Day 54: 99 Problems

Listening: If your having girl problems I feel bad for you, son. I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one.

What's my problem? Meat temps.

I got my own version of that song above which kind of describes the last week for me at work. It goes like this:

I'm havin' grill problems, so feel bad for me, son. 'Cause I got 99 problems, but a fish ain't one.

So, I'm coming off a bad week on the line, if you couldn't already guess. This week, I worked two grill shifts. One of the guys on the line was sent home because he was sick as a dog, so I had to cover the grill while Chef covered the hot apps station.

Now, I feel comfortable on the hot apps station, as I do with the saute station. I can cook up some fish like it's nobody's business, and I'm getting good at cooking duck too, but when it comes to the grill, temping out red meat, and all of that, I feel like the biggest douche ever in the world.

The other day, I killed three lambs. They were suppose to be medium rare and they were medium when I sliced them. I don't know if you get this about me, but I hate wasting food. I hate killing food. It gives me this feeling in the pit of my stomach where I want to vomit. I see the look of disappointment or anger in Chef's eyes and I feel even worse. I get the fear in me and it doesn't make me a stronger cook. It makes me a fearful cook. It makes me overly cautious. That was the worst of the bad days this week. There were other days that were bad for this reason or that reason. But, it seems like, this season, it's always something with me.

It makes me feel like a bad cook. It makes me doubt my talent, my aptitude, and my skills. It makes me wonder if I have what it takes to make cooking my livelihood. It makes me wonder if I can really good, if not great.

It makes me feel good that when I express these doubts to my friends, their instant responses are "are you f'ing kidding me??" and "for what it's worth, I've seen you cook and I doubt neither you talent nor your aptitude nor your skill and I've shared a kitchen with a starred chef." However sometimes, and often this summer, I question it all. On of my friends said that it was okay as long as I was still learning. I just don't feel good about the speed at which I'm getting things. I'm not a rockstar, and it bothers me. I want to learn, but I want it to come to me faster. I want the confidence now.

One of my friends said, "in our brief time together, I've noticed you're more like (if I may reference basketball) a Vinnie Johnson or a James Posey than a Danny Ainge, which is to say your game feeds off your confidence; when you're feeling it, you're really better, things flow. You're not lacking talent, I suspect, but you're on a cold streak (figuratively speaking) and for you that matters. The upside of being a V.J. is when you're in the zone, you're amazing. So, perhaps you need to stop trying to improve and start faking the swagger(as they say in the bible, act as if ye have faith and faith ye shall be given)."

God DAMN I love my friends.

The thing is, I love how they have such confidence in me, confidence that I can't find in myself. My question is, who is right? Is it an in between that makes the reality? Are we both right? Do I have the stuff or don't I? I mean I even get nervous when I cook in my friend's home who is actually an ex-chef. I fear that she's quietly critiquing what I'm doing or how I'm doing things. It's so weird.

Another thing that makes me doubt my skills, aside from the fact that I'm an incredibly slow prepper, is that I'm rotating between the hot apps, saute and the grill. Last year, I rotated through hot apps, saute and the expo/plating station. I was running pickups last year. It wasn't until the end of the season that I worked the grill (and poorly at times). One of the new guys on the hot line (the young talent), asked me what I did last year, and then asked me why I wasn't working the pass again this year, I didn't have an answer for him. Maybe Chef saw what I was doing last year and decided that I wasn't really ready for it.

I've never worked at a place that has made me feel like I sucked this bad sometimes. I'm wondering if it's a good thing or a bad thing. I'm wondering if I really do suck, and if I'm really "that guy," you know the one guy in every kitchen who sucks, but is there because he can do the job just well enough. Or, I'm wondering if I work in that difficult of a kitchen, which I don't really see. Perhaps it could be that a gauntlet is being thrown in an effort to get me to the next plateau. I don't know. All I know is that I feel like shit and I'm looking to regroup today, my day off.

It doesn't help that I have yet to find my happy place on this island yet. Last season I was focused on going abroad. I was focused on making my three month backpacking trip happen. This season, I'm going straight to work wherever when I get out of Nantucket. Although I have toyed with the idea of trying to get a job in Chicago or in San Francisco, I think that I'm going to have to be in Boston. I have a set support system there and if I want to save money for a year off, I'm going to have to know where my expenses will be and where to find things on the cheap.

