Some may not have even known that 2 months ago I was leaving the grand West to supposedly return permanently to Ottawa. I was in, it's true, and then I was out, like a tide. It's hard to believe what's happened between me sitting in this internet cafe in downtown Victoria right now, and working at Sweetgrass Bistro in Ottawa 2 months ago. Some may not have even known I was there.
It's actually hard to believe what I've gone through in 2 years. I can't remember the things that might be very memorable to most people that have occurred to me in the last 2 months. What have I forgotten that's happened in the last 2 years? Maybe it's time to start keeping a journal. 2 months ago I spent a horrific 8 hours at Sweetgrass Bistro trying out for an entry-level cook's position. It was hot, I sweat a lot, I almost walked out, I cooked some terrible food and I got the job. The following couple of weeks were a blur, I drank and laughed away most of my very slim free-time and it was totally great, how proud I was, but I hated the job so I left.
18 days ago I moved back to British Columbia, 5 days ago I started at the Hotel Grand Pacific in downtown Victoria. There was and is no plan, only an idea. There was a time when I abhorred banquet cooking, now I really enjoy it. I'm getting a real fire for cooking right now, it's terrific. It becomes something very rare. I think a lot of people probably don't ever experience real adrenaline. When energy is gone and only adrenaline exists. When adrenaline and terror are flowing at the same time, and when everything goes right it's followed by this flood of triumph...that's really amazing. That's why cooks work ridiculous hours, not because they have to, but because they love that feeling more than anything.
This is where I work.
2 days ago I moved into an apartment. It's the first apartment I have ever had owned occupancy of. I don't own it, but I own the lease, I own everything in there that wasn't there when I arrived. It's the first time I've owned anything in my home other than the food on my allotted fridge-shelf. It's a good feeling. To be able to express yourself through your home is something I didn't know existed. I can't wait to get settled in and have some dinner-guests. I've got plans for my kitchen, pickled beets and asparagus, preserved sauces and freshly caught shell-fish, home-made cured meats, dried wild mushrooms. I have visions of shelves adorned with colourful mason-jars.
But where there's independence there's isolation. Friends and family have definitely been kind with their time since I've arrived, there hasn't been a day without a shared meal or a movie or a visit to the bar but now that I'm living alone I anticipate that being a little different. Which is good, that's what I came here for. To escape old abusive routine and to find new nurturing routine.
There were times outside of routine in my visit to Ontario. The best beer I've ever had at the Wellington Gastropub (True North Strong Ale, try to find it), a very memorable trip to a friend's cottage involving canoeing through rapids and cliff-diving into a lake, rescuing dying friendships, rescuing dying friends, and discovering the magic of Harry Nilsson via hours-long trips on OC Transpo. But there's no poetry in Ottawa, it's like a good plot with a bad execution. All the ingredients are there but it never really comes together.
Now I am going to unchain my newly acquired bicycle, go to ValueVillage to get all kinds of crap for my new place, and spend a well-deserved night in peace.
Taking a day off in beautiful Nanaimo, B.C. Sitting on the patio couch, 11am, drinking coffee and listening to Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart wail away. Many adventures passed in the last month, where winter brings a necessity to entertain ones self via drink and dance, summer brings rebirth of the body and soul. Where to start?
So the new house is amazing, I really do miss residence a lot, living with the Frenchies and Todd was probably really suitable for a winter lifestyle. We drank and we laughed like boys do, now it's summer and I'm in a healthier kind of home. Many special dinners have gone down on the patio and I've only been here a month. On Friday night I made perogies using a recipe that is simply flour and sour-cream, kneaded and incorporated until a pasta dough consistency is achieved. I filled half of them with mashed yam and the other half with fried ground pork, but I mixed the pork fat into the yam mash and didn't tell anyone. Like a true Ukrainian. Swimming adventures are already happening, the dam is cold as hell but I've been in twice, first time I fully rescued a drowning friend. Apparently I've saved a life now, sweet. I also apparently look like a full-blown Californian surfer, I'm about 2 shades of brown away from being a legitimate middle-Eastern immigrant.
Adventures to Salt Spring are in gear, spontaneously went camping a couple or three weeks ago. Had some 95 proof moonshine, tasted like rubbing alcohol.
But this weekend was the number one hit parade so far. On Friday I made perogies, played crib (yeah I learned, Sproules, watch out for me, comin' up), and just hung out with the usual troop of passersby that find themselves here.
