Many moons ago when I studied and earned my "Plant Based Nutrition Certification" from eCornell, I remember learning about how there was no such thing as "sustainable fishing". And now, I find, well, there is this whole other world out there that is related to "ethical" eating even as a vegan, that many people are unaware of the ethical price of their food choices.

Oh sure, you hear the usual questions about, "Do you use plastic packaging at your shop? Because I don't support plastic packaging use!" but does anyone ever consider where their sugar comes from? Or whether or not the workers on whatever farm they get their veggies from are treated fairly and paid a fair wage? Do people ever consider how staff are treated/paid in the restaurants they dine in?

There is a whole other level of cognitive dissonance that exists, lurking beneath the feel-good factor of choosing a vegan diet, and delving deeper will only make your head spin and make you feel hopelessly incapable of enacting real change in a world obsessed with consumption.

We live in a capitalist system where resources are limited, food is scarce, clean drinking water is swiftly becoming a dream of the past...and its all part and parcel of our continued need to consume and to participate in this system of excess.

Whats wrong with owning less? Whats wrong with minimalism? Whats wrong with eating less and wearing the same old clothes many times over? And while we are on this subject of whats, what on earth is an "Influencer" and why do they have any say in anything at all?

You know what my brother said when I told him I was looking for a change?

"Yeah, man, you can become one of those "Vegan Warriors", you know? One of those "Influencers", like spreading the Vegan message, fighting for the Vegan cause!"

WTF is that supposed to mean? For real?

Like...is it about hashtagging everything? Hashtagging myself as a "Vegan Chef" and hashtagging my food as "saving the world one vegetable at a time!" or is it about making a name for myself so that then people will somehow believe what I say as being gospel and then change their ways?

I just...I've been walking this earth for more than four decades now. You know what I have learned? People don't change unless they want to. You can't force change. Sometimes I feel dejected and depressed and I think, damn, people aren't going to stop eating animals until they have fished the last damn fish out the ocean, until they have eaten the last calf to be born in an unnatural manner, until they have cracked the last egg on earth that was laid by the last sick and dying chicken...people will keep drinking the milk meant for another animals young, they will keep saying shit like, "Oh, but I can't really give up Cheeeeeeeese!" pshhh. Yeah, sorry, but what more can you expect out of me after I already went vegan, opened a damn vegan restaurant and really did what I could to show people whats possible with choosing a plant-based diet? What more can I do?

I can't even figure out where to begin...I understand now that you teach by example. I have always known that, and I just don't get the whole "Vegan Warrior" thing because I have always been averse to being hit over the head with something and when I am given the facts in a manner that respects my intelligence vs scaring me half to death, I tend to be more receptive.

Fear is a constant in our lives as human beings, why do we need to dish out more? Ethics and Morals are taught, and they can be learned. Many people don't want to change because change is hard and people are essentially insecure about the strength of their will power. More often than not, though, change weighs heavily on ones circumstances. Choosing a plant-based diet, choosing to eat "grass fed" whatever, choosing "organic" vs not, that is a luxury that many people the world over simply cannot afford.

So even though I actually put my money and my time where my beliefs align with my actions, I can still get shit from an armchair activist who believes they know what I ought to sell, what I ought to cook, what I ought to do with my time they have no hand in supporting financially. These same activists had an opinion on when our shop served Impossible Meat. They didn't consider the bigger picture and the lives (livestock) saved when this product came to the market.

They were willing to "cancel" a plant-based eatery serving Impossible but were all cheering and signing up for a "vegan tasting menu" on a Monday by a meat heavy restaurant playing soft ball with the plant-based movement.

Hypocrites.

Ripe with cognitive dissonance on exactly how blind they truly were.

You want to know what is hard about running a vegan restaurant? Knowing that no matter how hard you try, all you are doing is "reducing the harm", not just to the environment, but to all living beings. You still end up with issues like needing pest control, although I will be honest, that issue is more to do with fruit flies or not understanding that every bit of cardboard packaging needs to be discarded as soon as items are delivered if you wish to avoid things like roaches.

You can learn to make your shop the most inhospitable place for a pest to want to rock up to, maintaining cleanliness to high standards, ensuring everything is stored in airtight containers, and to lay down eco-friendly deterrents to things like ants crossing the threshold, but there will always be that odd chance that something escapes all your carefully laid plans to not take lives.

Our shop, before we moved in, was previously a family run local Chinese restaurant. When I viewed the place, prior to paying to take over their license and premises, I remember seeing tubs of raw chicken laying on low shelves, uncovered, maybe they were defrosting them, who knows, but I remember being mortified.