It's funny. It's almost the 4th of July, and I don't even want to be in America right now. Mentally, I think I'm still in Asia. Mentally, I'm still hopping from city to city, guest house to guest house meeting people from around the globe. In actuality, I'm on an island with people who wear critter pants and patchwork plaid and who have their collars popped.

Every day, I look at my pictures from Asia. I don't know why. Before I go to sleep, I check my e-mail and then flip through the pictures of temples and landscapes. I think about the people that I have pictures of and wonder where they are right now. I wonder if they're happy. I wonder if they're still out there on the trail or if they're home. I wonder if they miss the time we spent together as much as I miss that time.

A week or so ago, I was talking with Sam. She expressed the idea that she felt that if she went missing, no one would go looking for her. In some ways, I can identify with her. Last summer, Anh Dao came down to visit me and Mark Cina stopped by while on vacation with his mother. Other than that, I have had no visitors on this island. I have gone off island to visit people, but no one has really come to me. I feel like when I'm down here, I don't really exist. I feel so incredibly isolated that for the past two days off that I've had, I've spoken to a grand total of zero people who don't work for the restaurant that I work for. My one friend on the island who I really feel is on the same mental level as I am works on the nights that I have off which kind of sucks.

Well, that's how I'm feeling right now. I have no clue what I'm going to do with the rest of my night. They're supposed to be screening Star Wars at the new outdoor movie theater in town. The shit thing about it is that it costs ten bucks. For fuck sake. It's outdoors and it's a thirty two year old movie. *rubble* So yeah, I dunno what I'm gonna do tonight. I'll let you know.

Day 51: I'm a Bonehead

Listening: *ring* *ring* *ring*

What's my problem? I'm a bonehead.

So, today, I'm in the kitchen about ten minutes before break is supposed to end. I've been a bit in the weeds all day long since I had a busy night last night and I woke up a bit late today and got in about a half hour later than I wanted to get in. So, I'm there making my mussel vinaigrette and I hear this phone ringing.

Shortly thereafter, one of the interns comes in. I ask her if that's her phone. She says no. As we look for the phone, it keeps ringing and it seems as if the sound of the phone is moving around. First it's over here and then it's over there.

After about fifteen minutes, and about five minutes of the other cooks looking for the mysterious phone ringing, Chef asks if it's my phone.

Now, I just recently started using a friend of mine's old Blackberry. I have never heard it ring a single time in my life. I also have an alarm set which usually vibrates when it's about ten minutes before break is over.

That's right. It was my phone. It was totally fucked up. I felt like the biggest jackass ever in this kitchen. So, not only was I behind in prep today, but I also made a complete fool of myself. I guess that's how it is for me down in Nantucket.

On the up side of things, my ducks have been coming out better and better (the duck breast on the menu, not the Peking ducks that I have been trying out). I also had my pickled watermelon rind put on a fried oyster special. It's fried oysters with a tomato and bacon dressing, smoked corn salsa, heirloom cherry tomatoes and pickled watermelon rind. I must say it's kinda bangin'. There's so much of the pickled watermelon rind in the walk-in that I'm sure he'll use it on other specials.

But the bottom line is that I'm a bonehead.

Day 47: In 'n' Out

Listening: Lazy locomotives, wherever you may roll, I think you have no motive. I know you have no home.

What's my problem? One day off is NOT enough.

So it's been a while since I posted. The reason why is that I usually write on my day off. Today... my day off. Last day off, I was in New York City. I was a bit too busy to write.

As I said in my last post, my friend, Jade, passed through New York on her way through to Canada for an internship. When I'm traveling and I meet people I like and who I feel like I have made a genuine connection with, I tend to say to them, "Hey, if you're ever on the east coast of the States, let me know and I'll do my best to get out to wherever you are to hang out." This is the only time that anyone has ever taken me up on it. My friend Lianne came to visit me in Boston, but this is the first time where I have traveled to see a travel friend in my home country.

So, I took the eleven o'clock flight to JFK from Nantucket, which ended up being a noon flight. I was in JFK at one and I was at the American Museum of Natural History at two, where I met up with Jade.

It was a crappy day in New York City that day. It was raining. Jade was wearing the wrong shoes (because she's a girl), so we had to keep stopping so she could make sure her shoes weren't falling off.

It was kind of a strange meeting, because we haven't seen each other since we met in Paris four years ago. I had a couple of pictures of her, but all she had of me were the e-mails we shot back and forth. Apparently she was sweating it over whether she would remember what I looked like. Fortunately all of her worries were for naught, because when I popped around the corner out of the AC Subway station, she recognized me right away.

