The Chowebrum

COVID-19 sucks. I think everyone would agree with that statement considering it’s made the last few years miserable. At the beginning it was actually pretty “normal” in HK and I felt incredibly lucky living here. People were still going out, albeit with masks, I was able to work (restaurants back home were closed or only doing takeaway), live was peachy in HK. It’s only recently that HK has turned into a shitstorm with an avalanche of increase cases and deaths.

Now before you think “oh this is another fuck the government, fuck Carrie Lam” post, it’s not. They have enough haters already and I don’t need to add to the pile. I would say this is more of a “why are you bitching so much about the government when you’re not even born/raised here” type of post. I get that the HK government’s handling of COVID has been horrible and that they deserve to be called out for it but why you have to be so mad if you’re a random expat? You’re just fucking visiting. You’re just here for a vacation, on a working-visa, to teach English as a means to support said vacation/visa, trafficking drugs, laundering money, whatever. The point is you’re not stuck here, you’ve got options. You can choose to leave HK and go home to a living space which is probably bigger than your 200 square foot flat here.

The people who more deservedly should be making Fuck Carrie Lam posts are the people born and raised here. Those who actually have roots and no way out. Random expats, you absolutely have the right to complain and judge but just be reasonable about it. You don’t need to tell your friends how “crappy” HK is now cause of the gov’t every time you see them and spam their social media feeds with it. Just stop being a shit disturbing instigator when you’re not really going to do anything about it and when you sure as hell won’t be here in 2047.

“Practice makes perfect” is a common saying that I live and breathe everyday as a cook. Whether its doing a job more efficiently or improving my pickup timings during service there are constant repetitions that I do every day to become a better cook.

Lack of repetition leads to less than desirable results, case and point being my writing. It’s been 5 years according to Tumblr since my last blog post. As I’m writing this entry now, I’m realizing that its way harder than it was before. It just takes longer now; condensing thoughts into sentences, finding the right words to keep things fresh (don’t want to “say” everything, we can announce, whisper, etc.) checking if my punctuation is somewhat close to being correct, making sure that the things I’m writing “sounds like how I would speak” a stylistic approach that I try to emulate from Bourdain (vastly underrated writer IMO, since you know he’s famous for his food stuff) and my biggest enemy, run on sentences!

Long story short, I’m guess I’m trying to say that I’m going to start blogging again (we’ll see how long that lasts). How frequently we shall see but I think the main reason for revisiting the good ol’ Chowebrum is to keep my writing skills (mediocre even at their prime) from deteriorating any further.

Impermanence: the state or fact of lasting for only a limited period of time.

One of the things I love/hate about my chosen career is the fact that things are often impermanent. There are times where you wish a moment could last a lifetime such as when you’re serving a perfectly cooked piece of fish to a guest. It takes only takes a couple minutes for them to consume the dish that you’ve spent the whole day prepping for.

Lucky to have Sundays off which is a special luxury for those who work in the food and beverage industry. Just crushed a workout with my trainer and when I was on the bus back home I began to ponder about life in “the business”.

First off I’m extremely happy be working in this industry and so far have been incredibly lucky as well. The places I’ve worked at and the people I’ve worked with are amazing. For me a big source of happiness in this industry is the people you work with. You spend so many hours of your day working with them and they become like family to a certain extent. This is one of the reasons why I’m a big believer in a quote my chef always mentions, "to me there's no great chef without a great team”.