...
do u know by right all these massa should be destroyed...but no...they marked them and then sent to some more underdeveloped countries like indonesia where they would use it...and then maybe returned the end products here to sell....
unscrupulous business tactics!
i wrote a very honest and of course bad report on the findings...and handed it in...however, all was silence....
after sometime, i went back to the cool store room and found all the condemned massa missing....i asked the production engineer. he said all utilised already melted into chocolate and made into bars and tablets...
guess where did the finished products go?
to our army ns boys as energy food in their jungle training ration...my god!! how can like that???
yes, it was supplied to the army...our army!....
so i bo bian..and bo chap...helpless what?...what could i do?
i continued my daily routine works lor...
then the best part was one day, they sent some nuts sample. of course i suppose to roast them, eat them and comment on the quality...
shiok u know!...i got macadamia, brazilian, hazelnuts, almonds...fresh one...me just threw everything into the oven except the macadamias where were already processed when imported from australia...that one i supped on the spot...like dunno how many grams i ate man...
i ate so much nuts that for that day lunch, i actually skipped...full already what...haahaa..;9)
the brazilian nuts was the most expensive...and the most delicious...big, crunchy...and simply heaven to munch them...
so after makan...chopped a big PASS on all the nuts sample lor...
these nuts later would be coated with chocolate and turned into a product we called DRAGEES...or nut coated chocolates...
i worked there for almost 2 months already. and part of my work was that the company driver would drive me to the big warehouse where they kept all the cocoa beans imported from different countries...
GHANA produces the best ..the most fragrance beans...and i had to take quantitative sample from the mountainous stacks and stacks of gunny sacks containing the cocoa beans....
these samples i would bring back to the lab...me so the physical testing. my tongue, nose and sight came into play..
must observe for tiny insects....a kind of choc weevils. must lick the cut up raw beans...and taste it to see if they are sour, bitter or rancid....and must smell the flavour for "muskiness"..etc...
the weevils part was very interesting...u could tell whether there was or not. so i clever...i put some suspiciously selected beans into a container...left it aside...and true enough a few days later, weevils started appearing from the beans....
so we did an estimation on the amount of weevils produced...if it was way beyond the limit set...the whole shipment of beans would have to be rejected...supposed to be such theorectically...but dunno company got carried out the action or not....that part..me dunno so was my dept....
it was a month now...it was pay day. on the same day there was an open house choc sales only to employees....so me got my paid and went to see what chocs on offered lor...
wow!...many different kind...v h choc was originally from holland u know...so we had those imported all the way from holland...the LIQUOR FILLED TYPE choc..yum yum!
so i bought...almost $100+ i brought back all the chocs happily to belanja my family and maybe my friends too...
when i reached home thinking i got a good bargain...i was utterly shock to discover what was inside the choc when i opened up the wrappers...
MOTHS...tiny ones...many started flying out of one of the box of expensive choc...i was furious...how can the company sell this type of products to own stuffs??? i look closely at another box...eek!!...tiny worms shits...i could bet and sense there were worms inside there too....so i didn't unwrap...
i was mad. the next day, i din turn up to work anymore...i called to resign..utterly disappointed with this evil choco company...
i brought all those sickening unwrappped suspicious chocs to the MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT...there i officially filed a complain...and i told them where to locate all the hideous cocoa massa raw choco...and when on the spot i opened up the boxes of chocs..yes..u guess it!!...moths started flying..and worms crawling everywhere inside....:(....
u know what...my head of dept called me suddenly a few days after my resignation whether i went to file a complain...she said the company kena summon for like 5 figures..and she was actually pleased with what i had done...she told me...i did right...as a quality controller...she couldn't bring herself to do the same thing...cos of her livelihood...and for that she admired me for my guts..haahaa...;9)
and that ends the story of the yucky van houten chocolate job...the unscrupulous way of those so called foreign company that set shop here....and do this sort of dishonest business!
up till today...i rather eat any other brand of chocolate...but never van houten!!!
and the factory had since closed shop liao...or shifted out other countries....no more in sinkietown....
the end.