Money in my Pocket, but I Just Can't Get No Love.

Listening: Might know too much but I'm no soft touch. Brought you up to recognize lies as such. I need no crutch. Childhood was arduous and, if there is a God, I'm sure He would pardon us. Must be working hard in us, not to harden us. What's my problem? It's been too long. So it has been eons. Seriously. My TV is not turning on until I have something significant on the page. My balcony door is open. My laptop is on my lap. Faithless is on the stereo. And I am relaxing on my Sunday. The story of the past five months is that I have been working every day, at least a little bit, even on "days off." I am one of two sous-chefs at a new, fledgling restaurant that had great ideas, but had no foresight, wherewithal, or heart to push it through. I am a sous-chef in command of a restaurant that had a lot of potential, which is what drew me to it, but I need help. The other sous-chef is as prepared to be a sous as I thought I was. He's 22 years old, a good executor, but lacks the wisdom, heart, and experience to lead a crew. He's out anyways. He's taking a job as a line cook for a pretty good restaurant in Cambridge. The chef de cuisine isn't qualified to be a CDC either. He has worked with chef for a long time and has worked with the owner for even longer. He is an Asian equivalent of an Amigo (which in this case, I might call him a "peng you" - pronounced pung yo), who has been in the country for over ten years. His English is fantastic, but accented. He is also a great executor. He bangs out the work like it's nobody's business, but he's not a manager or delegator. He's not a constant creative. He doesn't even think he deserves a sous-chef title. I disagree. I don't think he should have the chef de cuisine title though. And then there's Chef. On the national scene, she's a player. As of late, she's had some bad luck in Boston, but I think that a lot of that is due to the fact that she hasn't played her hand very well and she is constantly anti-Boston, something that is very dangerous for someone from New York City. She's opened more restaurants than I have even worked at. People throw money at her. It's too bad this restaurant is going down the shitter. Finally, we have the clueless owner. He cares about the night life and that's it. He doesn't care about the food. He cares about the nightclub attached to the restaurant and the bottom line. Of course, kitchen labor costs are going to be the highest expense of the restaurant. But for some reason, he and Chef seem to think that you can get minimum wage workers to turn shit into plates of gold. I need skilled veterans and then I can turn shit into gold, or I can get less skilled cooks to turn gold into more gold. It's one or the other or both, but what's happening right now isn't going to make people like the food more. It's tough for me. This is my first sous-chef position. I should still be chained to the stove. Instead I'm out front expediting every night, dealing with logistics, hiring, firing, training the front of the house, doing payroll, and keeping the new GM at bay. Every night, I think about whether I can trust the food going out to be seasoned correctly, how I can get more talent in the kitchen, how I can get the most out of the kids we have, whether my paycheck is going to bounce, how I can make the most out of questionable product, how I can get my chef to order appropriately, how I can get my owner to green light an purveyor that's not restaurant depot, and the list goes on. I am working at least as much as I was at Island Creek, but my commute it much nicer, I get a whole lot more respect and responsibility, and I feel like I might get some good networking contacts out of this job, even if it does go down the shitter. I would be lying if I didn't say that four months after opening this restaurant's doors, I'm not looking at it. I was sort of talking to another new restaurant in Boston about going and being the sous-chef there, but there are some things that I kind of want to see how they play out with this place. First of all, Chef is considering opening up a restaurant in Chicago. This would, as I have been trying to for the past five or six years, get me out of Boston, at least for a little while. I now have experience opening up two restaurants. I might as well keep going until it's time to open my own. Second, Chef is trying to get me a consulting gig in Shanghai. That's the dream. For realz. No raise could get me to give up that dream. And if someone were to offer me my dream job, I would at least negotiate in my travel time and budget. In other news, I at least have a little bit more of a work/life balance working at this new place. When I was working for Island Creek, I would wake up, clean up, hop on the train in the winter or on my bike in the summer, commute for a half hour to an hour, work til midnight or one in the morning, and either cab or bike home. On lucky nights, I would take the train home for another hour commute. I was so exhausted on my constantly changing days off that I would never be able to make plans. At least now, I have consistent "days off." I'm able to make plans, go to concerts, go one the occasional date, hang out with pals, etc. Overall, I'm much happier with my life now than I was a year ago. I just wish I could be doing better food and I wish people appreciated the food that we are doing. The restaurant is grossly misbranded. It's a place with an identity crisis. It is neither owner driven nor chef driven. I constantly tell people that we should take a four pound chain to the place and distress the hell out of it. Make it dark and dank. There is far too much glitz and polish. And for as much glitz and polish as there is, the planning and the build out on the restaurant was absolutely horrendous. Things are already falling apart or aren't working. Also, the entire front of the house staff is so under-educated. How can you serve Asian food if you have no knowledge base? How can you sell, sell, sell, if you don't know what your selling and you don't have the hunger to know what it is you're selling? Maybe I have been lucky working with career servers in fine dining-ish environments, but I expect a server to know a little something about the food. I expect them to be behind the food. I feel like I'm the only one who is really trying to be behind the food. I care. I'm trying to get others to care. That's the trick really though, huh? Getting others to care. How do you do that? You get people who are excited by the project to run it. The kitchen should already be excited about it. But how can you get people excited about things that they don't even know about. I'm sure it's going to be something I deal with a lot over time. Anyhow, I kind of need a vacation. I don't have the cash for it right now, or the time, but I kind of need one. I want to be on a beach for a few days or somewhere that I have no obligations and I might not speak the language. I want to be somewhere with food that I can't get in Boston. I want a little bit of relaxation, because I'm wound tighter than... Well... I can't think of anything. A coil? A spool of thread? To top it off, I'm now an uncle to four, which all happened in a matter of weeks. One set of friends had a little girl and my pal in New York had triplet sons. I got some kids to spoil now. But right now I'm gonna spoil myself with some sushi. I deserve it. Omakase, here I come.

"I'm going to California..."

Listening: You take your number and you stand in line. And they watch to see how high you're gonna climb. Pat on the back 'n' better luck next time. It ain't nothin', no it ain't nothin' but a Heartbreak Town. What's my problem? "Tomorrow" can't come soon enough. I seem to remember when I was a kid, a game that I used to play called "I'm going to California..." What the game entails is that you sit around in a circle with a bunch of friends, and the first person would say, "I'm going to California. And I'm going to bring... [insert item here]." Then, the next person would say, "I'm going to California. And I'm going to bring [insert item here] and [person 1's item]." This would continue until the person could no longer recall in order the items of the other players. I know. It seems like kind of a weak game, but I think I played this in first grade, and sometimes, people brought giraffes with them to California. Anyhow, I was thinking about this game, for some strange reason, as I was walking to work. From there, my mind drifted to what I would bring with me when I finally end up leaving the country for the extended amount of time that I'm looking to leave for. What would I bring? What would you bring? Now, assuming that I only have one normal sized suitcase (that has to be checked), and one backpack, and assuming that I will automatically be carrying my passport, my visas, my wallet, the clothes on my back, the shoes on my feet, and my unlocked cell phone, this is what I would bring: 1. My computer & hard drive - I really don't know what I would do without my laptop. It's my way of keeping connected to people I don't get to see on a regular basis. It's my media storage. It's my jukebox. It's the way I can make sure that people know where I am and what I'm doing. 2. My knife kit - I mean, if I'm trying to live abroad, I'm going to have to find a job. I might as well have my tools to help me put my best foot forward. Hundreds of dollars of knives, spoons and tools, though it won't impress someone on the other side of the world, the can most definitely help me do what I know how to do. 3. My 3 pairs of Jeans - I own more than three pairs of jeans, but I have three pairs that fit me perfectly. They're good denim and they've been hemmed to the perfect length. I feel like I would have a hard time describing the right fit of a good pair of jeans to someone in Mandarin. 4. My Smartwool socks - Amazing socks like these are desperately hard to find out of the country, and again, I wouldn't know how to describe them in Mandarin. 5. A couple of books - I would at least bring Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. It's a book that I can read over and over without getting bored of it. I think that I would also bring Ernest Hemingway's, In Our Time or The Complete Short Stories. Hemingway was an expat for a good period of time, and he wrote extensively about his time abroad. Maybe it would inspire me to create a continuous narrative about my time away from the culture I grew up in. 6. My digital camera - How else am I going to record some of the debauchery I get into? 7. Hoot - My little owl traveling companion. 8. Some chef clothes - You can't depend on the idea that restaurants in other parts of the world provide linens for their workers. Come to think of it, that's all that I really think I need to bring with me aside from random clothing. Everything else, I could probably get wherever I end up. Anyhow, that's what I was thinking about for the better part of the day.

Dear Sabrina,

Listening: Drowning past regrets in tea and cigarettes, but I can't seem to forget when you came along.
What's my problem? I am mildly like Bill Murray Lost in Translation.

It's been a while, hasn't it? How have you been? How is your job? Has it started getting cold in Shanghai yet?

Can you believe that it's almost been a year since I met you in Shanghai? Sometimes it feels like it was only yesterday that you, me, Akiko and Orchid sat around your table sucking the sweet meat out of hairy crabs and drinking Shaoxing wine. I still remember how painstakingly long it took for Orchid to make it through a single crab. I have been seeing articles on http://www.cnngo.com/shanghai about those crabs, which is just another thing that serves to remind me of where I was a year ago.

To be honest, China has been on my mind a lot lately. I just finished reading a book by a guy who was a foreign correspondent for The New Yorker magazine. Before that, he taught English in Fuling, Sichuan. The book that I finished is about how China is changing every day. He illustrates this through stories that he has from people he meets either in Beijing where he lives, through stories of students that he still keeps in touch with, and through his own research of China's past. It's completely fascinating. He tells stories of his students who move from the interior of Sichuan to places like Shenzhen and Wenzhou to hopefully make enough money to return home and live a more comfortable life.

