August62009
8/4/09 - Roses of Roasted Pork Tenderloin.
Xiao Mi Fen’s demonstration.
By 6AM
I was up and working out.
7AM
I was pushing my way through the crowded market, with bags of meat
and vegetables.
10:00AM
Done with my portion of the kitchen prep, I took a short break to finalize my studio’s brochure design.
11:30AM
The restaurant opens (read: the curtain opens).
Every Tuesday now is my apprentice day at the Bitbit Cafe. I am starting with dishwashing, basic cutting and plating. The photo is one of our chefs’ demonstration for me.
***
From “The Grand Design”, The Elements of Typographic Style:
Literary style, says Walter Benjamin, “is the power to move freely in the length and breadth of linguistic thinking without slipping into banality.” Typographic style, in this large and intelligent sense of the word, does not mean any particular style - my style or your style, or Neoclassical or Baroque style - but the power to move freely through the whole domain of typography, and to function at every step in a way that is graceful and vital instead of banal. It means typography that can walk familiar ground without sliding into platitudes, typography that responds to new conditions with innovative solutions, typography that does not vex the reader with its own originality in a self-conscious search for praise.
In the next 23 months of my stay in Taiwan, I plan to build the culinary skills and knowledge that will free my movements, and take me to the beginning of style.
***
Soon after graduation, I began to think about the division of time. In school, time was always divided for us: two semesters in a year, every year you move onto something else, and every few years, you move up to a whole new level. Clear breaks mark the boundaries between one partition and another. They give us a chance to reflect, to recharge, or change directions if we so desire.
Do you ever feel like you’ve lost your sense of time?
I asked a friend who had graduated a year ahead of me.
He nodded,
When you are working 9 to 5, every day seems to go by slowly because it’s so much the same. You feel as though the days will never end. But then, a year goes by, and you are caught by surprise because you hardly noticed its passing.
It happens, but I don’t want it to happen to me. I want to feel time brushing against me and know as every particle passes, that I have used it to the fullest. I give myself two years in Taiwan because that limitation puts my days in context. What is a day out of two years? What is any subdivision - a week, a month, three months, six months, twelve months and so on - when you measure them in that light? Limitation gives weight to time.
***
Rewind:
Damian was leading me to turn around him. The Molinete, the windmill wheel in tango. Think of the last step, he said as I turned. Focus on how you want to end.
Kathy, my screenwriting instructor constantly told our class that we should write our script with its ending in mind. Know that last scene, then write towards it.
I am seeing it, the spectacular finale:
Style, the power to move freely through the whole domain
These two years, if I use them well, will bring me closer
in culinary arts and more.
