Yesterday, scandal broke in my sleepy little town. Not your garden variety dog-off-leash-on-the-beach, paperboy-late-bringing-the-peacearchnews scandal. This was real, honest to goodness Surrey-style scandal. Yes, my sleepy little town was home to a shooting...a fatal shooting...by the cops.
Now, I'm going to fathom a guess and say that in most Surrey neighbourhoods this type of an event would be met with sighs of acknowledgement and the presence of maybe two cop cars...three if we're feeling lucky. But not my neighbourhood. No, in this lethargic beach town we were lovingly graced with the presence of fifteen police vehicles! It just goes to show how dull, verging on comatose, my corner of the world can be.
Don't get me wrong. This is a tragedy. The police are here to protect us and shouldn't go around bringing the wild west to quaint resort towns. It's just not done. But at the same time...you're kind of asking for it if you walk around brandishing a gun. The people do not stand for such distractions from their yoga and watercolours. They will stand proudly on their lush lawn, brandishing hedge clippers in disgust from behind their white picket fences. They will not turn a blind eye, as they have an opinion on everything.
So, alas, this is what happens when people bring guns and erratic behaviour to a town where the latest excitement was when little Timmy kicked over his sister's sandcastle at the annual festival of the sea. Trigger happy cops and gun-wealding drug dealers. It's nice to feel as though I truly belong to the city on my address for once.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
A Challenging Puzzle
I had a really fantastic day at work yesterday. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but I generally jump around between bussing, hostessing and expediting at work, and last night I was hostessing. Now I'm sure you can imagine hostessing is not usually the most exciting position in a restaurant. It's a lot of standing around waiting for people to arrive and then just walking them to a table. At first I didn't like it. I felt like I couldn't really help out the other support staff because I always had to remain at the door in case someone arrived (it's funny how uncomfortable people are when they get to a restaurant and there's no one there to greet them, but I suppose I'm the same). Anyway, I hated that feeling that I was just standing there and that my job wasn't actually necessary until someone walked up the stairs into the restaurant, but yesterday was one of the good days.
We've been slow the last couple of Sundays, so the manager cut back on the number of servers working last night. That's why it was unfortunate that it was such a beautiful day out and lots of people called up to make reservations at the last minute. It's days like this when hostessing becomes really fun. It's like playing a giant puzzle in my head. I have to make as many people happy as possible using only a limited amount of resources. It's like when I play Sims; I make someone have next to nothing and then I help them rise from the ashes to earn everything they could want or need. I've always loved doing stuff like that. Trying to survive and thrive with so little on my side. It's so much more rewarding than a night that goes by without any problems. I want the problems because I want to be able to solve them and make a difference.
I know it's just a restaurant and maybe it doesn't seem very important, but it's so rewarding to have even just one person thank you for making their evening lovely. There was one table last night and the couple was so patient and thoughtful. They didn't have a reservation, but had come all the way from Vancouver because they love our restaurant so much. I told them that the earliest I would be able to fit them in would be in an hour, so they went for a walk. When they came back I had just had a table open up, so I told them to wait downstairs while I set it up for them. Of course, that was the moment where the phone started ringing off the hook, about 7 reservations came in that needed to be seated, and a very difficult pair of regulars insisted that I find them a table despite their not having a reservation. I think it took me about 15 minutes to deal with all of this before I got around to clearing there table. When I finally got them seated and thanked them for their patience, they were nothing but thankful that I could get them a spot. The whole time they were pleasant and just wonderful to be around even though they waited over an hour to be seated and possibley the worst table in our restaurant. It's things like that, which make me feel happy with what I'm doing. I love to have that challenge thrown at me and see if I can deal with it. The reward is talking to kind people and I love that I work in the kind of place that respects the kind of patient customers we get and rewards their thoughtfulness with complimentary peanut butter pie :-)
We've been slow the last couple of Sundays, so the manager cut back on the number of servers working last night. That's why it was unfortunate that it was such a beautiful day out and lots of people called up to make reservations at the last minute. It's days like this when hostessing becomes really fun. It's like playing a giant puzzle in my head. I have to make as many people happy as possible using only a limited amount of resources. It's like when I play Sims; I make someone have next to nothing and then I help them rise from the ashes to earn everything they could want or need. I've always loved doing stuff like that. Trying to survive and thrive with so little on my side. It's so much more rewarding than a night that goes by without any problems. I want the problems because I want to be able to solve them and make a difference.
