Is Speed-metal one or two words?

Back at the blog again after a long absence. I hope to finish recounting my South American adventures at a later date, but for now I want to talk about the present.

In March after I got back from my trip, I spent a month in Europe. Well actually mostly England, which doesn't sound quite so glamorous, but I did spend a week in Milan visiting my cute niece Tallulah. I spent a couple of weeks in Cambridge working for my dad at his catering company to find out if I would like working in the food industry.

I liked it.

I came back to San Francisco, very briefly, and then drove up to Portland so see if I liked it.

I liked it.

Now I live in Portland and I work and earn money. I have a new nephew named Otis. He lives in Portland also.

By the time June rolled around I hadn't worked in almost eight months. I was broke, discouraged, and a little desperate for some incoming cash. I had spent quite a bit of time pounding the portland pavements in search of restaurant work. I had the dual handicap of being overqualified for any entry level position and having no real experience in a town where twenty and thirty something slackers are as common as dental floss bikinis on a Rio beach.

Finally my friend Jonthan introduced me to a friend of his who runs an Italian restaurant and I was given a chance to prove my worth. "Ever worked in a kitchen" he asked me. "No" I replied. "OK, come in on Sunday and we'll see what you're made of."

So a month later I'm still working as a prep cook at this same place as well as bussing and hosting two days a week at another place. My first week I had to ask a co-worker the name of the verb for what I was doing. I knew it wasn't traveling cause I kept waking up in the same bed. I also knew it wasn't something I actually chose to be doing. What I'd choose to be doing would be watching three World Cup Matches a day and then going home to drink beer and read about them on the internet. But I had to come to this place every day and do things that other people told me to do.

Work. That's what it's called. That's the name of the verb of what I was doing, hunched over a chopping board finely dicing vegetables for bolognese and pulling the innards out of calamari for a sum smaller than what I made in high school carrying golf clubs for rich assholes.

So now I am in the restaurant industry. The restaurant industry while sharing a love of exploiting workers with the non-profit world is, as you would expect, a completely different world. There are no check-ins, no weekly facilitated staff meetings, in fact no interactive decision making processes at all. After looking carefully around the restaurant I have not seen a talking stick and not once have I heard "so what I hear you saying is........."

It's also been quite a while since anyone yelled at me while I was working. After my three day honeymoon period had ended, the owner came in one evening while I was peeling carrots into the carbage can (and also in equal amounts onto the floor). "Clean up the fuckin' floor Simon, it looks like Denny's in here."

And that was just the beginning.

At first I got defensive, making excuses about why I hadn't done this or that, but now I just stand there and take it. See my boss (who is actually a really nice guy most of the time) is one of those people who just needs to yell at people now and then, thinking that it will keep them on their toes and work harder. While this may be the case for a small business owner such as himself, the yelling sessions rarely have anything to do with when I do something wrong (which is quite often).

The folks at the restaurant have been really patient with me. They have had to teach me everything. How to hold a knife. How to stand so you don't fuck up your back. And a thousand little tricks for cutting onions, peeling potatoes, pitting cherries and cooking pasta to perfection. Now I finally feel like I'm an asset and not a liability. I start my shift, the sous chef gives me a list of tasks, and I spend the next 8-10 hours slicing and dicing away with very little supervision.

I like this work. I like the physical aspect of it and I love the fact that food is still the focus of my livelihood. I think I may want to own a restaurant or catering company one day. Just need to figure out some shortcuts to learn the skills to make this happen.

More on Portland in future blogs, but this afternoon I went to my favorite cafe (Stumptown) and overheard one nerd hipster barista ask the other nerd hipster barista (with a mustache).

"Is speed-metal one or two words "(I hyphenated it cause i don't know the answer).

"God that's a good question" he replied.

And then there was short silence as they both mulled it over, yearning to go home and look it up on the internets.

Farmer Simon