work

all i do is work, eat, and sleep. i dont feel very alive. that's the negative side of things.

unrelated - every once in a while, a total wing-nut beach character will walk into our kitchen. not the restaurant, the kitchen. our chef is a stoic guy, and we cook some serious food, and the wing-nut will invariably be welcomed in with open arms, kisses on the cheek, huge hellos, everything. it reminds me of coney island, how no matter how strange a person might be, they won't be out of place. our characters include old hairy men wearing nothing but speedo underwear, old women with hacking cigarette coughs, a pair of middle-aged bald identical twins who may also be brothers of the chef. we feed the men from Senegal who sell trinkets on the beach.

my co-workers think that trying to speak to me in english is the absolute funniest thing in the world. in the middle of the dinner rush, when we typically feed about 60 people, one of the kitchen guys will shout out something like, "Yoshua! Looook! The salt, is on, the table!" "Good!" I reply, as the kitchen worker is utterly consumed by hysterical laughter. i spent 10 minutes the other day explaining to someone how to say the word 'oven.' "haaven?" "uh-vin." "haa-ven."

There is not a lot of room for me in the kitchen. i observe, i help when i can, i don't get in the way. i work with fish sometimes, filleting big fish and small fish, i cut vegetables, do other random stuff, fry things sometimes, i don't get to cook with fire enough or plate dishes enough. the less engaged i am, the less happy i am, and i'm not super happy right now. There's a matriarch in the kitchen who is not interested in teaching me. some guys look out for me though, and show me things from time to time, let me try things. i assert myself more and more though as i feel more comfortable, as i understand more, as i learn things in italian. i recognize that the seafood is very fresh (despite the messy, chaotic kitchen - we feed the alley cat. there is an ant problem that nobody seems to care about). we receive beautiful whole fish, red shrimp and scampi shrimp that don't exist in new york as far as i know.

i managed to wrangle for myself a junk bike that i can ride to work. at night i have to travel through a patch of unpaved road - there are no lights, just trees and stars. i have to walk the bike. i can barely see my hands on the handlebars. i like this part of my day. the beach is right in front of me but i don't get to enjoy it, although i'm glad it's there. i worry that i'm not learning as much as i could somewhere else. i dont feel like this restaurant is using me effectively. but then again, i dont speak or understand italian very well, and there is not that much time for them to show me every little thing, i need to just keep watching and memorizing and ask to step in when i know how to do things. i want to learn pasta and cook with fresh seasonal produce and be exposed to interesting cheeses and i dont have any of that. i'm learning seafood, which is certainly something, but i dont feel inspired. and i'm very tired.