When I think of these stories, I think about the fact that you left Chengdu, where all of your family is, to work in Shanghai. You left to chase the dream. It's a thing of beauty. Since I lived in three different cities over the course of my childhood, I don't think that I really developed a true home. Although I have spent most of my life after university in Boston, I guess that makes it my home. However, I find myself looking to leave Boston. I need to chase the dream, even more than I already am.

I have started to read a second book by the same author. This book is about his two years teaching in Fuling. I have only read the first 20 or so pages, but I can already tell that I will like the book.

As far as the rest of my life goes, I feel like I'm going through another period of change. I have been at this job for 9 months, and I'm starting to get tired of it. It is kind of a turbulent restaurant that I'm working at. We're always super busy. Leadership isn't really all that organized. Communication in the restaurant is awful. I'm finding the food to be rather boring. I'm not really learning anything besides how to make it through the night. I'm not doing anything fun or interesting at work at all.

I have started looking for another job though. I had one interview this past Monday. I went in and worked for a day. Unfortunately, it wasn't a normal day. They were doing a special dinner, so the menu was very small. It was a 3 course meal. I ended up making one of the courses from start to finish and they seemed to like my work. They have already offered me a job, but we haven't talked about money yet. A friend of mine from a restaurant that I used to work at works there now, so he really wants me to take the job. I am planning on going in during a more normal day to see if I really like it and if I like the people who work there.

I also have a couple of other restaurants that I'm supposed to interview with. The restaurant industry is so small in Boston that I either know people who work at these restaurants or I know people who know the chefs. It seems like every time I think I'm going to meet someone new in the Boston restaurant scene, we already know at lease three people in common.

I have also recently moved into a new apartment. The good thing about this is that I live by myself. The bad thing is that it costs a lot more than I was paying before, and sometimes I get lonely. The fact that the new apartment costs more is making it harder for me to save up for my big move out of the United States. Actually it's the fact that my apartment costs more and the fact that for the first time in a long time, I'm living in the same city as a lot of my friends, so I'm going out to hang out with them quite often.

The loneliness usually comes late at night. See, I tend to stay up late at night not doing much of anything. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I watch television. Sometimes I'm just looking around the internet. If I try to go to sleep, I just end up staring at the ceiling. But late at night, while I'm either reading, watching television, or surfing the internet, I'll think to myself, "Man, I wish I had someone to hang out with right now." But, at that time of night, everyone else is asleep. Maybe I should start baking pies late at night. Or better yet, I could teach myself how to make noodles. It would probably be more productive than what I normally do. Maybe I'll start that next week.

Anyhow, this e-mail has probably gotten long enough. I was just writing because I was thinking about you and I wanted to see how you were. I hope everything is good with you and I hope that you are happy.

Wishing I was in Shanghai,
[ZEN!!!]

Aaaaaaaand... We're Back.

Listening: Now that I've seen you stripped to the very core, I know that I need you less than I did before.
What's my problem? I have 1 year to push through.

It's been a while and I can't promise how often I'll post, but I'm posting now at twenty two four in the morning. And it is because it's twenty two four in the morning that I can with some relatively certainty tell you that this post may not be as verbose as my usual ones.

It's been a long seven months. I've been working my arse off at anywhere from fifty to seventy hours a week. People have quit, sometimes without giving notice, and I have been the patch. It's a blessing and a curse to be the man who can do it all in a restaurant. They need a shucker? I'm there. A guy walks off the line? I swing over to fill in his spot. Someone calls in hung over? I call them a fucking pussy and rock out his station.

The last six months have been filled not only with a lot of work, but a lot of drinking, a fair amount of dating and a whole heap of chaos. Here are the bullet points...

--I've gone out on dates with a handful of girls (some more than once), but there's always something wrong (e.g. Contestant #1: cute & age appropriate, but a little too Christian, Contestant #2: cute & smart, but doesn't eat pork and isn't interesting enough, Contestant #3: pretty, smart, but too old - though gravity has not caught up with her)

--There are some pretty girls I incessantly flirt with, but I have a feeling that they're all show, no go. I'll continue one until each one comes to a head (or receiving head), though I fear I may contract the herps from one (Note to self: Always wear a hoodie.).

--Got offered a sous-chef position under a guy I used to work with back at the Chez, but the offer was too low and I wouldn't have enough say in anything, so I turned it down.

--There has been a lot of chaos in moving. I hate moving. I can't wait to get rid of as much stuff as I can once I settle back into my place.

--I have constantly been disappointed with people's lack of foresight and ability to think of anyone other than themselves. Co-workers running their stations dry on the day before their days off. Roommates not thinking about the fact that there are people living in the apartment who pay rent, but aren't on the lease.

Anyhow, I have two more weeks before I'm really moved back in. Once I do, I'm starting a pile of things that I don't want anymore and a pile of things that I want to put somewhere while I'm out of the country. Right now, and I guess I have been for the past six or eight months, I'm taking stock of what I want to keep and what I want to leave, literally, figuratively and personally. I'm taking stock of what and who are helping me, and what and who has been getting in my way.

Part of me is ready to burn the land and salt the earth, but the better part of me is waiting for next year's tax holiday to buy a new mac and a plane ticket, then quietly slip away, leaving breadcrumbs for those who I want to be able to find me.

I know it all sounds extreme, but it could just be the way that I find so many people and situations as of late so irritating. I'm sick of it. I'm over it. I'm done with the bullshit. I'm taking out the trash, packing my bag and disappearing.

One year.... One year....

Half of me doesn't exist anyways, so I don't think it's such a big deal if I set sail. I have chosen a life where my hours are so different that I rarely get to see even my closest friends. I've become a ghost. I float around all by myself on a lot of my hours off, hiding in my coffin of a room or meandering around the streets of Boston. Even at work, I'm kind of a ghost. I'm not THE grill cook. I'm not THE hot apps guy. I'm the cook who is everywhere and nowhere. Granted, it's an important position, but I still feel like I don't exist.

I'm checked out. I'm ready to go. I've got my passport and my smart walking shoes. A year from now can't come fast enough.

Flashback

Listening: Remember that long bus trip when I needed a nap? I used you as a pillow on that Spanish lady's lap. I love you sweeeeatshirt, red hooded sweeeeatshirt.
What's my problem? It's ten past seven in the morning and I'm awake.

October 25, 2005 - It was a warm fall day. Michael Jackson (yes, that was actually his name) and I broke off from Lianne so that Michael Jackson could check out of his hostel and drop his gear at my guest house in Riomaggiore, as my room mate, Diane had left earlier that day. We had plans to meet back up with Lianne in Corniglia, the middle of the five towns that make up Cinque Terre in Italy, after she went back to Monterosso to take pictures at three o'clock.

Two days before I had a brief conversation with Michael Jackson (I have to use his full name, because to this day, it amuses me that his name was actually Michael Jackson) as we got off the train in La Spezia. We parted ways thinking that we'd never run into each other again, even though we were both going to be visiting Cinque Terre over the next few days.

Outside the train station, I met Diane, a middle aged cop from northwestern Australia. We were staying at the same inconveniently located hostel in La Spezia and opted out of waiting an hour for the shuttle and shared a cab. We then, again, opted out of waiting an hour and a half for the shuttle to take us to Cinque Terre, and instead hiked for an hour along a long and winding road to get to the terminal town of Riomaggiore.

That night, as we checked out the town, we bumped into Lianne, a girl that Diane had met on the train. Lianne told us about an old woman who had helped her find a guest house in town. After Diane and I realized how big of a pain in the ass our hostel was, we knew that we needed to move into Cinque Terre. So, we arranged to meet Lianne the next day so that she could introduce us to the man who owned the guest house where she was staying.

When I say guest house, it was more like a villa. It was way up in the mountains, about a ten minute hike down into town, but it looked down over town and over the ocean. In the trellis that shaded the walkways around the villa hung grapes and lemons. The owner made "unh" sounds, as his English was elementary at best, eyebrow and hand motions indicating to us that we were free to pick the lemons and grapes.

We were incredibly lucky that he had a room for Diane and I. We had a room that was around the corner from Lianne and, although it faced away from the ocean and was kind of dark, it was comfortable, convenient, had a kitchen, and did I mention free lemons and grapes?

After dropping our gear, the three of us hiked back down the mountain to the head of the trail, where we bought our tourist passes to walk the trails connecting the five towns of Cinque Terre and to take the trains that connected the towns as well.

It was there that I ran into Michael Jackson again. Michael Jackson is kind of a quiet guy. He was a guy of twenty five years, but he had salt and pepper hair and sideburns that were just short of mutton chops. To be honest, he looked a little lost. Like me, it was his first time as a solo traveler. Whereas I had been on the trail for three weeks already, he had only been on the trail for a few days, and his trip was to last only two weeks.

As strange as this sounds, if you seem like a nice enough person, I'll always ask you to join whatever I'm doing when I'm traveling. So, naturally, I asked Michael Jackson to join Diane, Lianne and I (who knows, maybe Tito or Germaine would show up too... seriously... great name).

The first part of that day, we got to know each other as we made the easy stroll (I wouldn't even call it a hike) from Riomaggiore to Manarola. Once we made it to Manarola, we decided to take the train to the last town, Monterosso, where we got some gelato and checked out the beaches.

It wasn't until we decided to do the hike from Monterosso to Vernazza that we all realized that our lives were in flux.

The hike from Monterosso to Vernazza is not a short or easy one. It was just after lunch time when we started and we didn't get to Vernazza until a half hour before sunset. The long hard hike gave us all time to really expand on our stories.

