VICTORY!!!!

Very early on in my experiences with working I've tried to have a very good work ethic. I've tried to work hard and be respectful of the people I work with and the customers (when I've had to deal with them). I also came to learn early on that it doesn't always get you anywhere. There were many times in jobs where I asked if I could be moved to another department or get cross trained and was turned down while people who didn't seem to put in as much of an effort got moved up. There were times that I had to fight just as much for hours. I've had bosses rave about how good of a worker I am and how they wish they could clone me, yet scoffed when I asked about having a raise. In almost all of my jobs I got to a point where eventually I just stopped caring and slacked off....well as much as my work ethic would let me.

That has finally all changed.

Recently I quit my job at the restaurant in GR. Gas prices were killing me and I was getting to the aforementioned point where I wasn't caring as much. Also, it helped that I got offered a job at a place opening up in Zeeland (a town smack dab next to where I live). Once again I was dishwashing, but at this point I didn't care. I just needed a second job closer to where I live. We got my availability with the grocery store worked out although there was an annoyance on their part the first day after they realized that two of the nights they scheduled me that I wouldn't be available til an hour or so after they wanted me. That annoyance lasted about 2 days until they realized how good I was. After day 3, they said that if I wanted more hours they would gladly give them to me.

Then they had their first weekend. I try not to worry about what goes on when I'm not at a job. But I already knew that the other dishwasher couldn't handle it. I'm sure he's a nice guy, but during training it was obvious that it was his first job (obviously he's in high school) or at least his first restaurant. Every day I worked that first week I had both cooks and FOH people tell me they loved how I could keep up and somehow I knew the weekend wasn't going to go smoothly.

Enough about that though, things were going VERY smoothly and then about half way through the night the sous chef was like "Hey, we need to talk to you before you leave". I'm not sure who reads this but hearing those words is never a good thing. Luckily he knew what was going through my head and clarified that the talk was nothing to worry about. Towards the end of the night Brooks (the sous chef), Luke (the owner/GM/Chef?) and I went outside to talk.

And they offered me full time!!!

Full time as in a 5 day, 40 hour work week. And a raise to $8. I don't think I've EVER gotten a raise based on ability and working for 40 hours in rare in the restaurant industry unless you're on salary and salary in that business is not a good thing.

Naturally I accepted. Which means no more grocery store. It will make going out on "weekends" harder, but I get a two day weekend on Sunday and Monday which will make planning things with friends easier.

My whole working life I've run with the idea that hopefully someday I'll work as a place where they recognize and reward mine (or anybody's) hard work. It's nice to finally be at that place.

Like I said, life can only go up from here!

Sometimes you gotta "do"!

Close to the beginning of June I went to the Saugatuck Film Festival. It was interesting and I'd love to go again but under circumstances. My experience as a whole kind of blew for various reasons. I only got to see one of the movies I wanted to see due to a "group decison" that was dictated by practically one indivdual. I spent more time trying to track down my girlfriend and her friends due to that same individual deciding that one person's feelings weren't as important as the "groups" and I had to leave early to go to work. I could vent about that, but thats not the point.

The point is that I've been wanting to go to the Film Festival for at least 6 years but kept putting it off for some reason. I've always made an excuse for what apparently was my laziness in trying to go. There are many things I keep saying I want to do and keep "putting off": Homebrewing beer, cooking mussels, making pasta from scratch (okay, so I've done those two), going to Cedar Point, going on vacation, and many others. I'm at a point where I want to stop putting stuff off that I want to do.

I think I'm going to push myself to do more of those "I want to do but...." things. I need a hobby or 10 that involve more than reading. I can reading about things, especially food related things, till I'm blue in the face but sometimes you just have to "do".

What am I going to do first....I'm not sure. I saw a homebrewing kit a Williams Sonoma so I may start with that. It would be a great way for me to get the stuff I need to intially homebrew on a semi-regular basis, then I could get better and bigger supplies for it if its something I want to do more of.

More on that when I get off my lazy bum and do it.

The Waiting game

I hate waiting. Don't get me wrong, I can be pretty patient when needs be (like waiting for an appointment, or for someone to pick me up); but I hate waiting when it comes to waiting in lines or waiting for something to happen.

The last couple of weeks of working at the club was horrible for the fact that I couldn't wait for it to end. I liked the work, and I liked the people I worked and lived with and for the most part I liked the area but the fact that I knew it was ending and just wanted it to get there so it would be over was annoying at hell.