From there, we headed to Mulberry Street to get some Italian food for lunch and to catch up. It turns out that she had been eating Chinese food for the past two days, as she had been staying with her aunt in Flushing.

From there, we walked around Soho for a bit before heading back to Midtown to check out the Empire State Building. I know, it sounds kitschy, but she had never been, I had never been, and we figured that it might be cool. Unfortunately, due to the weather, there was zero visibility. We were warned on our way up, but she said, "When will I get another chance to do this. I might as well do it now, visibility or not." So we went, and this is what we saw.







That last one is the view straight down.

Anyhow, from there we made it over to Times Square to go see Avenue Q. I had bought tickets online ahead of time, so we had great seats, and cheap to boot. I was lucky and found a discount code online. It was either that show or the Lion King, and the difference was that I had a discount code for Avenue Q.

I had been wanting to see Avenue Q for a long time. I don't remember where I first heard of the musical, but I have almost the entire soundtrack on my iTunes, and I listen to it reasonable frequently. I new that it would be funny, and I knew that I would like it, but what I didn't realize was that it would be so much funnier with the interludes and the actual story lines playing out in front of you.

Jade is kind of picky about her musicals. She had never heard of Avenue Q and I told her that it was kind of a cross between Rent and Sesame Street, like the Muppets for adults. When we had lunch, I found out that she hated Rent for some reason. I don't know how anyone can hate Rent. She loved Avenue Q though. She bought the soundtrack, a t-shirt and a mousepad. I kind of wanted some schwag too, but I knew that I didn't really need it.

After the show we went to the Delta Grill and had some mediocre soul food (it sucks when you, a short Chinese American guy, can do soul food better than a restaurant specializing in the cuisine), and then hung out in Times Square until two in the morning. We tried to get into the Birdland to see some jazz, but the show was fifteen bucks and there was only fifteen minutes left of it before the place closed. We tried to hit up the Blue Note down in Greenwich Village, but when we got there it was closed too. What happened to New York being the city that never sleeps. Apparently it does.

Since we didn't really want to go on a crazy quest to find jazz, we just ended up across the street at a bar called the Big Fat Black Pussy Cat. I thought it was a strip club at first, but it wasn't. One side of the bar was totally a dive bar, but you go through this doorway and it's kind of a swank lounge. There was a guy spinning soul music, big cushy couches and high-backed chairs. The cocktails were meh, but I enjoyed it anyways.

We left the Big Fat Black Pussy Cat around four and headed to a diner for a cup of coffee before the real fiasco of the day off began.

We left the diner in Greenwich Village at around a quarter to five. We thought that the subway would be an easy way to get her to Queens and me to JFK. We waited for the longest time before we gave up and caught a cab. The cabbie had no clue where he was going, and it took forever for us to get to Queens, and when we couldn't find where Jade's aunt's place was, we had to get to JFK so I could catch my flight.

My flight was at ten past seven. We got there at a quarter to seven and they had closed check in. I had missed my flight due to this cabbie's incompetence. BASTARD! So I had to catch the next flight to Nantucket which was to leave at a quarter past eleven, and would arrive at a quarter past one. That flight was delayed and didn't leave until a quarter past noon, and I didn't get back onto the island until two in the afternoon.

Normally I get into work at around half past noon. It's still slow season, so I can even get in at one if I know I have nothing big to do. I didn't get into the kitchen until half past two. Luckily, Chef is a cool guy and is pretty understanding. He said that he knew that I wouldn't make it in on time. He was just glad that I texted him to let him know.

As far as the work front goes, I think that I'm doing well for the most part. I've come to terms with what I know and what I don't know. I have been doing well at generally sitting back and not doing too much that is extra. By that, I mean that I'm not actively looking for new things to try out. I'm not asking for special proteins. I'm not trying to put anything on the menu.

I think that Chef has sort of noticed that, so he asks me to do different things. He got in a sample Pekin duck, so he asked me to make a Peking style roast duck to make an appetizer with. I had never made one, but I did some research and made it. It came out damn nice too. Here are a few pictures of me giving the duck that had been hung to dry the first time a bit of a hot water bath before the second hang.





Apparently I did such a good job that he ordered three more ducks and I'm going to do it again in a week or so. I learned so much this time around that I'm going to do a few things differently. I'm definitely going to season the duck a little bit more. I'm going to temp the duck a little bit better, and I think I might dry rub it too for the first hang. I'm also going to take more pictures of it too.