Michael Jackson was just coming off of a tumultuous relationship with an older woman, unhappiness in his job and a host of other things. Diane, who had always wanted to be an actress, was trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her career in law enforcement, as she wasn't happy seeing the effects of the pedophiles that she had put away. Lianne was on her way from South Africa to the UK to start a new job.

Me, well, I was a wreck at the time. Even though I had just started to cook professionally on nights and weekends, I was thoroughly unhappy. I hated my day job. I hated the people at my day job. Furthermore, my heart had been smashed to smithereens by Stephanie, who at that time I harbored immense amounts of ill feelings for. I harbored so much hate for that girl that whenever I would think about her, my chest would seize up and I would find it hard to breathe.

The next day was when Michael Jackson and I peeled off with the intent of meeting Lianne at three, but we were running late. When we got off the train in Corniglia, there was a long steep stairway running up into the town. Corniglia was the one town that we hadn't been to.

Earlier that day, Diane had taken a train up to Lake Como. Lianne and I had plans to meet her there the next day, whereas Michael Jackson had to make his way to Rome.

It was on this stairway up to the city that I saw a man carving rocks from the sea for necklaces.

Since we were late, we didn't really have much time to stop and admire the work. Aside from a five second stop, we sprinted up the stairs and wildly ran around the town looking for Lianne. When we couldn't find her, we headed back down to the stairway at the train station.

Michael Jackson and I walked halfway back down the stairs, where the man was carving the rocks. Most of his necklaces were very Christian. There were crosses and such, but one caught my eye. It was a small round rock that he carved into a small fish. I liked it instantly. But, as I stood there hemming and hawing, Lianne showed up at the top of the stairs.

"Hey!" she said with a smile on her face. "Where the hell have you guys been? It's been an hour!"

We explained the reasons why we were late and decided it was time to go back to Vernazza for some more bruschetta and beer.

I was about to walk away from the necklace, but Lianne convinced me to buy it. The man put it on a cord with the perfect length and even attached a clasp to the back so that I could take it on and off if I wanted to.

Once the guy put it on me, I instantly knew that it was a good purchase. I loved it. I even named the fish Cornelius in reference to the town Corniglia.

Little did I know that right then and there my life was changing. I had no idea that the people that I had met in Cinque Terre would help me let go and move on from what had happened with Stephanie. I had no idea that they would help me decide to try to quit my day job to cook for a living. My time in Cinque Terre was a special time and place for me, and Cornelius has become a symbol and a reminder for me of when my life really started to change, when I started to find my smile again.

Even though I had the clasp, I never once took off Cornelius in the six years that I have had him. Sometimes, without even realizing it, I'll reach up to my neck and will rub the stone between my thumb and index finger as I daydream about my travels.

I have two pieces of jewelery. One is a ring that I have had since college, that I only take off when I'm doing dough work. The other is Cornelius.


Me, Michael Jackson, Lianne and Diane

Now, I told you that story to tell you this one.

There's a line cook at work, Juan, who is gay. Yeah. Whatever. He laughs and jokes with everyone, but he has taken to poking me in the side and sometimes pulling on my ears. I have taken it all in stride, with a good sense of humor. I am the new guy, so I try my best to have a good sense of humor about everything. A couple of times he has gotten annoying, but never really too bad.

Yesterday, he started tugging on Cornelius and *snap!* He broke the cord.

I was FURIOUS.

"Relax, Chinito. You can get another string."

That's when I tore into him.

"Are you FUCKING kidding me?"

"What? It's just the string. You can get another."

"I have had that necklace for five years and I have never taken it off in those five years. No, asshole. You fucking broke it."

"What's the big deal?"

"Get the fuck away from me right now."

"Relax, Chinito. It's not a big deal."

"I'm telling you right now, you need to get away from me."

"Chinito...."

"Get. the. fuck. away. from. me... now."

I was able to get Cornelius back on the string, but now it looks all ghetto with the knot in the middle tying it together. Today, I might try to find a proper cord to thread Cornelius back on, and I may try to save the hardware so I still have a clasp, but really, I'm still angry. It's a good thing that Juan is going on vacation for the next ten days starting with the day I get back from my two days off. No more games with that kid. Next I see him, he gets the warning to keep his hands to himself, or I'll make him keep his hands to himself.

Anyone around good with cheap cord jewelery? I suck at this kind of stuff.

Insomnia

Listening: In between the moon and you, the angels get a better view of the crumbling difference between wrong and right.
What's my problem? I can never seem to get to sleep.

It's a quarter to five in the morning and I'm still awake. This is nothing new. Since I started this new job, I've been working later than I have in any of my past restaurants. That's also compounded by the fact that it's at least a forty minute commute each way.

On average, I get back home at a quarter past one. By the time I shower it's a quarter to two. If I decide to eat something, which is usually the case because I tend not to eat when I'm working (tasting doesn't count), It's not ready til just after two. I spend another half hour eating and watching shows that I have downloaded. I'm lucky if I'm unencumbered by tasks by three. But even at three, though I may be tired, I can't sleep.

This hasn't been a rare thing for me to be awake at five in the morning. It actually seems to be more routine than rare. Sometimes I turn off the light and try to sleep. Sometimes I put on music and try to sleep. Sometimes I just wait, like tonight, and cruise the internet.

Tonight, I discovered that google translate can translate the proper names of fish such as Halibut, Salmon, Cod, and Bass into Mandarin. It gives me great hope to know that when I get back to China, I may be able to successfully call in or e-mail in an order. That is, if I can order by the pound or kilo... If I have to order by the jin, I'm going to have to learn another conversion.

So, here I am at five minutes to five with a million things going through my head from Chinese weight measurements, to what I'll be doing at work tomorrow since I'm essentially the "extra" man, to a girl I'm crushed out on, to the fact that I can't sleep, to the Counting Crows' amazing VH1 Storytellers album that came out in 1998 and is playing on my iTunes in attempt to lull me off to an easiness that never seems to want to come over me. Too many things haunt my mind that I can't seem to let go of even for a few hours of sleep, that is, unless the sleep is from six in the morning until two in the afternoon.

So, sing it, Adam. Mr. Jones and me, stumbling through the barrio, yeah, we stare at the beautiful women. "She's perfect for you, Man, there's got to be someone for me."

Out for Tiger Mother Blood: In Defense of Chinese Kids

Listening: I face the storms at the tides from the lighthouse and I want that. Unleash the storm and the night.
What's my problem? Some parents don't realize that sometimes their kids know better.

I have just finished reading Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. To be honest, It only took me a few days to read over the commute times back and forth to work and a couple of hours here at the coffee shop, where I, yet again, have no free wifi. At least it's close to my house.

Anyhow, as I have read this book, all I have wanted to do for the entire book was punch Amy Chua in the face. Seriously. It dredged up a lot of specific feelings that I still harbor from my childhood. The book brings up memories I have of wanting to stab my parents in the face with a pencil, smash my violin against the wall and climb out the window either to escape or face plant on the pavement.

The parenting model that Amy Chua used on her daughters isn't too far from that which my parents used, and her two daughters aren't too far off from my brother and I. I can all too well imagine what Chua's youngest (a number two as well) felt and was thinking. It seriously puts a lump in my chest and fury in my arms. (I am completely serious about the book making me want to punch someone.)

I think that the parenting model used by both Chua and my parents, though they claim that it's all for the children, is not one of altruism, but one of narcissism. Who can have "the best" child? Of course, it will be them. While they claim to have faith in their child to be "the best," they don't realize that, of course, they can be "the best," but it may not be in the way that they deem valuable.

Something that I have realized over the past ten years is that prestige in youth means dick. I'll take my brother as an example. He was a top ten chess champion under the age of eighteen. He was a national mathlete. He went to MIT for undergrad and Cornell for a Ph.D.. Even though he only played piano up until sixth or seventh grade (if I remember correctly), he did play piano... until chess took over his life. He made straight As in high school. He had plenty of extra-curricular activities. He was a parent's (any parent's) wet dream. Now, he's a statistics professor at a small college in Boston, and he hates his job.

You would figure that someone with that much success would find a job to love, or at least he would have his choice of jobs, one of which he would love. Not so much. I see that he loves game theory and things like that, but I don't see him moving towards it at all. I think that it may be partially due to the fact that jobs in that field are few and far between. I also think that it might because my parents would be clearly disappointed in him if he started working in gaming. Then they would have two failure children.

This brings me to the self-endulgent part of the blog where I hold a pity party for myself. Well, it won't be too big of a party, maybe just a small gathering of pity friends.

Growing up, I was carted around the country as my brother played chess. We would go on amazing road trips. To be honest, I enjoyed seeing different cities, even if it was from the hotels or the hotel ballrooms where the chess tournaments took place. I ate Steak & Shake and McDonald's at rest stops on the road and met kids from New York, Massachusetts, California, New Mexico and Indiana. At the time, I lived in either St. Louis or Chicago, so those places were far away to me. And although I played in some of the tournaments (my rating never broke 1100, which is pretty damn low), I never cared about the game. I was just dragged around like a sock monkey, second fiddle to the golden boy.

Much like Chua's second daughter, I was given a choice of piano or violin, and I chose violin just to be different from my brother, but it wasn't really much of a choice. It was EITHER piano OR violin. There was no guitar. There wasn't even a trumpet. And it wasn't even fiddle or jazz violin. It was strictly classical. I'm not saying that I don't like classical music, because I do. I just didn't want to be playing it, much like the fact that I love sushi, but I don't want to be rolling it as a career. I think that I would have stuck with the violin a little longer if I hadn't been forced into taking orchestra class, and maybe if I was shown the different dimensions of the violin. That's one of the major flaws of Chua's "Chinese parenting" model is that it's one dimensional. If it does work, those children look good on paper.

