Monday, November 23, 2009

From a few weeks ago...

Blogging is weird.  It's hard to find your own voice and feel like you have purpose to your dribble.  I'm going to throw one up in the spirit of not letting the blog die.  I'll be better about this in the future.


First impressions on the inside:

Starting from scratch in the kitchen is like doing any skill or sport for the first time.  My body isn't trained in these motions yet.  As a result, I look a little awkward and feel a little slow (in comparison to the guy chopping at the speed of light next to me).  In addition, it's like my nose overdosed on herbal crack.  After picking herbs for a few hours, it takes a while to come down and stop smelling things through the filter of thyme and parsely.  My point here being that I feel like a real newb and tourist in the kitchen, working slowly and taking snapshots of everything that is normal and average to the local cooks.

Nevertheless, even though I'm really excited to be there, work still feels...like work.  Manual labor is tiring.  Really tiring.  I am told this will improve with time, but for the moment I need to focus on beefing up my stamina.

Despite the feined excitement I get from so many when I tell them I shelled beans for four hours, the job IS exciting.  To me.  I can categorically say that after that fourth hour of shelling beans, my speed had increased and I was in the process of learning that motion.  Though like any sport, even prep cooking requires hours and hours...wait no, years of practice to work efficiently.
So while everyday I've been at this job and been thrilled by my improving mediocrity, it's hard to envision how I'm going to get from point A to point B.  The pace upwards is slow, at least it seems that way right now.