Cleaning the space was a mission in itself. I did a lot of it myself, scrubbing years worth of grime off walls, sweeping away the carcasses of roaches from years of people not having looked in corners dark and damp. My word, it was one of the most disgusting experiences of my life, and yet it was also an experience I took great pride in, because I would personally see a wall go from black to white, thanks to my due diligence.

Located on the ground floor and facing a "park" of some kind, we would see rats the size of small cats trot past on the regular. Keeping those rats away from our shop was a matter of militantly avoiding opening the back door, sealing every possible nook or cranny or hole in our walls and facades, and initially we did need to call pest control to ensure that these creatures were eliminated.

These early experiences are what pushed us to adapt and to store our goods with such care as to give a tiny mouse zero reason to come trotting in. You know, there is nothing worse than an exterminator laying down traps and you having the misfortune of coming across something like a gecko trapped on there. Its heart breaking. You feel like a frikken murderer. I cannot even begin to describe how awful it feels.

This is the reality of where your food comes from, just on the surface. You want to eat in a place that is clean, that has no pests, that makes you feel good about your food choices. And that comes at a cost, not just to the staff who work there, who are constantly working hard to make sure there is never going to be a breach of the perimeter, but also many of my team are Buddhist and have had to ensure that something as simple as a fruit fly, is not seen flying about near your food! Its a paradox of sorts.

Beyond all this was my sense of urgency with regards to protecting the health of my staff. When I worked at a restaurant, I remember that every first week of the month, they had pest control come in. We would have to cover all food and serving equipment with bin bags, and then the place would be heavily sprayed down. I would come in the next morning and part of my job was to remove all those bin bags that were used to cover everything.

I would end up with cold and flu like symptoms, brain fog, and fatigue that would last a week to ten days. It didn't take a degree in science to understand that the toxic load of that was what was causing my symptoms. I experienced this several times before I actively requested to avoid working the day after pest control, because I was already contending with liver damage that I was doing everything I could to recover from.

The first time I paid for pest control in my own shop, I ensured that I was standing right outside the shop as I waited for the fogging to be done. What I saw truly horrified me. Not only was the guy fogging the place not too concerned about protecting himself, he seemed to be quite blase about the whole thing saying that, ":Its safe, don't worry". Again, after I removed all the covering, despite me wearing protective 3M particulate mask, I got the same symptoms as I had experienced when I worked at the restaurant I had wprked at before I opened my own shop.

So I pushed the team to be mindful about how they cleaned everything at the end of each day. If we are extra vigilant about ensuring we don't create an environment that invites pests in, then we won't need to expose ourselves to these kind of toxins. I am proud to say we succeeded.

The last time we called an official pest control service of any kind would have to be towards the end of our first year. We have used everything from borax to baking soda, vinegar to fruit fly traps we make ourselves...but most importantly, we have done everything we can to always ensure that everything is properly stored and that our floors and fridges are always thoroughly cleaned daily.

To this day, I know that the choice to avoid serving ANY animal products has been a huge deterrent in keeping pests out. I also believe that in avoiding the use of excess chemicals I have not only saved the health and welfare of my team but also avoided unnecessary build up of toxins in our working environment. I would never have known what was possible if I hadn't been exposed to much of it first hand.

Covid19 has actually killed off the majority of our furry friends that we would see in great numbers in the back alley behind our restaurant. I am guessing that the lack of sightings have to do with the lack of easily available food scraps, a scarcity that was brought on by the curtailing of business hours for most restaurants and also the curtailing on the supply and demand for food produced in restaurants. Its a good thing, for sure, no doubt they stopped reproducing as much, and they just quietly went underground.

More than the lives lost to pest control, I have become increasingly aware about our hand in the working conditions that are faced by those who produce the raw materials with which we cook our food. We have, from the beginning, done what we can to avoid using vegetable and fruit that are listed on the "Dirty Dozen" and to maximize use of vegetable that we know are on the "Clean Fifteen" list. Of course, we can only do our best.

Ever considered why Almond Milk is something not ethically sound? Its a very water intensive crop. Avocado? Yeah, again, cartels, drought, and yet people want to put it in every frikken thing without considering how damaging this crop is to the ecosystem. Lets not even get into Sugar.

You want to bake anything, sugar will be part of that process. You want to be vegan and feel good about your veganism? Give up sugar!

Give up consuming anything with sugar in it. We can say, "Yeah, but raw sugar is vegan" and what not, but its not ethical. People working the sugarcane plantations are working under dangerous and often abusive conditions, modern day slavery is real.