My brother looks fantastic on paper, but sometimes I look at him and I see a train wreck. Sometimes my parents ask me to help him dress a little better, take him traveling and get his life together a little bit, but the problems are too big and they don't present themselves in a conventional sense. It's not something that one can teach either. It's something someone has to realize about themselves, much like the way a lot of Americans need to realize that America isn't the end-all/be-all of the world. So, in a sad commentary, I have chosen to distance myself and focus on the train wreck that is my own life.

I am a cook. It's not a career that any Chinese parent would want for their kid. I'm not the next Ming Tsai (without the douchey hair), and although at one point I wanted to be, I have no desire to be that any more. The unequivocal truth is also, that I'm not a shoemaker. I've cooked for the Governor and Branford Marsalis in just the last week. Over the course of my career, the list of people who have eaten off of plates that I have composed is both long and distinguished. I may or may not be great, but I'm certainly good. I don't cook at the Cheesecake Factory. But, I am also at least five years behind my peers.

When I talk about what a waste of thirty thousand dollars a year college was, my parents always say, "Well, if you didn't go to college, you wouldn't have started cooking for yourself and you wouldn't be cooking now." True. Indisputable. However, I first discovered food one night with two of my pals at the California Grill in Disney's Contemporary Resort. What would have happened if I had been given the option of having a more active role in family dinners growing up instead of strictly the awful task of doing dishes (something I abhor to this day unless I have a restaurant dishwasher, and I'm not talking about Miguel, Fredo or Ramiro). Would I have gone to culinary school instead of college? What would have happened if I took the year off that I wanted to take off after high school? Would I have gotten a job in a kitchen and started my career earlier?

What would have happened if I was raised with more of an ability to explore? Maybe I could have been a good musician. I constantly wonder how my life would have turned out if I had been given the option of having my own opinion about things. I wonder if I would actually have more confidence than I do if I hadn't been mentally lambasted throughout childhood. There's a fine line between pushing and making someone feel like shit. It's a line that Amy Chua may or may not have learned by the end of the book, and it's one that I'm not sure that my parents ever got.

I've spent the majority of my life feeling like I was shit. Granted it wasn't ALL my parents' fault. There were a vast array of women in there that also contributed to that. But up until I took my life into my own hands and stop listening to the crowd (which included my parents and random women who wouldn't even engage in small talk at a bar), that I started feeling better about myself. Chua's "Chinese parenting" model had nothing to do with my new found inner strength. It had everything to do with telling everyone to fuck off and bootstrapping it. I'm sure that my parents want to take credit for my work ethic, but it had nothing to do with them. It had everything to do with being tired of my life and living up to everyone else's standards. It had everything to do with me wanting something for myself.

It is because of this transformation that didn't happen overnight that I don't want to be the next Ming Tsai (with or without douchey hair). I want to do what I love. I want to assign value on my life and what I produce. I don't care if my name is out there or not (although I would prefer it not to be big). I just want to do what I do and hope that some small demographic appreciates it. I don't want approval from Michelin, Zagat, Yelp or Chowhound when I open my own joint. I just want the accolades of people "mmm"-ing, chewing loudly and being boisterous about their own lives.

Chua's story isn't over, though. Her daughters are eighteen and fifteen right now. One is about to go off to college (I'm assuming Ivy League), the other one is in the midst of, for me, one of the most awful parts of my life. Their and Chua's success doesn't mistakenly come from an Ivy League education. The answer of success or not comes from whether Chua's daughters excel at what they love, if they can even figure out what they love.

That's one thing that Chua's "Chinese parenting" model doesn't allow, even more so than the "Western" parenting model. How to find your passion. How to find what you dig. How to find what will get your rocks off every day you wake up in the morning. It upsets me that when I ask so many of my friends what they dig, what they want to do with their lives, even as far behind as I am, they have no idea. But they're entrenched in this nine to five grind, happy to give their forty plus hours a week for the two days of weekend and two weeks of paid vacation.

Today, I was catching up with a friend of mine in Germany. She's about to finish school and she's already resigned to being enslaved by corporate Germany. I'm sure that there are people out there who are perfectly happy being a cube-dweller. But, if you know that you're not going to be, why would you do it? Why would you resign yourself to it? It's like my friend in Germany can't see the possibilities in the world, something that I couldn't do for the longest time, because I was brought up to believe in the mainstream ideal of success and security. Ugh. It's just so infuriating.

I'm not saying that childhood should be easy and that children should be allowed to do whatever they want to. I do, however, believe that children should be encouraged to think outside the box. I believe that children should be encouraged to try things that they want to try, but that they shouldn't be allowed to butterfly about. By this, I mean that children should be allowed to try whatever they want to try, but they should commit to it for a decent amount of time.

Anyhow, as you can see, this book has kind of riled me up. It makes me so angry to look at some of the parenting going on, not just by Chinese parents, but by Western parents as well. Too strict and iron handed, too free and uncontrolled. Each side is a slippery slope. I know it's easy to make criticisms from the cheap seats, being that I am not a parent myself (at least not that I know of), but I can speak on my experiences being a child who felt like he was the subject of mental warfare. Part of me really wanted to re-read the book, underline, highlight and put notes in the margin and send the book to my parents. The notes would read things like, "When you did things like this, I wanted to stab you" and "I feel like I should still be in therapy for times when you talked like this to me," but what would that do now?

I realize that the book was not a how-to guide of parenting, but I wonder sometimes if she, through all of the time raising her daughters thought that her way was the right and only way. I wonder if at any time from her youngest daughter was born until she finally cut down on violin at age thirteen, did Chua ever think that she didn't know better than her daughter. She talks about giving her daughters credit to be able to take the criticism, and yet she didn't give her daughters the credit of knowing themselves, knowing what they dig and what they don't. Taking out the garbage, no one digs. It's something that has to be done though. Practicing the violin for X hours a day, when you didn't even choose the instrument that you wanted to play, no one digs. That's just bullshit. That's just parents projecting their own displeasure in their own lives on their kids. You fucking take violin lessons and practice X hours a day. Don't drag your kids/me into your personal dream. Your dreams for your kids are not the same as your kids' dreams.

I'm lucky. I'm lucky I bootstrapped my ass out of the hole I was put in. I'm lucky I made the friends that I made who supported me in my career change, who even encouraged it before I even knew that it was what I wanted to do with my life. I'm lucky that I've found mentors and brothers and sisters in the kitchen brigades that I have been lucky enough to have been a part of. It is because of that luck that I now try to help my friends and my fellow cooks to follow their dreams, to help them bootstrap it, to help them to make a fearless leap of faith to become who they want to become. I don't know how to get everywhere or anywhere for that matter. I do know how to take a leap though. I have leaped over the tiger gorge, but I still have some climbing to do before I'm out of the ravine completely.

Well, this blog has turned into a bit of a tirade or book report gone bad. I had meant to tell you all about the fact that I have been kind of clutch in the kitchen these days filling in wherever needed whether it be raw bar, pastry, grill or private dining. I'm all over the place. I'm working around forty eight or forty nine hours a week with time and a half for everything over forty, so I'm making decent money. When baseball season hits, I'm sure I'll be making sixty hours at least. For now, I'm bored on my days off and work is work. I can't wait for it to get warm.

I'm The Normal One.

Listening: With the strength, we have to together. But for now, emotional ties they stay severed. When there’s trust there’ll be treats and when we funk we'll hear beats.
What's my problem? Clearly the world has changed polarity.

So, I'm having brunch with a friend of mine this afternoon (Me? Morning? Psha! As if...), when she was talking about some of her other friends, and I ask her, "Are all of your friends bat-shit crazy? Am I the normal one of your friends?" To that, she sat for a second and thought about it and figured out that I was, in fact, probably her most normal friend. She even tweeted, "j-z could be my most normal friend."

How fucked up is it that I'm ANYONE'S most normal friend?

I think that out of the core group of my friends, I am the least normal. I don't work 9-5, 5 day work weeks. I don't have benefits included in my job. I don't have a big-boy bed (yes, I still have a futon). I live in a room with no windows. I see nothing wrong with occasionally being... deviant. And I know for a fact that my knives are sharper than any of yours (with the exception of possibly one reader). How on earth am I the normal one? Do you hear the shit that comes out of my mouth when I'm on a roll? I'm surprised more people don't think I'm chemically imbalanced.

Then, on the T going home, I realized that I may be a little more normal than I thought. It all started with my own personal bat-shit insanity. See, some moron got hit/jumped into/got hit by the metro at around 5PM this evening. I'm trying to get into the Kendall Square T stop and am told that service has been suspended.

From the station, we're told to wait outside in Kendall Square in the cold for shuttle buses to take us down to Harvard. The MBTA guy told us it would be ten minutes. We see bus after bus come for the people across the street going inbound. After twenty minutes in the cold, the score is eight to zero. Not a single bus for us. That's when I start getting belligerent. I start comically referring to the MBTA guy as the ten minute man. I talk about wanting to kick him in the balls. I talk about hijacking one of the buses coming the opposite direction, asking if anyone has my back. I'm having fun, because I'm freezing my gonads off, and if I don't have fun, I'm going to be thinking about said gonads retracting into my abdomen. That, and I'm trying to get some attention from a cute Indian chick standing five feet away from me.