Now I get to wait again to start my new job. I haven't decided if I'm going to disclose the name on the blog yet and I have yet to decide on a little "code name" for it. So for now its just "new job." I went down for an interview for it about 3 weeks before I finished at the club, I got offered the job about a week and a half later and I was supposed to start tomorrow. Only that didn't happen.

While napping today I got a phone call. I answered without really thinking about it and it was the "new job." For some reason or another the chef had me down for starting Friday and when I mentioned that it was supposed to be tomorrow he chalked it down to miscommunication or something. After getting that out of the way, he then pushed back my starting day to the 24th. So now I get to wait another 5 days. Which brings us back to the waiting game. Fun times

Other random thoughts that come to my mind:

The bright side of this all is that I'm taking the girlfriend (who is actually slightly amused that I keep referring to her as "the girlfriend") out for her birthday tomorrow so it actually gives me more time to take her out and do stuff with her. I still haven't decided where we're going. I was originally thinking about going someplace in Holland but since we have more time, I'm now contemplating maybe going to Grand Rapids. I guess I'll have to sleep on it.

Also I now have more time to work on some cooking projects. I decided about half way through the summer that I want to cook some things from the Momofuku cookbook (as well as other cookbooks). And it would be a sin NOT to start with the noodles. Only the broth for the noodles takes 7 hrs to make and that in itself is going to be a project. It will keep me busy, and assuming I do it right it will taste good. So its a win-win situation.

Finally I've had a hankering to resurrect (or I guess carry over from my myspace blog) one of my infamous picture blogs with some pictures from this summer. I probably won't post any pictures of people, but some of the food and sights and what not from this summer. Hmm...we'll see.

Five Years from now (or maybe not)

So last night I went out to the apartments to go to the bonfire. Most of the kitchen staff as well as the managers live out there. The last time I went out Chef was out there (but left right as I got there) as well as one of the ladies who work at U-21 (Under 21, named for it being geared towards younger folk). This week it was pretty much just the night staff (minus Giles, the night sous chef)

It was actually pretty fun. Hanging out with the people I work with (and the night pastry cook) outside of work was a new experience. It was just nice to talk and hang out without the stress/pressure of work all around us. AND it was a nice change of pace from life at Beachview.
Don't get me wrong, I love Beachview to death, but sometimes you need a break from partying and hearing all the servers bitch about things (work, the members of the club, about how hot they get, about who else in the service staff may or may not be dumb).(true story)

Anyway we're at the bonfire and Jeff decides he's going to be Dr. Thought Provoking and asks everybody where we want to be in five years. When it got around to me, I answered that I honestly didn't know. Heck, I didn't even know where I'll be in 5 or so weeks after I'm done here. And that kind of troubled me because I know everyone needs to have some sort of goal to work toward. In work, in life, in play, for anything I suppose. And I felt bad for not really thinking that far ahead
　
When push comes to shove I know what I'd like to be doing. In a perfect world I'd like to be well on my way to working my way up the ranks in a kitchen to eventually becoming at the very least a sous chef. I'd also like to be putting the wheels in motion to opening my own low key restaurant. Either some sort of Asian cuisine (currently I'm reading the Momofuku cookbook for like the 3rd time and I'm getting a culinary boner. ha), an Italian/Spanish/Mediterranean cuisine, or the cop out of "American Regional" cuisine. I'd also like to have the Momofuku/Au Pied De Conchon vibe going for it (in terms of it being not pretentious or not having a high end vibe going for it).

I don't know why I feel uncomfortable telling people that. I think part of it has to do with the fact that I self admittedly still kind of suck. I mean I know the basics pretty well. For the most part I'm pretty serious about my job. I can cook pretty well at home and for others. But I have to work on my speed and working cleanly when I'm at work. Oh and I have to work on my common sense sometimes too. So it feels weird having high ambitions when I have alot to work on.

I think its also due to insecurities I still have tucked away from when I was younger. As hard as it is to believe, growing up I was dorky (okay, that's not hard to believe), shy, kind of socially awkward and didn't always fit in. It got better as I got older but when I was younger there weren't too many people I was super close friends with. When I did try to share some of my aspirations with people they tended to make fun of me. In retrospect, I think it may have just been the regular ribbing people give each other about things (I.E. Calling someone who wants to be a basketball player Michael Jordan.....or do people now get called Lebron James?). Regardless I never really felt comfortable sharing my aspirations with people.