On Saturday morning (holy crap there's a spider somewhere on me right now and it's gonna bite me) I woke up bright and shiny and shaved, met Todd and my friend pirate-Steve and drove to Victoria and I hit the streets with a pile of resumes in my satchel. I visited many of the Victoria hotspots, Cafe Brio, L'Ecole Brasserie, Camille's...I met a lot of cool people and had a lot of nice, genuine conversations. It's amazing the collective personality on the island, this island belongs in the Caribbean or Mediterranean, people here are tooooo cool and easy.
After I finished job-hunting (wandered the city for 7 hours, brutally hot) I walked to Ogden's Point wharf in downtown Victoria. I was meeting Hasi, the cruise-ship he works on was docking in Vic for 6 hours. Hasi arranged a personal tour of the ship's kitchens and restaurants for me. It was truly humbling and incredible. The ship had large separate rooms for processing different categories of meat, it had half a dozen (or more) full-sized kitchens all for different restaurants, whole departments allowed only one-way traffic so as to discourage outbreaks via contamination (ie. only dirty comes in, only clean leaves), it was all stainless steel and absolutely impeccably spotless. After the tour, the food and beverage manager gave me a copy of all the ship's menus plus a list of their weekly passenger consumption which I assure you was horrendous and disturbing. He arranged a free dinner for Hasi and myself. I had a nicely cooked shrimp cocktail, a smoked salmon pate sort of thing, and a massive 12oz. ribeye roast steak with real jus! I also had a screwdriver and white Russian and a dessert tapas. It was an incredible experience, I feel really lucky to have seen that, and visiting with Hasi was enriching and revitalizing as it always is.
Around 10:30pm I began my next trek to Royal Hill Park to Donna Ashford's house. I got to the general area and tried finding her house but I'd misheard the address on the phone and spent 20 minutes walking back and forth on her street looking for a house that didn't exist. We sorted out the confusion and had a short visit, everyone was healthy and happy, new home is very beautiful.
Around 7am the next morning, every one got up and Donna and Guthrie drove me right downtown where I was picked up by Jenn, Taryn and Angelo, all friends from class. We drove to the incredible Fort Rodd Hill which is a retired fort turned museum/park. There was a large food-festival happening in behalf of the Island's Chef Collaborative. It was seriously incredible, reps and chefs were present from tons of local farms, wineries, breweries and of course restaurants. I tasted countless types of beer, wine, ciders and even a really weird gin flavoured with licorice aromatics. I ate SO much, I had a portobello mushroom burger, lamb sausage, oysters on the half-shell, grilled tuna albacore sandwiches, bouillabase with octopus, lavender shortbread, and all sorts more. The gin was by far the most intriguing and provocative taster present.
So now, with good reason, I am lounging in the sun and basking in the good fortune that was this weekend, if I went into more detail I could fully explain the karma that landed dumbly in my lap in Victoria but this is long enough as it is.
Shadows of a past self are wandering into my life here. I spent the last 10 months living with three guys my age, sharing a home distilled of any personality. Forest green couches, tan walls, calming blue sofas, desks and cupboards of wallpaper wood, every room the same, every room matching perfectly. Set to a tone of unassuming. Now I'm here in my 6' by 10' room, half of the space occupied by a bed, a tiny dresser and a book-shelf that's so thin it might as well be built into the wall. The kitchen is littered with doodles and notes from the past, the house is like a picturebook with it's pages of history everywhere. It's like being back in Ben's place, everywhere there's evidence of the humanity and friendship that's grown inside, in res there's only the mystery of who else has slept in the bed you sleep in every night.
My roommates are two sisters around my age but there's always a group of stragglers around. All of these people I've met have had me wondering about the pieces of me that are scattered everywhere. I've shed a lot of skin in a lot of places, I wonder how healthy that is. Am I stretching myself thin across the places I've been and among the people I've met? Or am I becoming a bigger man with all I've eaten and seen? I don't know, sometimes it feels like I haven't learned or grown a lot at all and that if I stop searching and soaking I might run out of time to figure it all out.
I wanted to take some photos of the new house but my camera is broken, the best I got was this photo of me on our patio. We have a nice barbecue on the patio, and a couch too. This is me sitting on the couch after getting showered in the rain. My sweater is currently hanging up and actually dripping onto the floor.
This is the night me and the Frenchies tried to catch crab for dinner, we had Wendys instead. Fatih, Nicolas, me, Lucas, Todd, and the adopted roommate, Asher.