Finally, we're told to wait in a different spot where busses pull up. I get on the bus. I'm one of the last two people on the bus (cute Indian chick got on before me... not that I was stalking... that would be creepy... or cool... no, creepy). So, I have a bag of ramen with me. Well, two grocery bags. I'm holding it down to my side. Apparently it's swinging and hitting a guy next to me in the knee. I have no clue. All of a sudden, he gets all up in my face. Tells me to stop hitting him with my bag because his knee hurts, like I'm doing it on purpose. I apologize and he keeps shouting at me. I mean this guy was ALL up in my grill. I'm just short of telling him to fuck off, but I'm trying to be the bigger man. So, I let it go, despite him telling me to stop smiling like an idiot. Maybe if he smiled like an idiot more, he would be less of a douche. Everyone around me, including the bus driver was like, "What the hell is going on right now?" as the man is shouting at me. I actually was just short of swinging my bag at him just for kicks too. Luckily he got off at Central and couldn't get back on. When the bus reorganized after the stop, I told the people around me to politely let me know if my bag was hitting them and I would do my best to stop it. They all got a chuckle out of it, even the cute Indian chick (I SWEAR... NOT stalking).

Sometimes, people take life too seriously. I know I can take it too seriously now and then. I try my hardest, though, to try to enjoy myself. I try to make myself and those around me laugh, sometimes at me, sometimes at themselves, and sometimes at a third party. I think that if I was really not taking myself seriously, I would have asked the aforementioned cute Indian chick out for a drink. She does live in Davis and is, as my buddy Manni would say, "geographically desirable."

I have been thinking a lot about dating since I got back from China. This will be the first time in a while that I will be somewhere for more than a year straight. I mean, on the island, you know it's either going to be a fling or one or both of you are gonna be too hammered to remember anything happening. And what happens traveling stays on the trail. But here I am, now, at a home base for more than just a few months, but for no more than a year and a half. Should I start trying to date?

I was telling a friend of mine today that I really just want to hang out with cool chicks with a possibility of nakedness. If I just wanted to hang out with cool chicks, I would hang out with my friends. It's really the possibility of nakedness that sells it for me.

But I know that I don't want anything to come of anything I start right now. My ass is moving to Shanghai in a year and a half. I don't care how good the sex is. I don't care how cool she is. I don't care if she wakes me up wafting the sweet smell of pork products to my nose... or oral sex (now found to promote cancer)... and? oral sex? My ass is moving to Shanghai. I am standing my ground. If I don't have a plane ticket or firm plans to make an exodus by June of 2012, I want all of my readers to collectively kick my ass to death and send me to China in a body bag. But I digress....

Dating... Should I do it? How should I go about doing it? How do I go about doing it now that I'm not actually in motion? It's all a jumble in my head.

Also, living in my hole has gotten to me a little bit. For some reason the dark hole that I have lived in off and on for five or six years is kind of making me unhappy. I kind of want a window now. I think that it might regulate my sleeping habits a bit more. I know that both of my room mates will be moving out at the end of the lease here, so I might try to move back into my old apartment where my brother is now. It makes a lot of sense to me in a lot of ways. I could consolidate a lot of my possessions, figure out what I want to get rid of, what I want to keep. My brother could take as much of the furniture as he wants with him to wherever he moves. I could start taking apart my life. It would be a great prelude to moving to Shanghai. Sure, the rent would be more than double what I'm paying now, but at least I would have all of my shit together. I would have a window for a few months.

So, that's what I'm thinking about for right now. It's getting late and I have to work tomorrow. Hopefully they will have mopped up the poor moron who jumped in front of the red line.

A Day of Rest and Weeks of Finding Groove

Listening: These dreams have let you down. Take it don't break it just turn it around. These dreams won't let you down.
What's my problem? Split days off

I walked all of the way from my place to Central Square in the hopes of a nice, free wifi connection and a cup of coffee. A Vietnamese ordered and a password acquired, and I'm still sans wifi. I don't know what the deal is. Everyone else seems to be able to get on, but for some reason I can't connect. Bastards. Even worse, the Vietnamese is sub par. This place had a bunch of good reviews online, but the only bonus that I see thus far is the emo-ish girl behind the counter with the hoody and skinny jeans. In my humble opinion... not. good. enough.

Maybe I'm just cranky today. I woke up wikkid early without the inclination to do anything of substance. I watched a couple of TV shows that I downloaded last night after I got back from some post-work drinks with Jon at Green Street. (Yes, Frenet was had along with copious amounts of gin, absinthe and chartreuse mixed in appropriate proportions). I also watched the movie Let Me In which wasn't nearly as horror driven or as awful as I expected it to be. After the movie, I dozed off again and woke up again around noon. It was time to get out of bed.

Since I started working a kitchen schedule, five plus years ago, I've had the hardest time trying to figure out what to do on my weekly bits of time off. I really don't know what to do with myself. Most of the time, everyone I know is working. There's no one to go out and play with. It just sort of leads me to stay at home and do nothing, go out to run errands, or go out to spend money. Staying at home sometimes tires me out and makes my brain go numb. Once your errands are done, well, they're done. And going out to spend money is not exactly the best thing for someone who hasn't gotten his first paycheck or who is planning on moving across the world in less than a year and a half.

Today, I ran errands. I brought a package to the post office to send one of my coworkers from this past summer who left some of her shit with me. I did some grocery shopping, paid some bills.

By the time three o'clock ran around, I hadn't eaten anything yet. I have a habit of that. For a cook, I sometimes forget to eat. It happens a lot when I'm working (tasting doesn't count as eating) as well as when I don't know what I want to eat. I'll continue not eating until I figure it all out. I also tend not to eat (as observed by my pal Linh) when I get back from a trip abroad as a somewhat product of depression. Today, I packed my computer because I planned on finding the wifi and maybe some food with it. That's when the indecision started....

Walking from Porter Square into Harvard... Nah. I didn't feel like having a sub from Harvard House of Pizza. Maybe a sandwich at Darwin's? Nah. It's too far. How about the new burger place, Flat Patties? Their fries look like ass. Clover food Labs? Their fries were ass when I had them.

After an hour and a half of indecision, I ended up at Charlie's Kitchen for a Chef's Favorite and a cider. It filled me up physically, but it didn't do much for the soul. I need to get back to Shanghai and the sheng jian bao. There's not a single place in Boston that serves them, and like an addict that needs a fix, I get the shakes just thinking about them.

From Charlie's, I went to the Globe Corner Bookstore, one of my favorite bookstores in the entire world. I remember back when the store was on Church Street, but a few years ago, they moved to a much nicer space. They always have everything that I could ever want when it comes to travel books and sometimes even has what I'm looking for in food literature. From time to time, there is a dog roaming around the store.

As I was in there, I started talking to a woman who will be going to Italy for her honeymoon. She will be going to Venice, Rome and Florence. She had been to Milan and to Como, but had never been anywhere else. I strongly urged her to go to Cinque Terre and to check out a restaurant in Florence.

Also, while I was there, I found out that the store is currently up for sale. Right now, the owner is in serious negotiations with a buyer. The idea of this scares me. I don't want my bookstore to change. The stock of books that they keep is so amazing that I just don't know if someone who isn't experienced can keep up. The world is a big place. Cities change on a daily basis. Somehow this bookstore has been able to keep up with travel guides, travel writing, and maps regarding every which part of the world from the most traveled parts of Europe to the the most random places in South America and Africa.

Now I'm here at the Atomic Bean Cafe, drinking a mediocre-at-best Vietnamese coffee, listening to my iTunes and typing on my textedit program. Now there's a skinny girl with librarian glasses setting up a projector and a mic. It looks like there's going to be a poetry reading. This makes me dislike this place even more. I just want to listen to my music and type right now. Hopefully, she won't start soon.

So, onto the information that most of you want to know about, work. So, I started at Island Creek Oyster Bar a couple of weeks ago. My first week was kind of a mess. I started off on hot apps and the swing between hot apps and grill. Truth be told, I was kind of a mess. There were no tickets in front of me or even close to me. Prep was hectic. I had no clue what was my responsibility and what fell on the AM prep crew. I had at least twelve dishes coming off the hot apps station, plus when I was the swinger, I would help the grill pick up any of their seven dishes.

Now, the most covers that I have ever done at any of the restaurants that I have worked at has been two hundred and thirty-ish. Two hundred is a slow night at Island Creek Oyster Bar. The fish station regularly does twelve to fifteen plate pickups. At American Seasons, the most number of plates that would fit on the pass was thirteen, and that was split between the saute and the grill stations. Fifteen plates were coming from the fish station alone which was responsible for at least eight dishes.

On my fourth day in the kitchen, I was working entremet for the fish station. I would be cooking and plating all of the veg and starch for the fish station. I had worked that position on my first stage, where I got completely destroyed, but in a crazy turn of events, we got slammed. The sous-chef went downstairs to help the raw bar, and the lead line cook who was on grill moved up to the pass to expedite, and they moved me over to grill. That's when things went downhill. Grill got hit. It got hit hard. I went down in flames like I've never gone down before. There were no tickets for me to look at to figure out the difference between my ass and my elbow. The communication from the expediter to me and back was spotty at best. Every two minutes, I was asking, "What's my pickup?" "What's my all day?" "Can I PLEASE get an all day?" "What the fuck do you need RIGHT NOW?" "You want it on the plate in HOW LONG? It hasn't even been fired. I'm going to need at least seven!" "Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?"

(The poetry reading has begun. It makes me want to suck on a shotgun.)

It was a rough night. The only comparable situation that I have ever been in was when I was at American Seasons, we were doing a fourteen plate pickup that was all me, which included four duck breasts at varying temperatures, striped bass, flukes, tunas. It was a mess. As we're plating up, I've got veg and sauce everywhere, and Andy, who was working the middle/plating station, asked me, "Can we add on another duck and another fluke?" My response was, "I don't give a FUCK!" I threw my cutting board onto my mise en place to make room for more plates, threw the plates down, and as we're pushing finished plates to Chef, Andy asks me, "Which one of the flukes was the well done?" I lost my shit and said, "You didn't tell me that you needed a well done!" as I grabbed a fluke off of a plate, threw it on a sizzle platter and chucked it into the salamander.

