READ THIS SHIT, DAWG!
Hey look what happened nearly 2 months ago. wow!
August 12th 2007
I do not think I have touched upon fully what I like about here. One reason, after Ireland, is painfully obvious: The weather - specifically sunshine and the fact that it exists. The second is more important and that is the pace of life here. It’s slow.
Things might be slow from a lack of anything else to be, or maybe it’s the heat, or the culture or shitty wages. Hell, maybe it’s just to piss off impatient tourists, but I like it.
After working the job I hated, detested and despised (and whatever other synonyms I could throw out) coming here is like paradise. Where I worked everything was rush rush rush, which was nauseating. The customers were pricks - a trait not reserved only for the Irish - in a variety of ways. The owners were clueless in the world of hospitality and had massive double standards.
The owners would cut corners to turn a profit while complaining about the budget, and then take a vacation to London or Florida or anywhere as a testament to their idiocy. Amazingly during these vacations the café ran better, as soon as their feet re-entered the building the staff and with them the atmosphere quickly shifted to dread and gloom. Everyone awaited the inevitable discovery of some insignificant wrong. Let fire and brimstone be cast down upon anyone whom let a vase or surface of any sort hold dust.
Here, sitting on the other side of things it all seems more endurable. Because people are paid by the day, they are not sent home when there is a lull in customers, losing wages that they want or need. Here is no different if it is a hard day or an easy day, like home there is no extra compensation, but I am confident that there are far more easy days, seeing as how the places are actually adequately staffed.
It drives me insane here when I befriend someone to go to coffee with and they are entirely unnecessarily in a rush to order. I suppose I have a lot of empathy with the servers, enjoying their laid back style of service. Finish that conversation or cigarette before approaching the customer - he’s probably an asshole anyways.
Here exists the idea of caffe culture because it’s too hot and slow for anything else. Hundreds of seats under cover of awnings or sponsored umbrellas line streets and city squares everywhere. People lounge about for maybe a coffee, or maybe a day. (They never take the chairs inside at night, to me this is amazing. In Ireland, anything left on the streets at night is sure to be ravaged by drunks or with their help the canals.)
This slower way of life can break down though. The house I’m staying at in Kotor has no running water save between 10pm and 5am. This means no toilets and consequently definitely no shitting - well, at least if you’re considerate. If a bus breaks down here, no replacement is sent. If a restaurant is out of something, there is no scramble to replace it. Most offensive of all this however, is a distinct lacking of draught beer. (Sacrilege!)
All this set backs are not enough to earn my distain though. It seems like everything designed to improve the efficiency of society instead of freeing up time, instead only shifts the work load elsewhere. Here I imagine it going down something like this.
‘Okay, we’ve got running water, and we’ve got electricity and our food production is sorted, now what?’
‘Dunno, let’s get a beer’
‘Right.’
It’s been a very long beer….
Surprisingly they aren’t actually just drinking a beer though, or at least not a lot of the girls I’ve met. One was studying to be a nutritionist, another a physiotherapist and another was working towards her PhD in Sociology. One or two was studying English and one Italian I met was going to move into economics. It seems like everyone here is going to post secondary but me. Good ol’ deadbeat me.
August 12th 2007
I do not think I have touched upon fully what I like about here. One reason, after Ireland, is painfully obvious: The weather - specifically sunshine and the fact that it exists. The second is more important and that is the pace of life here. It’s slow.
Things might be slow from a lack of anything else to be, or maybe it’s the heat, or the culture or shitty wages. Hell, maybe it’s just to piss off impatient tourists, but I like it.
After working the job I hated, detested and despised (and whatever other synonyms I could throw out) coming here is like paradise. Where I worked everything was rush rush rush, which was nauseating. The customers were pricks - a trait not reserved only for the Irish - in a variety of ways. The owners were clueless in the world of hospitality and had massive double standards.
The owners would cut corners to turn a profit while complaining about the budget, and then take a vacation to London or Florida or anywhere as a testament to their idiocy. Amazingly during these vacations the café ran better, as soon as their feet re-entered the building the staff and with them the atmosphere quickly shifted to dread and gloom. Everyone awaited the inevitable discovery of some insignificant wrong. Let fire and brimstone be cast down upon anyone whom let a vase or surface of any sort hold dust.
Here, sitting on the other side of things it all seems more endurable. Because people are paid by the day, they are not sent home when there is a lull in customers, losing wages that they want or need. Here is no different if it is a hard day or an easy day, like home there is no extra compensation, but I am confident that there are far more easy days, seeing as how the places are actually adequately staffed.
It drives me insane here when I befriend someone to go to coffee with and they are entirely unnecessarily in a rush to order. I suppose I have a lot of empathy with the servers, enjoying their laid back style of service. Finish that conversation or cigarette before approaching the customer - he’s probably an asshole anyways.
Here exists the idea of caffe culture because it’s too hot and slow for anything else. Hundreds of seats under cover of awnings or sponsored umbrellas line streets and city squares everywhere. People lounge about for maybe a coffee, or maybe a day. (They never take the chairs inside at night, to me this is amazing. In Ireland, anything left on the streets at night is sure to be ravaged by drunks or with their help the canals.)
This slower way of life can break down though. The house I’m staying at in Kotor has no running water save between 10pm and 5am. This means no toilets and consequently definitely no shitting - well, at least if you’re considerate. If a bus breaks down here, no replacement is sent. If a restaurant is out of something, there is no scramble to replace it. Most offensive of all this however, is a distinct lacking of draught beer. (Sacrilege!)
All this set backs are not enough to earn my distain though. It seems like everything designed to improve the efficiency of society instead of freeing up time, instead only shifts the work load elsewhere. Here I imagine it going down something like this.
‘Okay, we’ve got running water, and we’ve got electricity and our food production is sorted, now what?’
‘Dunno, let’s get a beer’
‘Right.’
It’s been a very long beer….
Surprisingly they aren’t actually just drinking a beer though, or at least not a lot of the girls I’ve met. One was studying to be a nutritionist, another a physiotherapist and another was working towards her PhD in Sociology. One or two was studying English and one Italian I met was going to move into economics. It seems like everyone here is going to post secondary but me. Good ol’ deadbeat me.