I know it's just a restaurant and maybe it doesn't seem very important, but it's so rewarding to have even just one person thank you for making their evening lovely. There was one table last night and the couple was so patient and thoughtful. They didn't have a reservation, but had come all the way from Vancouver because they love our restaurant so much. I told them that the earliest I would be able to fit them in would be in an hour, so they went for a walk. When they came back I had just had a table open up, so I told them to wait downstairs while I set it up for them. Of course, that was the moment where the phone started ringing off the hook, about 7 reservations came in that needed to be seated, and a very difficult pair of regulars insisted that I find them a table despite their not having a reservation. I think it took me about 15 minutes to deal with all of this before I got around to clearing there table. When I finally got them seated and thanked them for their patience, they were nothing but thankful that I could get them a spot. The whole time they were pleasant and just wonderful to be around even though they waited over an hour to be seated and possibley the worst table in our restaurant. It's things like that, which make me feel happy with what I'm doing. I love to have that challenge thrown at me and see if I can deal with it. The reward is talking to kind people and I love that I work in the kind of place that respects the kind of patient customers we get and rewards their thoughtfulness with complimentary peanut butter pie :-)
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Finland in my Future?
I applied to a Masters program in January. It was a relatively spontaneous application, since the information session was around January 9th and the application itself was due at the end of the month. But it looked like a good opportunity: one year at a Canadian school and the second at a European school. Who am I to pass up the opportunity to do my two favourite things: travel and learn?
In my mind this application was a bit of a shot in the dark. This is the first year they've done this program and they only accept two people from each of the schools in Canada. After talking to the other people planning to apply at the information session, I put this idea into the "just a dream" category of my mind. After spending the last two months downplaying this idea as a fantasy that was just not meant to be, I heard back yesterday. I got accepted!
I'm insanely happy and proud about it, but now I just don't know what to do with myself. I made it so that I wouldn't be disappointed when I didn't get accepted to the program, and now I don't know what to do with myself. I'm not mentally prepared to accept, but how could I not? It's such an amazing opportunity, but it completely throws off my plans for the future...however vague they were to begin with.
It's funny how our ideas of the future so greatly influence the decisions we have to make. How we fear to stray off course and explore the unknown. I remember when I was about 15, my friends and I made a life plan for ourselves. We decided how many kids we wanted to have and when we felt comfortable having our last kid (for medical and other reasons). Then we counted back from that age. How long did we want to be married before having kids? How long did we want to date our fiance before getting married. According to that plan, I should have already met my future fiance. I may have I suppose, but, as far as I know, that's not the case. And that's a good thing. I'm not ready to be married in the next couple years and I'm certainly not ready to be following a plan that links my life decisions so closely to someone else's life.
I've always been one to believe in fate. I think that things happen in your life when you are ready to handle them and when you are presented with an opportunity, you should jump at it. So, what nagging desire to follow an arbitrary life plan is making me hesitate before jumping at this opportunity?
In my mind this application was a bit of a shot in the dark. This is the first year they've done this program and they only accept two people from each of the schools in Canada. After talking to the other people planning to apply at the information session, I put this idea into the "just a dream" category of my mind. After spending the last two months downplaying this idea as a fantasy that was just not meant to be, I heard back yesterday. I got accepted!
I'm insanely happy and proud about it, but now I just don't know what to do with myself. I made it so that I wouldn't be disappointed when I didn't get accepted to the program, and now I don't know what to do with myself. I'm not mentally prepared to accept, but how could I not? It's such an amazing opportunity, but it completely throws off my plans for the future...however vague they were to begin with.
It's funny how our ideas of the future so greatly influence the decisions we have to make. How we fear to stray off course and explore the unknown. I remember when I was about 15, my friends and I made a life plan for ourselves. We decided how many kids we wanted to have and when we felt comfortable having our last kid (for medical and other reasons). Then we counted back from that age. How long did we want to be married before having kids? How long did we want to date our fiance before getting married. According to that plan, I should have already met my future fiance. I may have I suppose, but, as far as I know, that's not the case. And that's a good thing. I'm not ready to be married in the next couple years and I'm certainly not ready to be following a plan that links my life decisions so closely to someone else's life.
I've always been one to believe in fate. I think that things happen in your life when you are ready to handle them and when you are presented with an opportunity, you should jump at it. So, what nagging desire to follow an arbitrary life plan is making me hesitate before jumping at this opportunity?
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