On advance toujours

I didn’t plan on neglecting this blog for so long.

Solitude in books

It’s hard to believe, but we have less than 2 months left in Hong Kong.

I’ve given my Chef my notice. My last day working at Robuchon will be December 31st. Just writing that makes me giggle and sends me into a flurry of excitement. We are exhausted and a bit depleted.

December 31st may not sound like its far away, but in reality its still a few more hundred working hours away. 

Lessons from a young entrepreneur

An avid note-taker, I’ve made some notes from the very beginning of this winding self-employment path. They were meant for me, but I realized that they would be better off shared. Should they help just one person out who is launching a business, that’s pretty cool. Here goes, in no particular order.

Keo Confiserie

The past few days in Toronto have gone by both too quickly and painfully slow with errands all at once. Just this past Monday we were still in Brooklyn with our dear friends and now we’re trying trying to catch up with older ones before leaving for Hong Kong this coming Monday night.

Our trip to New York was unforgettable. For a whole 11 days the city was ours to explore and eat. Every one of those days we walked for at least 6 hours and still it wasn’t enough and we found ourselves wanting more. There’s no doubt we’ll be back eventually.

A couple of days ago, we made our final caramel delivery. It still amazes me to think how far we’ve come with it in the time we had.

Our little candy company started in our apartment in the 19th arrondisement of Paris.

Technical Difficulties

I don’t have internet.

Hard to believe, but embarassingly true.

I have internet on my Blackberry, but does 100mb of data even count as internet? I can’t toogle or teeter or whatever the word is for using your phone internet on your laptop. This humble, precious 100mb of internet allows me to upload about 10 pictures. Oh and my Blackberry, my faithful phone died the other day on a full charge after a 3 minute conversation with someone.

Real, uninterrupted (mostly), unlimited internet only comes during the few moments when I’m at Bruce’s place or loitering at a coffee shop.

As a new entrepreneur, I’m consistently amazed by the power of the internet and how it’s so seamlessly infiltrated our lives and changed how we do things. Thanks to all the social media, marketing has gotten easier- and cheaper. You can easily update on the activity of your business on Facebook in an instant, without having to have someone change all the source codes on your website. People can know instantly what you’re launching/making/building. How did we ever manage to live without?

That being said, as someone who hates Twitter (mainly because I don’t understand/really want to learn about hashtags/RT/@/other-ridiculous-acronyms) and has a barely functioning phone with limited internet, it’s really hard to keep up.

A lot of business owners that I’ve talked to have also admitted to not being huge Twitter fans, but they do it because that’s what the people want. So what’s the balance we need to strike with this love/hate relationship with technology?

It’s supposed to make our lives easier and as a result, we’ve all become addicts.

I haven’t been blogging as much as I’d like for two reasons.

The first is the reason above.

The second reason is a bit more of a concern for me- my lack of inspiration. In Paris, my fingers were always itching to write about a petit gateaux I tried, or the bread at a new boulangerie I discovered, hidden parks and new pastry collections from Monsieur Hermé. Unsurprisingly, the cupcakes and donuts of Toronto just don’t get me that excited.

I think this will change once I start my new adventure in Hong Kong.