As far as the "home" front is concerned, I have a room mate now. Unfortunately. He's kind of a nerd and talks a lot, but at least he's clean. I continue to miss my own bed and my room mates back in Cambridge. It makes me kinda sad that they may not be there for long when I move back.

Oh, also, my pal Mark Cina is working on this island this summer with Tom Berry. Apparently, since they kept pushing back the opening of the restaurant he's supposed to chef, he's taking the summer over here in Nantucket until September when they're going to open Stoddard's. It's nice to know that I have another ally on this island. It sucks that I don't feel close to any of the people that I work with. Having Mark around will make the summer go quicker. Unfortunately, I think that it might also have an impact on my budget. But I guess if I don't want to be a hermit, I'll have to be spending at least a little bit.

Well, that's it for now. I've been pedaling around the island all day listening to Wilco (who I have found that I really like), and now it's time for me to go see Transformers at the crappy movie theater. Maybe I'll post again later if I have something productive to say.

Day 32: Things Could Get Worse.

Listening: There's flies in the kitchen. I can hear em there buzzing and I ain't done nothing since I woke up today. How the hell can a person go to work in the morning and come home in the evening and have nothing to say?

What's my problem? I'm living just to get by.

Usually, I have Thursdays off. Today is Wednesday and I didn't have to work today. I traded my day off with Pies whose father is coming up from Florida to visit. I was hoping that it would lead me to being able to trade for an extra day off next week, but the way that scheduling works, I can't snag anyone's day off and have two days in a row.

The reason that I wanted to have two days off is because my friend Jade, whom I met in Paris in the fall of 2005, will be in New York City for a week from this coming Tuesday until the following Tuesday. Pies has Wednesdays off, but his father will be in town from today until next Thursday. This means that he doesn't want to give up his Wednesday next week. No one has Friday off, which kind of sucks, because that means that I have no one to trade with on the other end of my day off. That leaves me pretty S.O.L.

Even though I only have one day off, I plan on going down to New York for that one night to see my friend. I know it's gonna eat up a ton of cash, but I figured, how often do I get to see my friend from Australia. She's never been to the States, as far as I know. It will be her first time in New York City, at least. The closest that I ever got to Australia was in the islands of Thailand. By her coming to New York, it's a mere hour long flight. Sure, it'll likely cost me two hundred dollars to fly it, plus I'll be spending money on food and drink and maybe even a show while I'm down there, but I think it's worth it. I would like to think that if I went to Barcelona, my pal CTodd would take his day off and trek from Madrid to see me. I would like to think that if I were in Brugge, Julia would com from Den Hague to see me. Life's too short and good relationships are too hard to come by to not try to keep them when you can.

Anyhow, if I fly Jet Blue, it'll cost me about $214, but I won't arrive in NYC until three in the afternoon, and I'll be taking a flight back at seven in the morning. If I fly Delta, it'll cost $315 and I'll arrive at noon, and will be flying back at eight in the morning. I do have a hundred dollar voucher for Jet Blue that Linh got me for my 30th birthday. That would cut my cost down to just $114 for the flights, but, still, I wouldn't be arriving at JFK until three. By the time I get into the city, it'll be four in the afternoon. By the time I meet up with Jade it'll be five, time for dinner. The bonus is that I think that we're going to pull an all-nighter, just because I would have to be at the airport so early. It's not worth getting a room for me, or even trying to stay at friends' places in Queens or Hoboken.

So, a week from tomorrow, that's where I'll be. I'll be in New York. I don't know what I'll wear or what I'll bring with me. I'm wondering if I should bring a daypack with me just in case I want to buy city provisions to bring back with me. I know that I can't buy shampoo or anything like that, because it would mean that I would need to check my bag. I dunno what I would bring back, but I would be back in civilization.

In other aspects of work and living on this island which has become my own personal Alcatraz, there's a new guy moving into the apartment tonight. The other guy who's already there said that he purposefully left his room a complete mess, throwing his clothes on the two other beds in his room so that the new guy would think that the other two beds were occupied. As far as my room goes, one of the other cooks left some of his stuff in my room on the other bed, so I'm hoping that it detours the new guy from staying in my room. I didn't purposefully leave my room a shithole though. That's kind of a dick move. I find that more and more, as nice as people pretend to be, there are a lot of people willing to pull dick moves. Sometimes I wonder if I should be pulling dick moves too.

