A Good Mix

I had my first drink when I was:
9 years old. Well, I remember getting drunk on eggnog, at my grandmother’s birthday celebration. But my dad had worked in F&B all his life, and so when I was 12 years old I already knew I wanted to work as a bartender. My parents gave me my first ‘toolkit’ for bartending when I was 14.

I’m from Slovakia.
I just returned from a trip back home. The difference in temperature, from Slovakia to here, is 55ºC. I think it was -16ºC in Slovakia, so when I came back to Singapore, it was like someone slapped me in the face. My life here is air-conditioned!

I miss the food back home the most.
The first dish I miss is called Bryndzové Halušky, it’s a kind of dumpling with sheep’s cheese and bacon in it, cut into big cubes. The second one is Svickova, which is beef tenderloin, slowly cooked and served with something like a bao—white and steamed, squishy and huge—and cut into slices, with vegetable sauce. Those two are my favourites.

I spend six days a week working at a bar.
It’s called The Library, in Keong Saik. I first came to Singapore two years ago, when I was offered a job at another bar, where I worked at for five months before coming to The Library. It wasn’t an easy choice to come here, and I was given only three weeks to make the move. I was 28 years old at the time, and was all settled down in Slovakia, but I’d been wanting to move forward to somewhere else. 

Now I don’t want to move back home.
My girlfriend is from Singapore, and I brought her to Slovakia, which she loved. She asked if we could move there and find a job for her but I said no. It’s very different there.