Yeah, I almost lost my shit again that night, on my fourth day of work.

Since then, I've gotten a hell of a lot more composed, and I have gotten used to the pace and the style of the kitchen. When I'm working the fish station, I'm having no trouble plating up fifteen plates, and I have been killing it on hot apps. They put me on hot apps on the Saturday before Valentine's Day without a swinger. It was one grill cook and one hot apps cook (which was me). We fed three hundred and ninety diners that night, not including the people who ate at the bar. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that we fed at least four hundred and ten people. I have NEVER fed that many people. To make it all more interesting, I had a seared gnocci special that night in addition to the littleneck app that takes a lot of time and sometime attention. But, I did it. I never got flustered or crushed. I had a good rapport with the sous-chef, Peter, who was working the pass. I was also helping out the grill cook a lot too.

The past three days, I have been doing entremet for the fish station. Given that Island Creek Oyster Bar is a seafood restaurant, even on "slow" nights, it's still a hopping station that blows through a lot of product. What also makes that station difficult is that every day, the menu changes. There are two things that stay constant, which are the baked stuffed lobster, and the seafood casserole, but everything else can change at the drop of a dime. If you're working the fish station, the first thing that you have to do when you get in is find a sous or find the chef and ask them what's changing. Sometimes it's nice and you're just trying to run a dish out, but other times, the prep for a fish will change, there will be a whole new dish or things will get flipped around.

Prep is a challenge every day. It has been a challenge everywhere that I have worked, but the difference at Island Creek is that they do such high volume that not only do you have a lot of dishes to prep, but you also have a lot of volume to prep as well. It takes some serious time to turn ten pounds of jumbo lump crab meat into four ounce crab cakes that aren't too wet or too dry that they'll fall apart in the pan.

Also, since the restaurant is so big, I must be running at least four miles a day at work. Dish pit is forty paces. Dry storage is a three minute brisk walk. The walk-in is halfway to dry storage. If you're in the walk-in looking for dijon mustard, but someone already has it on the line, you just wasted a minute and a half walking to the walk-in, five minutes looking around for it, another minute and a half walking to dry storage to look for it there for five minutes only to see that there's none there, three minutes back to the line to ask the sous-chef if he's seen the dijon, and then another two minutes going over to the fry station where the cook there had it. That's a good fifteen minutes. So, there are all sorts of time sucks in this kitchen.

On the really good side of things, I've got a compadre on the line. The grill cook, Jade, has a killer attitude and a good idea of what the right way to do things is. We have similar senses of humor and she's just loud and egotistical in a funny way. But we get along like gangbusters.

I also find that I'm getting along well with the lead line cook. She's a deadpan kind of a girl. We have similar ideas on how things should get done as well. We're both fans of super-clean stations and nightly prep lists. Last night, she was psyched that I was closing the fish station. I cleaned out all of the drawers, put all of the veg in two drawers, emptied the raw proteins into new bins, brought them to the walk-in, and put all of the cooked proteins in a drawer separate from the veg. Yeah, that's an example of my kitchen OCD, which is probably not as bad as my friend Katherine's.

I have split days off this week due to the sous-chef, Matty's, oversight. I almost had three days off this week, but I opened my mouth saying I wanted the hours. So I have today off and I have Sunday off as well. Hopefully I'll be more fun on Sunday. I'm thinking brunch may be in order. I think I'm going to go home now so I can actually get on the internet to post this. I think I'll stop by the new Thai place in Porter Square for dinner. Rod Dee used to be at a different location, and supposedly had really authentic Thai food. I'm hoping it does.

**Add on** The som tam is really not as spicy as it should be. The pad kra pao is spicy, but it could have more. I'll try the pad see you after I get home from work tomorrow.

Employed

Listening: I was dreamin' when I wrote this. Forgive me if it goes astray. But when I woke up there this mornin', could've sworn it was Judgment Day.
What's my problem? Snow... and its bastard son slush.

Last night and the greater part of yesterday was spent waiting for a phone call. The chef there who was self-admittedly ADD told me that he would call me and would let me know about the job yesterday. Apparently, he forgot.

Originally, I was planning on waiting until nine in the evening yesterday to call if he didn't call. That got pushed back until after service, and, again, got pushed back to this morning.

I woke up this morning at nine in the morning. I was surprisingly well-rested. I left the lights off and relished in the perfect temperature that it was under my covers with only my head poking out. I felt like I was in a sensory deprivation tank. It was nice. It was one of the nicest wake-ups that I've had since being back in America, and strangely, there was no daylight involved.

At ten in the morning, I got a text from a friend asking what had happened about the job. At eleven o'clock, I called and left a message for the chef. At a quarter past eleven, I got a skype from my friend in Russia. At noon, I got a call back from the chef saying that he flaked and that he gave the job to the friend of one of the cooks. And at three past noon, I e-mailed the chef at Island Creek Oyster Bar saying that I would take the position. A quarter past noon, I had my first shift lined up.

So, there it is. Thursday, I start at Island Creek Oyster Bar. This isn't without interesting twists. See, the reason that they were hiring at Ten Tables, is because the sous-chef there will be leaving to open up the Ten Tables in Provincetown. From what the chef at Ten Tables says, he's interested in maybe having me go down there to help open up the new joint as well, possibly as a sous. Who know what'll happen. It's a good three months away, I think. Never know though.

Anyways, here I am. Employed now. I'm at Mr. Crepe in Davis Square, trying to survive off of two bars of free wifi, because I'm too damn cheap to pay the eight dollars for a day of service.

Not much more to say other than that. I'm wondering how long I'm going to stay here. I should probably buy some groceries on the walk home too. I wish there was something to do today that was exciting and productive. Shoveling snow doesn't count. That's the beauty of renting in an apartment building with a management company. You never have to do it.

IDGAF

Listening: Search through time. Nothing reveals the answer. If it's truth that you're looking to find, it is nowhere outside of your mind. I bide my time, waiting for your change of heart..
What's my problem? I think I'm depressed.

Ugh.

Seriously.

Ugh.

So I've done five stages at three restaurants starting a week ago. I did one at Beacon Hill Bistro, two at Ten Tables in Cambridge, and two at Island Creek Oyster Bar in Kenmore Square.

My first stage was at Ten Tables. It was last Monday, when it was insanely cold. It had been a slow couple of days leading up to that Monday, so there wasn't a helluva lot to do. The people there were nice. I dug the vibe that the Chef had going. He seemed to be a really funny guy, and everyone there seemed professional and friendly. Now Ten Tables is in Craigie's old space. I had never been in the kitchen there. It's a maze of small rooms and doorways. The kitchen itself wasn't nearly as small as I had anticipated. After being in shoe boxes like EXNE's kitchen and seeing kitchens like Bondir's, anything looks spacious.

To be honest, the food that they were doing there looked like really easy pickups. The plating was pretty easy, but I think that most of the tough stuff, as always, is in the prep. There were some things that were pretty standard, but the flavors were pretty much spot on.

I had a pretty good feeling walking out of the stage. The chef said that he wanted to offer me the position, but he had to see another stage coming in. I, also, felt the need to do my due diligence. I knew that I wanted to see the kitchen on a more rockin' night than thirty covers, so I set up a stage for the upcoming Friday night.

The second stage was on Tuesday and was at Island Creek Oyster Bar. I couldn't have picked a more polar opposite kitchen. The entire Ten Tables dining room, kitchen and storage area could have fit in the Island Creek Oyster Bar kitchen. This kitchen was a MONSTER. I knew that it was going to be. I was expecting it. I just didn't know what it would have been like to operate in a kitchen that big.

When I got there, I was shocked by just how big it was. There was an entire wall of fryers, a giant flat top the size of a ping pong table, two eight-burner ranges, a grill, refrigerator low-boys for mise-en-place. It was really quite shocking.

What was even more shocking was that after I did a little bit of light prep, they threw me right on the line working with the guy who was cooking the fish. Now, this is Island Creek Oyster Bar, so you know they're rocking it heavy on the fish. In fact, there are only three non-fish dishes (a burger, a steak and a chicken dish). My job, that night, was to cook all of the sides for the fish dishes. So, I was cooking veg and starch for at least seven different dishes, all of which I wasn't familiar with. I had to keep looking back at the menu to make sure I knew what was going with what. When it got busy, and boy did it get busy, we were doing twelve or thirteen plate pick ups. To give you an idea of what this was like for me, at American Season, the biggest pickup that we did was probably fourteen plates, and that was split between both the saute and the grill stations. We were doing twelve or thirteen plate pick ups just off of the fish station. We're not talking about fried fish and easy drops. We're talking about pan seared and roasted fish with real plated sides. Sure, it was bistro style plating which meant "just get it on the plate," but I was getting run.

Now, I was so shell shocked by the night that I had no clue what to think. They made me an offer, which was the first to hit the table. I was honest with them. I didn't quite know what to think, so I set up another stage for the coming Saturday. I wanted to see it again, on a nice busy weekend night. I think they respected the fact that I wasn't willing to jump in right away. In addition, I had the other two stages set up.

Thursday, I was at Beacon Hill Bistro. The first impression wasn't a good one. First of all, the chef didn't have a copy of my resume. He hadn't printed it off from his e-mail, so I had to recount it for him. To be honest, the chef was a pretty quiet person. He didn't have much of a presence. However, much like at Ten Tables on Monday, Beacon Hill Bistro had been slow for the preceding few days. Therefore, there wasn't too much to do.

