Chef David Chang on failure, Thoreau, and vegetarians
37signals.com
37signals.com
Ok, there is so much hatred in this line.
I am a vegetarian. I like good food, but most of my friends will most likely differ with regards to what they consider as "good food". But you see, I love those great conversations that can happen only over a dinner table, overlooking a busy bustling street full of new york, or by the window on the ocean front watching the sun move into the sea.
Some of us can not eat non-vegetarian food because we were brought up like that(I grew up in India). Some people think that it takes a lot of discipline and political liberalism to be a vegetarian. Fact is I cannot bring myself to swallow a piece of meat anymore than a regular American can bring herself to eat dog meat or grass hopper fries. I will throw up, it has nothing to do with conscious thought, its faar past that point.
Most of the time, when a bunch of people go to a dinner at a restaurant, I always tag along. I almost never have an opinion as to which place to go to, because I know I wont like the food anyway. But I tag along. And yes, I will ask this chef dude to pick out the meat, not out of dis-respect for what he does, but because I want to be with my friends, because I love conversations and sunsets.
Let me write it again: My friends go to this place, I tag along because I want to be with my friends. Chef dude or friends dont have to be offended - because I am not demanding anything, I am saying please please don't mind me, and go ahed and have fun.
You already said you'd make "chef dude" pick out the meat. That requires him to mind you and cater to your lifestyle. He said he won't, that you should eat somewhere else. He's standing behind his food and that should be applauded.
"That requires him to mind you and cater to your lifestyle", when I said that my vegetarianism springs not from conscious thought, you should understand that its no longer a choice for me. Now if this guy stands for his food, I will show you an architect who thinks large obvious parking spaces with blue paint smeared on them makes his beautiful beautiful building look bad. Would you consider going back on disability laws?
Now I am not going to stand and say this is how all vegetarians are. But the fact that I exist and many many more like me, should make you reconsider.
Can't passion for your food, and compassion for a fellow human being co-exist?
There are people with serious food allergies, so much so that they will die if they eat certain foods, but restaurants are not required to make available optional dishes for all possible patrons (for you it's veggies, for someone else it's gluten for someone else it's peanuts, etc etc etc). No one can please everyone. If you can't eat the food, just don't go.
It wasn't a law to have large obvious blue parking spaces before some one pointed out. Did they not have a point before it became a law? Is anything that is illegal at this point in time pointless?
Jon Stewart has a nice discussion about such sentences. In particular he analysed one form of statement which made things very clear. The form was "I think your <relationship> is a <expletive>, no disrespect". Just because you tag all your statements with "no disrespect" doesn't mean you are not actively hostile and disrespectful.
My actions can be interpreted as insulting when infact they are not. This is why I am offering an explanation. Thats how people live in harmony: they intend no harm, and they explain when they are mis-understood.
This is sort of the same way I feel about computer games. I'm a Mac user and almost all games are only for the PC. I really appreciate Blizzard for making games on the Mac, but I completely understand why there's no native TF2, Portals, or Guild Wars for me =/.
It's simply another constraint, and as much as we say we hate them, they're crucial to our work. I see "make me great food, with no meat" is not much different from "write an interrupt handler, in under 200 bytes" or "paint a fresco, on the ceiling".
The greatest thing that you can grab from this interview, though, is the parallel (not implied) between why he stopped playing golf at such a young age and the ethos that he runs his restaurants by. Claiming to be a fairly competitive individual, he said that he stopped playing golf for mostly two reasons, 1.) it was no longer fun to do competitively and 2.) he knew that he would not be the best. Whether he acknowledges this or not, he has gone the other direction with his restaurants. He was asked by Rose if he desires to have a restaurant that is "Michelin Star" caliber but strongly stated that he did not wish to do so. The laid back demeanor and attitude reflects the way he runs his restaurant. The moment you strive to be the best, the fun and enjoyable elements can disappear quite fast (I can speak from personal experience myself playing competitive golf as well). He has simply worked hard at his trade with the focus of doing well and living by a few simple principles (not to mention a little luck thrown in). You have to decide yourself whether it is worth sacrificing some happiness to reach the end goal you desire (Chang had said that attaining a Michelin would come with a stress level they do not need).
"We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done."
In terms of entrepreneurialism, sometimes that best advice or ideas can come from other trades and then making them applicable to you. If you cannot see that, then you might have a little trouble yourself when it comes time to create a start-up.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
This qualifies.