I've been working a lot at a restaurant called The Lighthouse Bistro, it's fast fun job, but the nights are late and it's turning me into what I was when I worked 70 hours a week before moving here. I'm also having a lot of barbecues, skating too much (body is currently covered in burns, scrapes, roadrash and a pretty sweet tan), and trying to focus on being a cook. I've been trying to up the ante at school with varying success. Oh I've also been dabbling in wading in profound confusion about the current direction of my life. Sometimes having choices is more restricting and frustrating than it is liberating.
The old man and sister Sproule are making their way out in September, I'm pretty excited. I'm probably gonna hitch a ride back to Ottawa for a visit.
I won a free lunch on Friday by diving into the ocean. There IS a such thing as a free lunch.
I sort of always thought I'd never be where I am, I didn't think I'd ever graduate from something or complete something. In a month and a half I'll have reached a goal, probably for the first time in my life. Even with everything that's going on, I am craving some serious changes, it must be spring.
I might have been the first Canadian swine victim.
Today has truly been the ultimate day. I woke up only mildly hungover and watched Clueless, a true underrated classic of my generation. Then I left the house, which is my home only for 2 or 3 weeks more, and went skateboarding aaaaaall day. I just noticed that my arms and face are beet red from all the sun I've gotten in the past 3 days because the weather has been unreal and I've been outside as much as possible. When I got home from skateboarding today I sat down just in time to catch The Goonies, not an underrated classic but a genuine classic, and after The Goonies AMC reeled straight into Raiders Of The Last Ark, no commercials! My life seriously rules.
So in between being a complete bum and skate-rat I've actually been ridiculously productive. Last month I became incredibly sick, I went out on a Friday night and when I woke up on Saturday my body was unusually sore, by Saturday night I was in full-blown flu mode. I'm talking can't get out of bed waking up in a cold-sweat haven't eaten in 3 days full-blown flu. To make matters worse I'd picked up what I thought might be pneumonia but was diagnosed as a lung viral infection. I was coughing so violently and so often that I somehow tore open my sinuses or whatever and was spitting up/blowing out mucus-blood constantly. Not just watery spit blood, oh no, more the consistency of half-dried paint and the colour of...blood. This illness resulted in me missing 2 days of class, but it could have been 5 if that wouldn't have resulted in me failing. The cold was fierce and persistent for 6 days and on the 7th I felt the turning point, at the worst of it I physically could not speak. So in addition to the 2 days there was 1 additional absence from the Mexico trip plus 1 tardiness in the month of March. Anyone else would have failed from the docked marks but I got my monthly mark the other day and I passed with an 81%. He also gave me an 86% on a vegetarian plating that was a near disaster. I cooked it while in the middle of the flu because I had no choice and an hour in I almost walked out of the kitchen because it was going so badly.
There's been a lot of productivity in my life outside school. I found a really beautiful room for rent just down the street, it's in the home of 2 charming young girls, they like to bake and they're environmentalists and they're into geology and all kinds of cool stuff. Today I ran into one of them at a protest for cleaner rivers. The rent is fair and the location is ultimate and the room is ridiculously small just how I like it. I've gotten myself 2 jobs, the first is a legit job in a busy bistro that floats off the pier downtown. Gonna cook there 2 nights a week and when I graduate they're gonna give me 5, plus the chef and sous-chef are certified which means I can clock the apprentice hours I need to graduate this year. The 2nd job is kind of a BS job in a hotel, it's called "casual" which means I only work when they need me.
On Thursday I met my friends Brodie, Lewis and Steve down at one of the piers downtown, my friend Taylor was with me. The plan was to catch 5 crabs, bring 'em to my place and have a BBQ, but it took too long to catch 5 legit ones (plus there was an unscheduled break at the pub) so we just boiled them. We had a close encounter with a couple seals and also a kind of intimidatingly close-encounter with a big old bald-eagle. The eagle in this photo was about 10' away from us, Brodie threw some bait in the air and it made an amazing dive-catch with it's kick-ass talons. So amazing. Brodie joked that an eagle's thoughts at all times must be "damn I rule, I am the coolest".
Clockwise: Me, Lewis the ginger, Taylor, master-chef Brodie, and Ottawa-Steve who's been to Ottawa so I'll call him Ottawa-Steve.
A few weeks ago Kassie and I went to Vancouver fairly spontaneously, we got there at 10:30pm and met my cousin Alex and partied all night. We went to the weirdest house-party I've ever been to, it was in some kind of abandoned office-building but the building looked like it hadn't seen activity in 50 years, for real. It was kind of crazy. Alex is the best, so amazingly hospitable. Kassie and I got home after he'd gone to bed and we were soooo disruptive, he reprimanded our poor showmanship by being a perfect gentleman. I didn't see Katie Swinwood which was horrible but there isn't much separating us so that's OK, plus I think I'm moving to Vancouver in September when the tourist season ends in Nanaimo.