There was another roadblock to me wanting to work at Beacon Hill Bistro. See, the reason that I left EXNE was that I really didn't enjoy working with the sous-chef there. I knew that EXNE was looking for a new sous during the time I have been looking for a job, but I didn't know why. To be honest, I still don't know why, but I do know where he will be going after he leaves EXNE. It turns out that he'll be at Beacon Hill Bistro. The chef at Beacon Hill Bistro and the ex-sous at EXNE were both Lumiere alumni. I think those kids are as thick as thieves. There's a big network of them and they all, generally have the same style. So after hearing that the guy from EXNE would be at at Beacon Hill Bistro, I pretty much took it off the table as a job possibility.

The rest of the stage was uneventful, for the most part. There was a cook there that I was totally in love with. She was a badass blond line cook who wore stretchy black pants under her apron and chef coat. I couldn't stop staring at her ass. She was a good cook too. She had her movements down, something that I enjoy watching. And it wasn't just because she was a hot chick. There are plenty of cooks out there that I love to watch as they cook the line. Marsoir is one of them. There are some people who just have such fluid motions and such grace going from action to action. She had it.

Since there were a few bum pilots on the stoves, they kept butter wrapper wicks above the line on a little ledge. So, periodically, this badass blond line cook would reach up above her head, grab a wick, light the burner and replace the wick on the ledge. I was entranced.

Now, some people who know me might think that watching a girl like that might just be enough for me to want to take a job, but the bum thing about it was that this girl will be moving to New York City in a few weeks. So, even if I took the position, I would never get to work with her.

The stage rounded out with me cooking on the roast station. I burnt my thumb and forefinger on a hot, hot spoon in a puree that I was warming up. Amazingly enough, it has already healed. The next day it was a giant white spot that took up three quarters of my thumb print.

I left the stage after a meal of some charcuterie and a oxtail ragout with parisienne gnocci knowing that I would not be taking the job. Today, when I got an offer e-mail from the chef, it added insult to injury that he low balled me, offering me two dollars less an hour than Island Creek Oyster Bar and not even guaranteeing more than extra two or three hours of overtime a week.

The second stage at Ten Tables on Friday was much busier. I was a lot more active. I felt like I was slow during prep. I accidentally browned my roux when making a bechamel sauce and had to start over. I blame the limited work space near the range. I had to keep running back and forth to stir the roux as I was prepping parsnip puree. During service, I helped out the guy working the app station. Normally the chef tends to float around the kitchen and help whoever needs help on the busy weekend nights, but since I was there, I helped out the app guy. The chef worked between the meat and the fish guys, and the sous-chef prepped and pretty much chilled as we all worked the line. I have to say that I got a much better sense of how the kitchen ran when busier, though there wasn't any real big push.

After the stage, I sat down and talked to the chef some more. We seemed to have a good rapport. I was a little uneasy by the fact that the stage that they had come in on Thursday had worked at Craigie on Main. The chef also told me that he had another stage coming in. So I would have to wait until Monday (today) to see what would happen. That made me even more uneasy. We went from him wanting to offer me the job to a slightly less certain feeling that they wanted me. We did, however, spend a good half an hour talking about noodles and eastern cuisine. I showed him YouTube clips of guys hand pulling and shaving noodles in China. I showed him my clip of the Thai girl making crepes in Ayutthaya. He was entranced. He's a self proclaimed noodle whore. So, we connected a lot on that level. I just hope it's enough to at least get me an offer to work in that kitchen.

The second stage at Island Creek Oyster Bar on Saturday was busy too. Instead of cooking the sides on the fish station, I worked the hot apps station with a guy named Dan. When I counted the number of dishes coming off of his station, it numbered twelve. There were three mussels dishes, three soups, a little neck clam dish, crab cakes, baked beans, a biscuit, a gnocci dish, and a shrimp toast dish. I feel like I'm missing another one in there too. But twelve dishes! I have worked at restaurants with less than twelve dishes ON THE ENTIRE MENU. I mean holy fuck. In the division of labor, I ended up picking up all three mussels dishes, two of the soups, the shrimp toast, the biscuit, the baked beans and I set the plates for the crab cake. I could totally see how I would be getting in the weeds there on the line. It wasn't as bad as the fish station, but, don't kid yourself. There was a lot of food coming off of that station.

All in all, though, we were able to keep up. The only annoying thing was that he only had two spoons on his station and I had to reach over him to get one of them. Also, I couldn't get at the salamander to heat up the plates, so I had to heat them up in the slow oven under the flat top. It was kind of annoying. I think that even as a total rook on that station, I could have done it a little better if the guy just got out of my way more than he was already. He had a habit of leaving the line. The grill cook, a sassy girl from the dirty south, commented on the fact that he needs to stay on the line. She was cool. I liked working next to her.

At the end of the stage, we left it that I would get back to the chef on Monday night or Tuesday morning, and that's still where it stands.

The question is, if Ten Tables makes an offer, will it be enough. The offer that Island Creek made was what I was looking for. If Ten Tables offers me the same amount, I would have to go with Ten Tables. It's a subway/bus free commute which would save me the forty something dollars a month in a T pass. I wouldn't have to worry about getting out of work in time to catch the last T back home. I would have to worry about making family meal. I think that at Island Creek, they have one of their prep guys make the family meal. If Ten Tables offers me less money, I think that's when things get hairy. If Ten Tables offers me one dollar less an hour, that comes out to be at least a hundred and sixty dollars less a month, even more if you count overtime. If it's two dollars less, like Beacon Hill Bistro offered, then it's losing me at least three hundred and twenty dollars a month. What will I do if they lowball me?

Ugh.

Seriously.

Ugh.

To complicate everything, I think I'm a little depressed. I don't really care about anything right now. Not a single thing. I'm not excited about anything. I don't want to go anywhere (besides move to Shanghai). I'm achy. I never want to get out of bed, because I don't want to go out and spend money. So, all I do, when I'm not out staging is sit on my bed, look for more job postings (which aren't really coming out of the woodworks), and watch re-runs of How I Met Your Mother. It's not really an enthralling lifestyle.

But, really, what can you do when you don't have a job and you're not at all excited about the city that you're living in? I don't just think that it's the fact that I don't want to go anywhere or do anything specific. I think that there really isn't anyone to hang out with. Everyone's got their own thing going on. A lot of my friends have either popped out shorties or have moved out of town. I feel the need to meet new, exciting people, but I don't know where or how to do that by myself and on a budget.

The snow isn't helping much either. I am effing sick of winter. I want to punch Jack Frost in his stupid ass carrot nose, peel it, and add it to my mirpoix. I would tell Jack Frost to kiss my ass, but I think that his stupid ass carrot nose would find its way into my culo, and no one wants to find produce in their bung hole. I'm guessing that it might be easier to take than, say a bunch of celery or an onion, but, regardless, I want none of that.

I do want to be more active. I want to read more and write more. I think that I need to find the motivation to get off of my bed. It's hard to do that, find the motivation to get out of bed every day. Wednesday, I barely left my room. I think that it doesn't help that I don't have much of an appetite. I have found myself down to one meal a day with very little snacking. Today, I had a cup of coffee at Simon's, where I read for a couple of hours, a jumbo tonkatsu combo at the Porter Exchange, a glass of wine, and a handful of snacks. It's not a whole lot.

The reason that I think its a bout of depression is also because, according to Linh, I go through a big bout of depression after every major trip I take. She would know. She has been around to see my re-entry adaptation from my month around Europe, my two months in southeast Asia, and now for China. I hope I get over it soon. I hope I find a reason to get up in the morning and a reason to get out of bed. I wish I had someone here giving me a reason to leave the apartment, but all of my friends have better things to do with their time, just as I should have.

I guess it doesn't help that I don't get tired until the wee hours of the morning. Even when I try to go to sleep early, I can't manage to do it. I tried some melatonin pills that my friend gave me, but that really didn't do anything.

I think that the bottom line, right now, is that I just want to care about something immediate. My move to Shanghai is so far away right now, I need some short term excitement and goals. I have my long term goals and aspirations, my mid term goals and aspirations, but I just can't get excited about anything right now. It's not very ZEN!!! of me in the technical zen sense, but it is how it is.

Can someone, please give me something enthralling to enrich my life at this very moment, because, right now, I don't give a fuck about anything.

Whore, Glutton for Punishment or Desperate?

Listening: Maybe in a month or two... Maybe when things are different for me... Maybe when things are different for you. You know all of this shit just sticks in my head.

What's my problem? I have no clue which one I am.

Paul, 19:25: Hey Zen, can u help me demo at the wine expo this Sat?.... 1:30- 6pm is..
Me, 19:27: Yeah probably. Gonna be easier than the last job?
Paul, 19:28: Yes.... Im demo-ing chowder ...have to be there by 3pm...
Me, 19:30: Okay I'm in. Just let me know where you want me to be, when and what I need to bring with me.
Paul, 19:31: Chez....Sat @130pm....a knife and chef coat
Me, 19:31: See you then.
Paul, 19:32: Ok

Am I insane? Am I really getting myself into this again? What the hell am I doing? And does Paul know the proper way to use ellipses?

It's totally against my better judgment to be doing another job with Paul like this. I have no desire to be a part of the fuck show that was the last catering job. But, at the same time, I don't have anything better going on at the moment. I don't have any stages lined up yet or anything like that. So, it's kind of an opportunity to get the hell out of the house.

I'm finding that it's impossible for me to work or write in my bedroom. I just end up watching vapid things on the internet and not really getting anything done. I think it has to do with two things. First of all, I don't have a proper chair and table set up for my computer. This makes it hard to properly sit and write. I think that this is also why I write and work so much better at coffee shops.