I always wince when I see vegan blogs and Vegan "Influencers" who are all about the pastries and the cakes and the nuts, nuts and more nuts...oh, and avocados.

As a restauranteur, sometimes you have to make a choice and balance your ethics with what you know you are willing to serve and what the customer demands. There is still a lot that many vegans are willing to stomach as long as it comes with a vegan label, they don't want to have to think about the ethical cost of that product beyond some sort of "fair trade" or "sustainably sourced" label.

I get it, sometimes you think, "Damn, dude, I am already doing so much, why do I also have to do this to make a difference? Why can't one of those animal eating fools cut out the sugar instead of me?" lol.

I feel that way about a lot of things sometimes...and I have been through all the stages of grief, as a vegan and as a Chef/restaurant owner.

• denial.
• anger.
• bargaining.
• depression.
• acceptance.

Like...why can't these people see what they are doing? Why can't they see their choices really are harming the environment, the animals, their own bodies...their children, etc...then I got angry, like "Screw these people, maybe they deserve to see the consequences of eating this way and what will happen to their heart, liver, kidneys in the long run!" and then its like, "Hey, how about they consider just ONE meal a day to be fully plant based, right?" Bargaining. Sigh.

Then yeah, most of what I have been dealing with the last year or more has been depression and acceptance.

Almost resigning myself to the reality of the world we live in. A world in which a self-proclaimed "Vegan" is happy to eat plant-based chicken from a deep fryer at KFC that is shared with the real chicken eaters. How someone can call themselves "Vegan" and actively campaign that this is "progress", that is the reality I have to contend with.

I am just...yeah, I accept that this is the world we live in. Where "Vegan" doesn't mean what I believe it to mean. Where saying "Plant-Based" actually carries way more gravity than being Vegan. Where being Plant-Based also has its zealots about being whole foods plant based (WFPB) which in the end actually IS the most ethical way of eating, and I have been so not ready to deal with that myself that I got caught up in the small picture aspect of choosing a plant-based diet and running a plant-based restaurant, none of which will ever be enough in the long run.

I have to hold myself up to a higher standard than that, not because someone is watching, but because I am just as much of a hypocrite as a "vegetarian who eats fish twice a month"  if I don't seriously face up to the reality of my food choices.

When you look up unethical companies, Coca Cola and Nestle are listed right up there at the top of that list.

You want to know how many companies/brands Coca Cola owns?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Coca-Cola_brands

That is A LOT of different brands, I mean, they are listed from A-Z!

I have been guilty of drinking iced tea that comes in a tetra pack (assuming I am doing less damage than an aluminum can or a plastic bottle) and I am pretty sure that its made by the Coca Cola Company!

I am posting all this because I want to be facing the reality of my choices at the same time I am hoping to share with others what it actually means to be part of the capitalist system, to be a consumer, to see the hypocrisy in someone like Marie Kondo now selling shit on her site that "sparks joy".

Its apparently not good enough to declutter, you got to replace that clutter by spending money yet again on something that has a predestined spot at the landfill.

Who will keep your precious little trinket after you die?

Your kids won't likely want to hang on to most of it. Does it serve a purpose? Does it carry water or can it be used to carry groceries? How many handbags or watches do you need in order to carry your smartphone or to tell you the time of day?

How many shoes can you wear at any given time? Does it matter that your watch strap or your shoes were made from Pineapples if the process created pollution in the environment or that the people producing it were working under substandard conditions?

I just...I am as guilty as the next person when it comes to falling prey to marketing ploys, but I hope to genuinely work towards being more self-aware, more mindful, more discerning, and to simply avoid buying anything that doesn't serve a bloody good purpose that actually is a necessity for sustaining life. More than this, I hope to avoid causing suffering for other earthlings, not just animals, but for humans as well.

I am but one person on the path to enlightenment with nothing to guide me but my own moral compass.

I am thinking about all of this, rather heavy thinking, as I look to the future and to the life I will be leading in the years to come.

I am becoming starkly aware of my choices and the avoidance of responsibility for problems I believe are too big for me to get a handle on. As I watched the second season of "Rotten" on Netflix I became aware of the heavy weight of guilt that was practically choking me, the issues I was unaware of but that now I had no excuse to feign ignorance about.

Another documentary I watched that struck a chord, "Kiss the Ground".

youtu.be/K3-V1j-zMZw

You can't walk away from that feeling good about the capitalist system. Covid19 has made it infinitely clear to me the world I am living in, and for the most part, I am ashamed and I want no part in it. But that is not a solution.