I'm way too full of energy lately, God love summer in B.C...so damn good for the soul. God love Indiana Jones too...and hell, God love finding fiery orange tie-dyed Neil Young And Crazy Horse tour t-shirts at Value Village.
Two or three weeks ago my friend Kassie texted me early in the morn' asking if I wanted to go for a ride to Victoria, in my boredom I promptly answered "When do we leave?!". She didn't respond all day and I figured it was because she left without me which would have been very unlike Kassie. I was mad though and went downtown to sink my misery with a falafel platter at The Thirsty Camel (best falafels ever). On the way home I got a text from Kassie that said "I just saw you, come to my work". So she was working the whole time. I made some quick calls and she gave me a ride to downtown Victoria, Johnson and Douglas. We went our seperate ways, her driving in one direction, me getting out of the car and wandering down the street in another direction. My destination was Il Terrazo where an old friend, Ali, worked. Ali and I know each other from crazy hazy Perth days. At Il Terrazo she cooked for me, I ate, we drank and then we left to bus to her boyfriend's work. We drank some more, then we cabbed 15 or 20 minutes into Sooke, THEN we walked 45 minutes further into Sooke and finally arrived at her lovely house in the country. We stayed up all night drinking, Ali made beautiful music and we all slept on her living-room floor and the next morning we hitchhiked back downtown. I rode in the back of an open truck, so fun.
I decided I like Sooke. A chef at school recently encouraged me to apply at the Sooke Harbour House. Sooke Harbour House is a very cool resort, the onsite restaurant operates as organically as a restaurant can, growing their own produce on site and changing the menu regularly to encourage freshness. You all know where this is going. If I get the position the likelihood of me returning to VIU for the second year is not very likelihood at all.
Looking for a place for rent for March plus still looking for a job, Nanaimo is beautiful, but weak, very weak. The economy here is like a delicious salted cracker.
I went to Mexico on the weekend for my Mom's wedding. It was really nice, congratulations Glenn and Tracy McDougall.
My trip was a little bit zany but ultimately really smooth and painless, except for my left ear which is still echoing from the plane descent. I took a flight out of Nanaimo to Vancouver where I met up with Alex, we had a little food and chatted it up really quick and he kindly got me back to the airport just in time to board, very comfy. From there I flew to Toronto, I slept most of it I think, I had a quick layover and took off to Cancun. I arrived there at 2pm and was at the resort by 3pm, and the wedding started at 4pm. So that was kinda bewildering in my state of mind but I manned through it, for about 6 hours and then I passed out like not so much of a man. The next day we went to Xel Ha which is a cool snorkeling park, you rent some gear and then just slide into this lagoon and check out all the colourful fishies. There was a jumping cliff and a lazy river. That night we went to a restaurant on the resort and I had swordfish carpaccio which was not carpaccio 'cause it was cooked, served with diced watermelon and a balsamic reduction. I had a green apple crab bisque that was really nice, and then I had a suuuuuuuper delicious tuna filet steamed inside a banana-leaf served with some orange and ginger spongecake, so amazing. I had chocolate mousse and a white Russian for dessert, then Emily and Greg and a bunch of my mom's friends got drunk in the calm of the ocean breeze. On Sunday I left. I don't wanna talk about my trip back 'cause it started horribly, but ended with running into a friend on the ferry and sharing a sunny afternoon being calmly rocked back and forth by mother ocean.
...I got another tattoo. No one likes my knife but everyone likes this new one, I like them both so eff you world, eff, you.
A couple weeks ago I went to Tofino with my friend Asher. In addition to me buying a super cool t-shirt, we went to the ocean. We both ran in but I couldn't take the cold and ran back out 10 seconds later, Asher stayed in, crazy son of a bitch. After that I ate a baguette and some babaghanoush, then we went to a different, prettier beach and kind of went our separate ways for a few minutes, staring at the sun burning the piles of dusty old leaves in our minds. It was an amazing day, the weather was our friend.