Second, I think that the room with no windows is irking me for the first time in a long time. While I was in China, I would wake up with the sun streaming in on my face in almost every hostel. So much so, that I sometimes used one of those eye masks. Now, in the windowless room, without anything scheduled, I lose track of time. I lay there, or I stare at my computer. Maybe I need to set some schedules (not that I haven't tried). I want to try to work at the coffee shops more. Maybe it'll help my retroactive blogging more too.

Anyhow, I just wanted to pose the question, what the fuck is wrong with me for taking this job? If anyone has any answers, please let me know.

Mission Failure

Listening: We had a lot to learn; table manners and grace, how to wait your turn when time came to clear your slate. You had too much, had too much on your plate.
What's my problem? I should never have answered that text.

Goal 1) Failure
Goal 2) Failure
Goal 3) Weeeeeeeellllll... It's up for debate.

8:53AM, Paul: Can u cater today?...Paul
8:57AM, Me: Yeah. What time and where?
8:59AM, Paul: Noon at chez...going to Newton by 5pm...behind because no delivery yestrdy
8:59AM, Me: I'll see you at noon.
9:01AM, Paul: k

So began a very long day. I should have never answered that text. Nothing good can come of signing onto a catering gig on the day it's supposed to happen. Nothing.

When I get to Chez, Paul isn't even there. Scott, the other guy doing catering just got there. He knew about the job on Sunday. Paul shows up after fifteen minutes and promptly leaves again to pick up some stuff and switch out cars. It's a good hour and a half before we see him again.

As we're prepping for the catering gig, it becomes more and more clear how behind we are and how we should have been here at eight in the morning and not noon. The catering gig was for a hundred adults and twenty five kids. It will all be passed or buffet at a corporate office. At noon we started with nothing done. Fuck. We're not supposed to be there by five in the evening. Five is when the food is supposed to start going out. We're supposed to be there at three. Fuck.

So, I'm doing a lot of the finer knife work, though it's apparent that I probably should have been doing a hack job. It's four o'clock and almost nothing is finished. We load up Paul's car haphazardly, but in our rush, we forgot to take a bunch of essential things. Scott stayed behind to finish up and ended up taking one of the server's cars to the site. It was a total fuck show.

When we got there, we arrived five minutes after the food was supposed to start flowing, but we were only able to put out two things, because the rest of it all was in parts. I scratched up a marble floor with a cooler because we were in a rush and no one could help me carry it. Everything was chaos.

Somehow, in the middle of service, Lynn, the catering manager, promoted me to catering chef. The food wasn't anywhere near as good as it was supposed to be. Paul was all over the place. Scott kind of mentally checked out. So, I was really the only one bouncing around trying to get shit done and making sure we weren't killing people with food that was improperly heated. To top it all off, we had some picky, picky kids. It was pretty messed up.

By the time it was all said and done, I can honestly say it was either the worst catering job I have ever done, or the second worst. The only one that was anywhere near contention was the Cooks Illustrated holiday party a few years back where it was a blizzard and it took us four hours to drive from Cambridge to the South End. I guess it could have been worse, looking back on it, but I wouldn't want to be a part of that worse. Next time Paul texts me to cater on that same day, unless I'm desperate for the cash, I'm going to have to say no.

The good things that came out of the whole scenario was that I got to see a few old Chez faces. Robby K was behind the bar and Jordy was on the floor. I was out the door before noon and I was actually a productive person.

Today, I have already sent out one resume. We'll see where it goes. I also texted my pal Tom to see what he knew about the position I threw my name in the hat for. My pals aren't coming through with the info I want for job prospects, but I can float for a little while longer. Let's hope I don't float too long though.

Too Many Shirts

Listening: It's hard enough to feel the world as it is and hold on anything. Without these quiet times you've brought round here. I'm gonna have to run away, I'm sure that I belong some other place.

What's my problem? Not enough molding.

I sit here at a quarter to two in the morning. Today has not been a productive day. Yesterday was not a productive day. The day before was not a productive day either. I could say that I had an excuse today. It was snowing out and my power was out from six in the morning until one in the afternoon. That was just a bullshit excuse for not getting out of bed or staying in bed and catching up on serial dramas that I watch.

The truth is that for the first time in four years, I actually have to be proactive about finding a job. The last time I was unemployed, I was unemployed for a mere week. That was after I got unjustly shitcanned from the Chez. I called up a buddy, and he had somewhere for me to work. I could probably do that again, but the big question on my ind these days is, "where is the right place for me to work?" I love western food. I love putting charcuterie and cheese down my gullet. I like pasta and big fat cuts of meat (which reminds me that I should really get a steak sometime soon). However, looking for a job reminds me that the white tablecloths aren't what I'm chasing.

I think that at the end of the day, I want to put my best shell-toe Adidas forward and bring it back down to the street level. I don't want my servers doting and replacing silver. I don't want flimsy plastic pieces of shit either. I want to rock out interesting good food inspired by the places that I have seen that doesn't give a shit about stars or reviews. I'm not seeing a ton of that around right now. I'm not excited about anywhere. I think that's what's making it hard for me to start fighting for a job. I'm not excited. I need the money right now, because Shanghai ain't getting any closer with me sitting on my arse.

So what am I to do? Where to I send my resume? Who should I be talking to? Who should be talking to me?

So what am I doing with my time? Well, as I said before, I'm catching up on serial dramas. I'm trying my best to clean up and organize my room, which is tough considering that there's two peoples' stuff crammed into it. My desk is almost clear. It's far better than it was the other day.

Today, I finally did laundry. It was just as much laundry as it looked like. Five loads. It was while I was doing laundry that I realized just how many shirts I have. I have a lot of shirts. See, I hang dry almost all of my shirts and tee shirts with prints on them. Right now they're on wire hangers balanced precariously on the crown molding on a little overhang in my room. Seeing the shirts lined up, I must have at least twenty something shirts/tees just drying. Forget about the ones that are in my closet or the tees that are folded on the shelf. I have what would qualify as a fuck-ton of shirts. I have maybe four pairs of pants that I wear regularly, but almost all of my shirts get worn. I love them.

Today, I looked at my shirts and wondered which ones of them would make the cut for me to take to Shanghai in a year and a half, which ones would be boxed up and sent into storage, and which ones would be donated. I wonder what it'll be like when I pack up all of my stuff and leave the place that has contained the majority of my life since I finished college. Would I keep all three tux shirts? One has french cuffs. Another one has a dragon print on the ruffles. The other one just irons better. How about that shirt I got in Vietnam because I was out of clean shirts and I liked the way it looked? What about the shirt that my boss at Au Bon Pain gave me back in 1996? I guess I have a year and a half to decide.

I've also been meaning to start retroactively blogging my seven weeks in China. I have the notebook where I kept the list of daily events right next to me. But instead of writing it all down, I'll start staring at pictures of my trip. Sometimes I'll see a picture of one of my friends that I met on the trail and I'll just stare at it for a good half an hour, when I should be writing bullshit cover letters that no chef will actually read. I already miss the people in China. I already miss the smog and the dirty street food. I miss having to look up to see everything. I miss the smells and the sounds. How am I going to get back there? And when I do, is Shanghai going to remember me like I'm sure I will remember it?

I have three goals for tomorrow.

1) Send out at least one resume/cover letter.
2) Retroactively blog at least my first day in China.
3) Leave the house for at least a couple of hours... maybe get a coffee.

It's not a lot to ask of myself, I know. But it feels like a lot. I also have a goal of getting up with my alarm at nine in the morning. We'll see of that happens too. I need to get my shit back on track. I need to wake up, shower and put on one of my many shirts and start kicking some ass. Time to start kicking some ass.

Disorganization

Listening: When you smile, the whole world stops and stares for awhile, 'cause, girl, you're amazing just the way you are.
What's my problem? Everything is messy.

It's been three days since I got back into Boston. The first day I spent networking with cooks that I'm friends with and having dinner with two of my best friends. The first night was spent not being able to sleep, catching up on TV shows that I missed and, did I mention, not being able to sleep. I did get to sleep, though. It was around six in the morning. I didn't wake up until two or something like that. I had dinner with some more friends, got home around eleven, fell asleep for an hour and then couldn't go back to sleep until nine in the morning. So, my sleep schedule is pretty messed up right now. It wasn't nearly as messed up when I was in San Jose. I blame the fact that I couldn't sleep on the plane ride back. Damn you east-traveling long haul flights.

Right now my room is a mess. At least it's better now than it was this morning. This morning, my pack was still, essentially, full. My suitcase was pretty much full, but it looked as if it had vomited all over my room. Now, the pack and the suitcase are empty, and the height of my laundry basket rivals that of a fifth grader. My desk is covered in books, bathroom products, magazines, hats, dried fish, spices and at least five different forms of currencies. I have to figure out what to do with all of my crap in the next year and a half.

All of the disorganization is making it hard for me to concentrate on getting a job. I know I need one, but I don't know anywhere specific that I can point to and say, "Yes. I want to work there and I won't take no for an answer." I'm at a point in my eating where I know some of what I do and what I don't want to end up cooking. The big problem is that there's very little of what I want to do in Boston. I can only think of two places that do what I want to do in the city and I've already worked at one of them. Should I go for the other or should I suck it up and go do the food I have been doing for the past five years or so? I have no idea. Maybe I should just be looking for the highest bidder.

So I was online today I and I was looking at some of the pictures that I took from China and I saw someone else's pictures of the Shanghai Swing scene, and, man, do I ever wish I was back there. There was just something amazing about the people I met there. I will do my best to be living there by May or June of 2012. For now, though, I have to muddle through. Time to find a job and find a happy place for the time being. Life ain't all sunshine and lollipops, but I'll be damned if I can't bask in some sun here.