I guess it really only matters for the next few weeks. We got another guy coming in four weeks or so. There will be four of us up there in two bedrooms. I have a bed in the larger of the two rooms, and I have already staked out the desk, a bookshelf, a set of drawers and the proper closet. I left whoever is in my room a set of Rubbermaid drawers, a proper set of drawers, a small cupboard thingie, and I found a collapsable closet that I put together last night just so that I could keep the proper closet to myself.

I already don't feel relaxed at "home." I dunno how much this new person is going to be affecting my already constant feeling of unrest.

I hope this dude isn't as lazy as my current roommie. He does no cleaning or upkeep, even though he makes most of the mess. He never takes out the trash. Sure, he's a nice guy for the most part, he's just a bit lazy.

Today, I bought some cleaning supplies so that I would be able to clean up the apartment a bit. The floors need a sweep and a mop, mostly because I'm the only one who takes off their shoes in the house. It really irks me when it rains and they trek water all over the apartment.

I swear I'm not this OCD. I ABHOR household upkeep, but the thing is that if you drop a Cheerio on the floor, if you pick it up right then and there, you don't have to worry about sweeping it up the next day. If you wash your glass after you're done using it, you don't have to worry about cleaning twenty of them when the sink gets full.

I've been known to explode all over my room. I do that often, in fact. But I do my best to not have my mess affect someone else. I just don't know how this is going to be, but I have a bad feeling about it.

It's rough going from living this life full of vibrance, excitement, interesting and open people that I want to get to know and spend time with to living a life where I'm just trying to get by for the next five months. I know it's a shit way to live, but it's all I have right now. It's just me, my iPod and my computer with all of my pictures on it.

I'm thinking about ordering some Poi chains. I figure that I could teach myself how to spin fire poi by the end of the summer. It's something that I can do by myself on the beach either before or after work, or even on my day off. It would just give me another thing to do. Then, when I go back to Koh Tao, I can go back to the Lotus Club at Sairee Beach and maybe do a little bit of fire spinning with the performers there.

Really, I'm just plotting my next escape. I don't know how it's going to happen or for how long, but I think a good idea would be to go a year from November. It would give me a good amount of time to build up capital and close up loose ends that I would need to tie up before leaving for potentially a whole year. Also, there's a chance that I'll be in Vancouver around that time, which is a great jumping off point to Korea and China.

I think that if my insertion point is Korea, I'll travel down through China, to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and then down to the Philippines. From there, I would hit New Zealand and Australia before heading back north through Indonesia, Singapore and the west coast of Thailand. I think that I would re-visit some of the places in southeast Asia that I rushed through or that I missed, before heading back into China to see Tibet and Nepal. From there, I think that I might try to hit the Trans-Siberian railroad from China into Russia, which I think would be really cool. From Russia, I would check out eastern Europe, including Lithuania, Poland, Croatia, Hungary, Greece and Turkey. I would stop by to see Iria in Germany, and Julia in Den Hague. Maybe I would go see Markus and Robert in Sweden as well. I think from there, I would want to head to South America, and then find a way to head back into the States by way of Central America and up through Mexico. That sounds like an amazing trip to me. We'll see if all of that happens. I think that if I were to cut any of it, it would probably be the South America/Central America part. I really do wonder how long that trip would take, if I really took my time and tried to find jobs in places that I liked.

I really think that my next big trip will be an open ended trip. I really don't want to feel like I have to be back anywhere unless I run out of money. I don't want to have any commitments. I want to be free to go an run with the travelers. I want to be able to feel like I can move on at any time if I don't like what's happening without long term career repercussions. I know that having a gap in my resume would have career repercussions, but I feel like the experience that I would get in return would pay dividends.

Life is to be lived and shared, two things that are not really going on with me on this island. I don't think that it would have hit me as hard if I had never gone to Asia, but my eyes are open now. I've been spoiled. The only thing I can do now is feed the addiction.

Day 29: Wi-Fi-Riffic.

Listening: And I've been living too hard to believe that things are going to get easier now. I'm still trying to shake off the pain from the lessons I've learned.

What's my problem? Why can't I get hit on by HETERO GIRLS not GAY GUYS?

