i haven't written anything in my blog of late because i have not been in my head as much or as my good friend cathy says about me, i didn't have anything torturing me so i felt i could not write.
which isn't necessarily true because on a daily basis, i encounter my daily angst in varying degrees of why am i here and what am i doing the rest of my life.
i guess to some extent - cathy is right. i don't write if i don't feel like it. when i am in the mood to write, it's as if something takes over me and i am not really lucid, but i feel like some otherworldly being in someone else's body typing away.
when that happens, i end up writing something really funny or quite good judging from my hopelessly supportive and encouraging friends' reactions.
anyways, i've changed my blog's name.
last thursday, i interviewed with chef jun tanaka to apprentice in his kitchen for maybe 1-2 days a week. he invited me over for an interview. i guess what i said suitably convinced him of my desire to learn to cook professionally - so he accepted.
chef jun tanaka runs pearl restuarant and bar which is an uber hot french restaurant with an award winning wine cellar. he was trained by albert roux and marco pierre white among other 3 star michelin chefs he trained with.
starting september, i will be working in his kitchen 1-2 days a week. if i don't kill myself with exhaustion that is, as i will still be doing my 5 days a week job which pays the rent and the bills (well barely).
it is an unpaid apprenticeship. even freshly graduated culinary students are unpaid - how much more someone completely untrained?
i can hear all your various reactions now. from 'well finally! you're going to do what you've wanted all along' to 'huh? i never knew she wanted to cook?'. hey, i've been with my therapist for a year and a half now and i just told him last week i wanted to cook.
how does that connect with studying for my mba and selling luxury make-up in the middle of a recession? i don't know really and i don't care to try and make sense of it.
all i know is i am so grateful for all these opportunities, which seem far and few during regular times, much more in the midst of a recession where unemployment has risen to levels higher that post world war 2.
and all it took was one email. and one interview - where i told him that a preserved human brain has the consistency of foie gras and that cat protein fibers look exactly like chicken (a throwback from my days when i thought i wanted to be a doctor). and that after working for 10 years in advertising, i looked around me and discovered i had 4 advertising books - and 163 cook books and a collection of food magazines lovingly preserved and stashed in order of publication. i also go around telling people that the top three chefs in order of number of michelin stars are: alain ducasse (25 stars), joel robuchon (18 stars) and gordon ramsay (12). the only american on that list comes in fourth - thomas keller of The French Laundry (7) and he trained under alain ducasse. i am designated chief family cook during holidays and whenever i am at home in manila. my friends always want to come to my house when i tell them i am in the mood to cook. i love going around markets - when i travel that is all i want to do. beautiful eggplants, dirt encrusted mushrooms, cheese and meat displays excite the hell out of me. i can tell you about the differences in beef in america, europe, australia and asia arising from their feeding process. what is my passion? no shit sherlock.
i wanted to hit myself 'why didn't i even bother thinking that before?!'. i guess though, when you are ready, the teacher will come. when you are ready, the universe will show you how.
i think what happened to me was that i never thought that a job was something you truly loved to do. somehow, i had it in my head that a job was supposed to be something you worked at, not necessarily what you loved. you could like it, or maybe even love bits of it but it didn't necessarily have to touch your soul or turn you on so completely you could talk about it till the cows came home. so that's the role my jobs took in my life.
i also thought a job, as long as you were climbing the ladder, you were getting a promotion, getting more people under you, more countries under your responsibility, you were getting more money, you drove a fancy car, it allowed you to shop like a mad woman - that was what a good job was. well okay - i had a good job. i had many, many good jobs. but i NEVER loved any of them.
because i didn't love any of them - i took them all for granted and even hated them because some of them made me hate myself because i knew i was just doing those jobs because of the money, the title and the sheen of grandeur those jobs gave me.
they fed my image but not my soul.
and it is amazing that i had to run away to london and learn to realize that for myself. somewhere, sometime during my stay here, i finally had the courage to start doing something i truly LOVE.
i think it also wasn't just that i had a different perception of what a job was.
i think i was also afraid of what i loved. many of us, know what we want, what we love, but we are also afraid of going for it for whatever reason. i was afraid because for too long, i thought i was going to be less if i didn't have what i previously thought i needed to have.
anais nin said 'And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.'
i am living proof that you can convincingly tell many people one thing, when in fact in my heart, i was holding onto something completely different.
why i kept holding it inside for so long - i don't know. and i don't care to rationalize why it took me this long.
i know now, for sure, i want to cook. just like i want to write.
i wrote once in my facebook headline 'If it's not mad, passionate, addictive, life changing, spiritually uplifting love that makes you believe you can change the world (or something like it)....it's not worth it.'
cooking here i come. The Empress Apprentice is here.
With your MBA and advertising skills, you can out perform Ramsey...and even out swear him. hahaha-Matt
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