I want to do everything I can in the years to come, to raise awareness about the poison of empty consumerism, to show what it means to move towards a more sustainable way of living, to harvest rainwater, to process sea water into drinking water, to use solar power to meet the needs of running on board fridges and fans...to cook in a sustainable manner, to stop buying processed crap regardless of the labels...and I do not expect any of that to be easy, trust me, I am sure I will have moments of utter failure and despair ahead of me, but I am going to do my very best to work towards my goal of true sustainability and use my lived experience to teach by example.

The system is broken. The world we live in is controlled by politicians and governments who do not always have our best interests at heart. I am grateful for the eye opening experience that has been the pandemic we are all enduring. Time will tell how and what people will choose to do with the truths they are facing today.

I for one am done with the system, I want to change it and I have yet to figure out the how of it, but make no mistake, the change has got to be something I aim for because I can't pretend to be happy with everything I have achieved so far and claim that it has been good enough.

There is ALWAYS more we can do.

I am not giving up. I will not give up. I will do my best and keep fighting to maintain my best effort or die trying.

That is all from me, for now.

Much loving kindness, always.

Today I had two different customers mention how they had "read my blog".

Yeesh! I had no idea anyone reads this, coz I never told anyone I was writing, and lets face it, who on earth would actually take time to read my writing, for real? Ha.

There is a quiet serenity in writing for the sake of writing, not because you believe you are gonna be read. Obviously, if you wanted to be a "writer" writer, maybe you'd want to be read, but if you write for the joy of it, or the catharsis of it, its much like cooking for the joy of it, right? Maybe...mmm.

Anyway, I guess it made me just a tiny bit self conscious about how much of a Debbie Downer I have been for months on end, and for that, I feel a little apologetic because I don't want for people to walk away feeling sorry for me, or to feel down about the world in general, or the future, etc.

I guess what I want to share is the upside of everything that Covid19 has brought into my field of vision, my field of awareness, so to speak.

Not sure if I mentioned it before, but I took this course a few years ago, it was what I would call a personal development course, and much as people think it was culty and a hard sell, I was able to get a lot out of it and also to be able to walk away from the course after course treadmill after I felt I had gathered enough knowledge to feel I didn't need more of it, I learned a lot about myself, what made me who I think I am, how none of that is real, how a childhood of abuse and personal hardship doesn't have to be what defines me and how my future actually IS wide open. Many people I took the course may still be in that system, still taking more courses, deriving a great deal of self-worth through their participation, and I ain't gonna say that is a failing in any way, but I would say that they could just as well be fine without more courses.

Its what made me go ahead and open my own restaurant, its what made me a Chef, its what made me a better communicator and what made me feel unashamed for brazenly being myself, my authentic self. It made my life easier in many ways, the aspect of not having to be someone other people expected me to be, to be honest not only with others but with myself, and to take ownership of my mistakes as well as my capacity to succeed without fear.

And its this same knowledge that continues to stand me in good stead, even now, when I face a future that reads like a blank page, and I feel genuinely free. So was it hard for me to get out of the constant "sign up for the next course" bullshit? Well, the short answer is "No".

Why? Despite what their sales push was structured like, it was still my decision on what I do with the push, and if I was confident enough to say, "This is where I get off the train" well, then I was confident because their courses taught me that, I had been able to gain insight into how I think, all thanks to the courses I took, which was about 4 in total. Did they want me to keep signing up for more? Hell, yeah. Did I feel pressured? Its all a matter of "perspective" as they teach ya, how things "occur" to you...but yeah, a spade is a spade, in my world, and in the end, its all about how strong your conviction is and how sure of yourself you are...and even if you aren't, how willing you are to stick to your decision.

Many people, in life, struggle with indecisiveness. Its human nature to doubt, sure. Heck, I have it all the time, but thanks to mindfulness, at least I recognize it as being self-doubt, and I don't let myself get swayed by the hard sell. Sometimes even with the shop, I have had suppliers cajole and even strong arm me into purchasing products I later regret, but that is all part of the learning curve, but life decisions, big ones, they are the ones made with your feet more firmly planted on the ground.

I've been sharing with people more about the future of Confusion, and the more I share, the easier that choice becomes, the more sure of my decision I become, like a Mormon out there proselytizing at some far flung corner of the globe, its not about converting others, its about renewing my faith in my beliefs, in my faith in a better future, for myself and for my family.

Everything I have done, from the start, has been a matter of sharing ALL knowledge with my team. This would mean everyone from my son, who started with us washing dishes and fearful of facing customers and fielding all their queries, to my fellow chefs, every single one of the team was fully aware of the cost of our venture. The cost of rent, the cost of utilities, the cost of Government rates, the total cost of salaries...all of it...they have known what it takes to run the restaurant and this has made them all the more willing to look at the business as their own, as if they were part of a family business, without the blood to bind us.