Right now, I'm blogging from my room. That's right. From my room on Nantucket. Not the coffee shop. Not the library. Not my friend's place. From my room on Nantucket. See, I got this kick ass roomie in Cambridge who sent me her extra wireless router so I tapped into my Nantucket roomie's cable modem and now I have full wireless bars anywhere in the apartment. Before, I was scamming wireless off of the people across the street, but it was really spotty once I got to my room at the other end of the apartment. Now, I don't have to worry about it. I can chat without worrying about getting cut off. I can watch streaming shows and movies from my room. And I can blog in bed if I want to. I know that it seems like such a small thing, but when you take the crack pipe out of the addict's hands, or give him marginal crack, you'd better believe he feels the withdrawl.

In other random occurrences, last night, one of my pals from the restaurant played at the muse last night. He's one of the few people on island that I know who likes and can speak intelligently on house music, rave culture, the club scene in Boston and so on and so forth. So, in support, almost the entire kitchen staff (with the exception of Chef and the intern who is only nineteen years old) along with a few front of the house kids rolled in to support.

The music was deep, dark, and tribal. Not nearly as deep as I like it, and a little more evil than I like it as well, but it was a great night for Nantucket standards. We didn't get to the Muse until around midnight and I was kind of content on hanging out on the sides and drinking my beer as I bobbed my head and neck to the beat.

Lo-and-behold, two of my non-restaurant friends (my snarky friend who runs one of the coffee shops in town, and her pretty attractive blonde friend), roll in. A piece of information for those who don't know my snarky friend. She's a out lesbian. That piece of information will come in helpful in about three minutes.

Anyhow, so I get coaxed onto the dance floor by my two friends and we're having a good old time. I like my friends. I find them hilarious. The blonde is beating off men with a stick. My snarky friend is dancing, well, like she dances, which is, well, the only way to describe it is hilarious.

We're all dancing and this guy comes up to them that they seem to know and they have a little "what's up?" conversation. So he introduces himself to me, and proceeds to try to twirl me. I'm like, "Err... dude. This is weird." He then asks me if I'm gay. I say, "Not so much." He then says, "All of the time or some of the time?" So, I'm thinking to myself, "What the fuck?!?" But instead, I answer, "I'm pretty sure I'm NOT gay ALL of the time, but to each their own." "Absolutely," he replies. "I love these girls," he says pointing to my friends, implying that since I was a guy dancing to house music with at least one lesbian, that I'm gay. "Yeah," I say. "They're pretty cool." That's where the conversation ended and he went off to presumably hit on someone who was gay.

See, that whole interaction might have been different if the gay guy was actually a hot straight girl. See, hot girls need to be hitting on me. Okay, maybe not HOT girls, but at least relatively attractive girls. Or maybe I should just start hitting on the attractive girls more. Seems like all of the ones I know right now have boyfriends or are too young to order alcoholic beverages on their own.

You know it's funny, they say that the thing about eighteen year-olds is that you get older by they stay the same age. It's a true saying. The thing is that, sure, they're the same age, but when I get the bludgeoning blow that they're eighteen (actually, usually nineteen in my case), I think to myself, "Oh! It's so wrong!" Sometimes, they're just too hot and you don't know what to do about it. It's an awful, evil conflict, but at least it's not as awkward as the gay guy was hitting on me.

Day 26: Everything I Think About Fades Away

Listening: I don't wanna talk about it, how you broke my heart. If I stay here just a little bit longer, if I stay here, won't you listen to my heart.

What's my problem? I can't remember people's names.

I've been back on the east coast for forty-four days, in the country for fifty-one. All I think about is my time in Asia, but after even just fifty-one days, memories begin to fade. I can probably recount every single day that I was away, but little details seem to slip away into oblivion. There was a time where I could tell you the names of every single person on my Halong Bay trip, but now I can only remember the twins (Sophie and Clover), Stu, Paolo, Craig, AJ, May, and that's pretty much it. I can only remember Julia, Kate, Jen, Bina, Marion, Carol, Oliver, Sandy, Pauline, Sitka (though I don't even know if that was how it was spelled), and, of course, Chloe from my time in Luang Prabang. I met many more in those places, but I seem to have forgotten their names. I have pictures of them. I remember what they did and what happened when I was around them, but I just don't remember their names. I can remember where they're from too.

The point is that my memories are slowly growing halos, and I'm sure that it won't be long before it's all just a haze, much like the time I spent in Europe. It's not to say that I don't remember anything that happened or everything I saw. I remember it all, but the finer details continually seem to escape me. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the Indian chick that cooked in Toronto whom I met in Paris. I can't even remember the name of the restaurant that she worked at. I don't remember the name of the vinstubes that I ate at in Strasbourg, though I could find them in my Michelin Guide.

