johnrobe

I’m in San Francisco for a week for a conference. Timmi and her exceptional planning skills are still back in Toronto, but she’s been feeding me info on how to keep myself fed ever since I got here.

According to customer reviews, one of the best places nearby to eat was a Vietnamese place called Cordon Bleu, so tonight that was my destination of choice.

First, the name. Cordon Bleu is a wonderful dish made from breaded veal (though often redone as chicken) stuffed with cheese and ham. From France.

This restaurant had no ham, cheese or veal on the menu anywhere, and as mentioned, was Vietnamese, so pretty much no connection at all, other than the fact that Vietnam was a French colony for a while. Still, I’ll allow that.

The menu is very simple, with only about 10 items on it. I wasn’t sure what to get, and not in the usual “it’s my first time at a new place” sort of way, but more in a “what the heck is all this stuff?” way. I don’t mean to imply that the items on the menu were exotic items written in a language I didn’t understand. No, they just didn’t seem to actually match what seemed to be being prepared by the kitchen.

Let’s look at the track record of the dish I ordered, which was entree #1. It contained:

Shish kebab. It was meat, but not on a stick. In fact, it was extremely flat and thin, very un-kebab like. I watched it prepared in front of me, so I know there were no skewers or sticks involved. Meat type? Unidentified. I think it was pork, but they also had “pork chops”, so they aren’t shy about calling pork pork. The mystery remains unsolved.

Rice with meat sauce. It was rice, full points for that. The stuff on it was sauce, but it didn’t have much meat in it (if it had any) and it didn’t really taste like meat. Mystery remains unsolved.

Country salad. This appeared to be cole slaw, sort of. It was shredded cabbage with a light sauce of some sort. Mystery mostly solved.

Imperial roll. This one wasn’t misleading exactly. It was a roll. I just didn’t know what “Imperial” meant. There was no description anywhere on the menu. It was a spring roll basically. I think it had meat. Maybe it had shrimp. There was orange stuff in it. Mystery remains unsolved.

Despite the confusion over what it was, there was one thing that was not in doubt at all … it was AMAZING. Really really tasty, and really cheap ($6.85). So much could be done with a little bit of extra description on the menu, if they care at all. The place was packed and hopping, they probably don’t need any help.

A while ago, I had a weird incident at a shawarma place where they just couldn’t understand why I didn’t want tomatoes on my sandwich. I had chalked it up to the oddity of the particular person helping me at the time and let it go.

Then today, new restaurant, same order (chicken shawarma), same issue! I asked for everything except tomato, and instead of a “Sure thing sir!” (or even just a nod), I received:

Him: What? Why don’t you want tomatoes boss?
Me: No thanks, I don’t like tomatoes.
Him: Really? You don’t like tomatoes?
Me: Nope. (I wasn’t going to go into the whole “I do like them, but not raw when they’re over a certain size” thing, having learned in the past that it warps people’s brains)
Him: Who doesn’t like tomatoes?? They’re good for you!!
Random woman standing next to me: I’ll have his tomatoes!
Me: She can have my tomatoes.
Him: He needs to eat tomatoes.

Fortunately, at this point he seemed to accept that I didn’t want them and constructed the sandwich without the tomato. He did not give my tomatoes to the woman next to me, much to her disappointment.

I started reading the book as required, little knowing the profound impact it would have on my life. Quite simply, it was the most depressing book I had ever read in my life, and is still in the top two.

The book describes one day in the life of a man in a post world war II Soviet era gulag. Not a special day or an abnormal day, just one typical day of incredibly depressing and dehumanizing existence in a communist labour camp. The daily grind described in the book, where even the littlest pleasures are unknown and a victory comes from something so small that we wouldn't even consider them something to be taken for granted, is painful, yet feels incredibly real.

The other book that I consider even more depressing? The Gulag Archipelago, also by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

These books describe an existence so bleak they make you question everything about your life. Could you live in those conditions? Could you prevail? I honestly don't know if I could.

It does make it easier to deal with things like a stain on your shirt, or your lunch being cold. Didn't get a raise? At least you get to bathe. Your boss is a jerk? At least he doesn't make you sleep with your hands outside the blanket in the middle of Siberian winter.

I want to be a writer. I've been writing the same novel for 10 years and it still sucks. It's discouraging. Still … to write the Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn had to go through this:

Because the Gulag might obviously render anyone who came into contact with it a long prison sentence for 'anti-Soviet activities', Solzhenitsyn never worked on the manuscript in complete form. Due to the KGB's constant surveillance of him, Solzhenitsyn only worked on parts of the manuscript at any one time, so as not to put the book as a whole into jeopardy if he happened to be arrested. For this reason, he secreted the various parts of the work throughout Moscow and the surrounding suburbs, in the care of trusted friends, and sometimes purportedly visiting them on social calls, but actually working on the manuscript in their homes.

Thank you Aleksandr, for putting it all into perspective.