My back-up plan at the very least is to find a job at a low key restaurant/bakery/cafe/catering company/whatever in a decent sized city, keep my head down, work my ass off and then get a foot in the door of writing. As is evident by some of the blog entries I write, I LOVE to write and am pretty decent at it. I don't know if I'd want to do restaurant reviews forever, but I'd be open to doing informational and opinion articles. Actually, I'd probably try to do food writing even if I did open my own place. So regardless I'm going to put the wheels for writing in motion.

No matter what I do, I AM starting to narrow down where I a want to go after here (working at the club). I haven't hidden the fact I want to go back to school for additional schooling. Maybe a bachelors, maybe just to learn more about the aspects of the industry I'm unfamiliar with (baking, pastries and if I can find someplace that has a class: butchering), maybe to go someplace and take writing classes. So I want to end up someplace with a decent school for what I want to go for. Likewise I also want to end up someplace with good restaurants. Partially to eat at, but also partially so I can beg my way in to work for free if needs be to learn more. (in addition to any normal job I have).

So yeah, that's that. That's my rant on where I want to be an my inability to tell people. I wasn't expecting to have that conversation last night. But regardless it was still nice to hang out with the cooks.

(on a brighter note, Jeff became slightly less thought provoking afterwards by talking some good natured crap about his roommate. haha)

Adventures in eating Sushi

So I once read an article, or maybe it was a blog entry by Anthony Bourdain. In it he talks about how he places bets with the members of his production staff (especially new ones) about when the first person is going to get sick on any given shoot for an episode of No Reservations (well they do it when in other countries). 99% of the time Tony picks the breakfast buffet at the hotel because, as he so bluntly points out, you can't always trust that food and you shouldn't eat food you can't trust. Almost every time a member of the production crew eats the hotel breakfast buffet and sure enough they get sick.

Last week, I totally disregarded that word of advice and I paid for it dearly. For a while I had a bit of a craving for sushi. I have no clue how that craving started because I've only had sushi once back in November. But I had a craving nonetheless. My forary into eating Sushi here in Grand Rapids started out fine enough. I mentioned my craving to one of my friends who I went to Culinary school with the first time, and she mentioned that Jonny's Cafe at Calvin College (where she works) had a sushi bar on Tuesdays and that its pretty authentic. So a week or so later, I finally made it in (it probably helped that it was 90 degrees that day and hanging out in A/C is always a good thing). I had sushi and it kicked ass. I'm totally going again when I have a chance.

Needless to say, that is not what made me sick. What made me sick is two days later I was at the grocery store getting something to eat for dinner. I saw the grocery store made sushi and got a small bit of desire to buy it. A little voice in the back of my head was saying "don't do it, you know you want Potato Wedges instead!" a little voice which I then told to "fuck off" (bad decision). I bought the sushi, took it home and scarfed it down. And I seemed fine.

The next day I felt off. One of the classes I'm taking is bowling. Normally I can break 100 and even make it up to 120. (and today I got 143) But I was sucking due to feeling totally out of it. After class I met my dad for lunch and my trademark appetite seemed to be missing. After lunch I went to my aunts house to hang out (god bless A/C). Eventually I told her I was feeling like crap and upon mentioning I felt like I almost had to puke she said that making myself puke might help me feel better.

Thust started a 30 minute ordeal which has probably been the worst 30 minutes for me in the past 19 years. Seriously kids, I don't get sick and when I have puked, its because I've drank too much. After I finally felt I couldn't puke anymore, I grabbed an empty trash can and told her I was taking a nap and plopped down in my cousins bed. Naturally I woke up feeling much better.

Its funny though cause I tell people that story and the unadventerous ones always snarkily ask me "I bet you aren't going to be eating sushi anytime soon?" and its like "why not?" I'm not letting one bad experience turn me off. I ate bad food, I puked, it happens. I'd much rather be adventerous and puke than sit at home eating crappy fast food.

I seem to have the impecable luck of being an adventerous picky eater. I want to try a ton of stuff yet there are still things I won't eat. Despite that I have no learned an important lesson. No more eating food that can make you sick if its not being made someplace trustworthy