It makes me sad that I lose the details. It makes me wonder if I should have given in to all of the people that I met on the trail and joined fuckin' facebook. I guess it would have allowed me to remember people better. The other edge of that sword is the idea that I originally made my stand on. If we were really good friends, you know where and how to find me and I'll keep in touch. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of Julia, Paolo, Erin, Jen and Lydia. I shared such amazing times with them.

The weirdest thing about coming back is that no one really asks me at all about my time abroad. No one asks for stories or any of that. No one wants me to talk about it. It's all I think about, and no one asks. I think the one person that I talked about it at length with was Sam. One afternoon before I came down to the island, I spent four hours taking Sam through my trip with maps and pictures. I told her a few of the stories that didn't make it into the blog for some reason (like where I got headbutted by a British dude for making a "yo mama" joke while riding on a tuk-tuk to the bowling alley in Luang Prabang, or making another British guy who was twice my size tap out due to a guillotine choke on the boat on Halong Bay). I think that my friend Gabi wants me to do that for her too, but it just hasn't happened yet.

I want to talk about my time in Asia, but at the same time I don't. I don't know if I have the vocabulary to accurately express how I felt in each place or what everything looked like without the filter of the camera. I don't know if I can express how things really were. I can't explain how things tasted different than they do here in the States. I can't convey just how present I was in my own life.

I don't know why it's so hard to be as present in my life while I'm here. I'm wondering if I could be more present if I were in Boston. My life consists of me going to work at half past noon, working until half past ten or eleven o'clock, going back upstairs and showering after two beers, staying up until four in the morning for absolutely no reason, and then going to sleep only to wake up in time to shower before work. As Sam calls it, I'm a bit of a factory worker these days. Just doing my job and that's it.

At least I'm not going out like the other kids are doing. One of the other cooks went out on his "Friday" night. He and another cook dropped a hundred and forty-three dollars. That is ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-THREE DOLLARS! In a single night! No food included! It was all liquor. I don't want to be that guy this year. I'm into battening down the hatches and putting everything away. Of course, I still want to live a little, but mostly, I want to save.

Speaking of spending, I have been researching scooters for a long time. I have wanted one for a long time. Originally, I was going to buy a new one in Boston, but I opted out of it, because I didn't want to drop three thousand plus incidentals on a really good one, or a thousand on a crappy Chinese one that would be hard to get serviced. Then, I saw a sign on the bike shop in Nantucket. They're selling their used scooters for eight hundred and fifty dollars. It comes with two helmets, so all I would need to do is buy a chain for it. It's a pretty popular Korean scooter and I looked the model up online and it seemed to be a slightly above average scooter. As some people say, maybe your first car shouldn't be a BMW, maybe I shouldn't buy a primo scooter right off the blocks. Maybe my first motor vehicle should be a bit of a beater. So that's why I'm thinking of buying one of these used scooters. When it's time to leave the island I can still bring it back up to Boston, and I would be able to work at some restaurants that are a bit harder to get to. So there are a lot of pros and cons.

Anyhow, I'm looking for some opinions. Should I get it? Should I not? Why would you say what you say? I need some definitive input.

Well, I gotta get out of this coffee shop. Gonna go over and meet my friend for dinner. We're cooking tonight because we're trying to be cheap. Another one of my friends here caught a shitload of striped bass. I got us a couple of pieces of it for dinner. It should be delicious. I mean, really, two professionals cooking something at home, no doubt it'll be good.

Day 19: Homeless

Listening: It took six whole hours and five long days for all your lies to come undone.

What's my problem? I dread the next five months.

Over the past three weeks since I have re-entered into American society, I have felt the "ZEN!!!" feeling that I got from Asia fade away from me like the tan that is quickly fading from my skin. And like my tan, my "ZEN!!!" was a thick dark coat over the cynic that made deals at the end of last season to ensure that he would have employment, and the worry wort that didn't have enough confidence in his skills to say and believe that he could just drop into Boston and have a job.

I hate being a man of my word sometimes. It means that I feel like I have to do what I say even if my ideals and goals have changed. I have to put what I want on the back burner to appease my honor. I have to swallow it and digest it like the bite of durian that everyone else at the table seems to like, but I no longer want to even have in my mouth.

I wrote that passage about twenty one days ago, two days before I left the mainland of American and marooned myself on this island for the second summer in a row. I would have posted it then, but Sam said that it made me sound like kind of a little bitch that thought that the chef owed me for doing him a favor. Well, it is kind of how it sounded, but I kind of liked the prose.