School has been off and on as usual. I got called out by one of my chefs this week, he told me my focus was slipping and that I was disappointing him. He was right, my mind has been focused on one particular thing lately which fortunately is now resolved and done with. His words reawakened me and I think I'll be able to ride that for a little while until inspiration fails again. On Friday the senior students in our program graduated, our 2nd semester begins on Monday which means that I am now a senior...which is actually completely insignificant, save for the fact that there's a new intake of students which is gonna be fun. Initiation season. It's gonna be really hard showing up next week and not seeing half of the people I've worked closely with for the last 5 months.
I'm staying in Nanaimo this summer, there isn't a lot for me in Ottawa. No Magy, friends have all left or are leaving. I actually can't imagine ever living in Ottawa again.
I started applying for jobs this week just so I'd have something to do in my off time and to help me focus on cooking. The town's a little dry right now, a lot of businesses are going under, no one's hiring, but I'll find something. The local independent skateshop just went under, a real a bummer.
Last weekend I went to Vancouver for 2 days and a night to visit Alex Dow who just moved there with his girlfriend. It was amazing, I won't go into the lurid details for censorship sake but there was consumption a-plenty in the most healthy and happiest kind of way. I went with my friend Kassie, it was smiles and sunshine practically the whole time, the weather turned a little the day we left but it was still nice. Alex's girlfriend is amazing, she had me laughing the whole time. I also made a 2am rendezvous with Katie Swinwood, the poor girl stayed up waiting for me to get my drunk-ass over there, then when she came outside to let me in she locked us both out of her apartment. We got in and it was great to see her even if only for 15 minutes. She's truly in a world of her own, I've always liked her 'cause from the moment I met her I sensed the old-soul sensibility that I cherish in myself emanating from her. That's a rare and lovable characteristic. Completely real, probably the realest person I've ever known.
Today I woke up very early, after coming home very late and very drunk. I walked downtown and had an amazing breakfast then went to the pier to listen to Neil Young and clear my head, I decided I would get tattooed. So I came home and woke up Asher who was passed out on my living-room floor (he showed up pounding on the door at 3:30am after I accidentally abandoned him at the club, I'm the worst friend ever). We got in his honky-tonk old truck, put on our shades and some CCR and made our way to the parlour. Welcome to the family tattoo #3, already tinkering with some ideas for #4.
It's exactly what I had in mind, I'm very very pleased with it.
In 27 days I'll be in Mexico, and in 29 days I'll be back in Nanaimo. How bizarre.
Yesterday morning a campus security-guard told me that Nanaimo set the national record for snowfall so far this year. Winter just has it out for me, last year it was Ottawa's dramatic, amazingly long winter, and now it's Nanaimo.
So I should write about Christmas break. My trip home was hilariously horrible. I threw out my back, ran out of money, slept on 3 of the most uncomfortable benches I've ever sat in, spent a total of about 15 hours in layover, missed 3 Greyhound buses, went into near delirium taking muscle-relaxants, ate A&W, yelled at a potentially "slow" Greyhound attendant, lost my luggage, found my luggage...total trip time was 27 hours from walking out my front-door and into my mom's car at the Greyhound terminal in Ottawa.
That's the Kinach Christmas Eve kiddie-table. The only person I'm actually related to in that photo is the wino at the bottom right, lil' sister Sproule. Clockwise from her is her boyfriend Greg, some really cool dude beside him, Alex beside him, Adam (my cousin-in-law) beside his girlfriend Alex, Ally, Adam's brother Sean beside his girlfriend Ally and back to my sibling in sin.
The next morning I made breakfast for Mom and the gang, classical hollandaise over eggs-benedict.
I also spent some time in Perth getting up to no good with the Sproule side of me which was really nice.
On New Years Eve I went to a friend's house and got tipsied and then stumbled onto the Greyhound around 12:15AM to head to Toronto, the trip back was really smooth but still long. When I got to the Horseshoe Bay ferry-terminal in Vancouver I called my Dad and while I was talking to him I saw some blurry-faced stranger smiling at me, her face was blurry 'cause I'd been awake for about 20 hours and couldn't focus on the nose between my eyes. Turns out it was my friend Jill from campus, we shared a cab into town with her boyfriend and some Indian lady, I think I got the raw end of the deal, they pitched me $14 between the 3 of them but as the last person off I payed the tab and it was $30 with tip. The driver was using GPS to find our respective places but I think he was giving us the round-about. Jill's boyfriend was giving him lip, he told the driver to throw his GPS out the window.
This is really boring, I felt obligated to write about my trip but I don't really wanna relive it.
I grew my beard back, coming in pretty nice...just in time for my cowboy costume for this Friday's "Cops and Robbers Party".
Oh also, I got a cellphone yesterday, my number is 250-797-2006.
