Yam’Tcha- an intimate dinner with an old Chef

Before we were us, I sent Bruce an email that he never lets me forget.

Back in September of 2011, while working at Marcon, I loved spending weekends in Paris. Especially since Lisa moved there and had a little apartment in the 9th arrondissement. We’d fit as many patisseries and boulangeries as we could in 48 hours. Sometimes, we would invite Bruce. 

Working in the industry, we all usually had Mondays and Tuesdays off. Bruce was working in Paris at the time, at a little restaurant called Yam’Tcha.

Exotic, weird and wonderful: Fruits of Vietnam

There were so many moments during our trip to Vietnam that have been purely inspirational. Eating fresh fruit was definitely one of them.

Growing up exotic fruit was a part of my childhood, much more than apples and bananas, though I do enjoy them as well.

I didn’t understand the value of money as a child, but I knew they cost an obscene amount of money. I understand why that is now, as it’s the price of shipping something halfway around the world after all.

This past trip has allowed me to indulge in a lot of these favourites cheaply, but also allowed me to understand a little more about where they come from.

porcelain bowls

My mom rarely used the tiny oven in our little apartment while I was growing up. For the longest time, I thought that everyone just used ovens as storage for other pots and pans.

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.