Before I got here, I thought I would be getting a pay raise regardless of whether I lived above the restaurant or not. When I got here, I found out that I would be getting a pay cut and that I would be working an extra day every two weeks. When I brought it to the attention of Chef, now I'm making exactly what I made last summer, but I'm still working one extra day every two weeks.

Also, in the kitchen, though things have changed, a lot has stayed the same. Two line cooks didn't return to the kitchen, and two new ones have taken their place. And by taken their place, I mean to say that their roles both on the line and in the social order of the kitchen have been filled. We have the older guy who has a lot of experience, who thinks he's too good to scrub and sweep, and when he does so, he does it half-assed, but after years of being in the industry is not simply a line cook, but he's JUST a line cook. And the other is the young talent highly regarded by chef and everyone else in the kitchen, who seems to talk down to me like I'm an infant sometimes. Yeah. I'm back to the bottom of the hot line pecking order.

A little bit about that. I understand being at the bottom of the hot line pecking order. I know I don't have a ton of experience, and I know that I don't know how to do absolutely everything. However, this is my second season in this kitchen and somehow I thought I would have earned a little bit more respect. I guess that I have not.

This makes me think of what I had left in Boston. Before I left, I had at least two people who wanted to hire me without me even saying that I wanted a job. I almost blew off Nantucket just so Paul wouldn't feel bad about poaching me to work at his new joint on the Vineyard. People in Boston want me to work with them. Sometimes in Nantucket, I feel as if people work with me just because Chef hired me, not because they necessarily think that I have something to offer. I feel like I left a whole lot of respect behind in Boston, along with my feeling of home.

Speaking of the word "home," I feel like I am without one. I have been without one for a year. A year ago, I came to this island and dislodged myself from the place that I had lived for the past eight years. I had come to this island to dislodge myself though. My plan was to get myself traveling, to become a bit of a journeyman, to cook and live in other places. One year later, I'm back where my journey started, so I really haven't gone all that far.

During my three months abroad, I never once felt homesick. I wished that my friends could be there with me in Asia, but I never once wished that I had been back in Boston with my friends. I have been here for nineteen days and there isn't a day that goes by that at least for a few seconds I wish I were back in Boston sitting at my coffee table with Linh and Sam, drinking wine, watching "How I Met Your Mother." I want to be relaxed, and here I'm just not that.

As it is right now, it's just me and one other guy living above the restaurant. Over the next two months, two more cooks will move upstairs with us. I'll have to share a room with one of them. It doesn't give me much room to keep to myself. The common room isn't nearly as inviting as it was last year when it was Brit and me at the end of the season and Jo-Jo during part of the season.

I find myself being the clean freak again. Everyone knows that I can explode in my own personal space, but when it comes to common areas, I feel like it needs to be clean all of the time. I think that shoes should come off at the door to reduce the amount of crap that is trekked through the house. I can only imagine how much more of a shit hole the apartment will become once two more guys move in. I think that the whole cleanliness thing is why I like living with women more than men. That, and everyone is jockeying to be the alpha male. I can't stand that bullshit. That's what it really is. It's bullshit.

To make it all more interesting, I can't seem to sleep. I haven't gone to sleep before a quarter past three in the morning since I got here. I have tried. I have laid down to sleep and just couldn't trick myself into sleeping. So, now I don't even try. I stay up and watch TV shows that I missed while I was in Asia. This insomnia had better go away soon, because I'm running out of TV shows to watch. I go to sleep at four and wake up at noon, just in time to go to work. Well, at least I'm not going to the bars and spending money.

It's five months though. Five months. I can do five months. If I can be an accountant for five years, I can be a cook on an island that I don't feel at home on. It will be an exercise in humility. It will be a test of my patience. Maybe it will make me a better person. I have no idea. I'll try to keep up the positive, up-beat attitude that I put on the first day I made it back to the island. Hopefully, I won't drop that front. If I do, who knows what'll happen.

In five months, I'll be back on the mainland. In five months, I'll regain my sense of home and I'll try to pare down my belongings and try to figure out a new way of becoming a journeyman without having to feel like I'm not in an environment where I can thrive. I need to get back to thriving, and it's not going to happen here. I can hone. I can focus on refinement of some of my skills, but I don't think I can thrive. I don't think my happiness lives here on this island. It's a start, though, to realize something like this. Sometimes finding things out is a process of elimination. In five months, Nantucket will be eliminated from where my life will take place.