It would be so easy to think of a 10K day as being "just half of a monthly salary" if one didn't factor in everything else that came into play. If an employee genuinely knew that in order to survive we needed 25 of those 10K days, then they would not view their place in the ecosystem of the restaurant as being "just another job", they would take personal pride in a good day, they would take ownership of their mistakes and strive to be better, they would actually give a shit about their jobs and not believe they were just there to earn a paycheck but that they were there because they were supporting the livelihood of the entire team.

I believe I achieved what I wanted to, it certainly isn't conventional, but its also why my team has been fully on board even with a decision that involves calling it a day. They would have been on board if we went on to another location. They would be on board if we went smaller or bigger, they were all in, and they were all in because they knew they belonged to a whole, they were part of something bigger than themselves. This is the bit I am going to miss, but its also the part of everything I have built that I will cherish forever. The human experience, the hope, the camaraderie, the family that isn't really family, and the way we have all matured together.

Its been a complex mix of emotions trying to put into perspective everything that I have been feeling, beyond just relief that its out there, I have had, for the first time in a long time, the opportunity to actually smile again, to revel in the joy, to appreciate the happiness we have been able to create, not just for each other but for the greater community of people who turn up and love our food, its such a "heart swell" kind of emotion.

I remember how much I used to feel such awe and pride, and like...total shit-eating grin like happiness that welled up in my chest and radiated out to my extremities, I used to feel that so often when we first started, and I think it was because I was genuinely unsure of myself, and the positive feedback helped fuel my journey forward, giving me strength I never knew, giving me confidence I didn't know I was harboring within me, giving me resolve to keep aiming higher. Then at some point, all of that started to change, even though people still loved the food, the reviews were still generous in their praise, and I had no evidence to make me feel like I was failing, the protests really were a huge blow to my ability to experience the same joy and fulfillment that I so easily experienced that first year.

I began to doubt myself, I began to feel angry at the world, I began to get tired of false hope, I began to just stop hoping for better. Hope became a four letter word, it gave me nothing but sleepless nights. Each time I got my hopes up, I would get dashed with another weekend of protests, staff trapped en route, and just that constant nagging anxiety about money and the future.

Just when I thought my hope couldn't be crushed any further, you know, when you tell yourself that "Well, when you hit rock bottom, the only way to go is up!' and all that jazz, Covid19 hit.

At first I laughed it off, coz I was, duh, full of hope!

But then it became a very real case of looking at the future and seeing how scared I felt, actually admitting how scared I was and how helpless I felt. And I will be the first to tell you that sometimes I doubted that it was wise for me to share my feelings with my team, but I cannot pretend, I am a terrible liar, I walk around with my heart on my sleeve (mostly in ink, but hey)...I am who I am, I cannot be anything but who I am, and if one cannot accept me when I am at my weakest and most vulnerable, then they honestly cannot share in my strength.

And strength, resilience, grit, optimism, moral support, I have so much of that to share. Not just to share, to give. My team has seen me at my best and they have seen me at my worst, and they have loved me through it all and have had a chance to experience what many employees can only dream of in life, authenticity.

We are all only human.

I am no more special than someone on my team, I may be older, I may have more life experience, I may have more fight in me for every time life beats me down, but I am not anything special, and the sooner that my employees, my team mates, understand that, the easier it can be to speak their truth and to respect me purely for the integrity I bring to their lives, daily.

Man, I cannot even begin to describe how much my heart swells with pride when I think of each and every member of my team. So proud of each of them. I am not ashamed to say that I love each and every one of them. I have been so fortunate to have had my son working with me for nearly three years. My beautiful boy, who felt so distant to me through his teenage years, the product of over a decade of residual divorce resentment and acrimony between his father and myself, he has really made me proud of how well he has handled everything life has dealt him and how stable and dependable he is as a human being and as a teammate.

In the last three years, I have had the luxury of building a solid adult relationship with my son, a relationship that was fraught with complications and miscommunication in the first year or so, but has blossomed into a phenomenal parent-child, boss-employee, mother-son, friends for life relationship that makes me genuinely proud to know this phenomenal human being and truly bursting with pride that this beautiful young man is my son and that he is his own man.

It took me 40 years to build that bridge with my own parents. So I am truly blessed that I didn't have to wait that long to build that relationship with my son. For many years I would beat myself up about how I was responsible for so much hurt my son experienced, there were times I almost didn't want to look myself in the mirror because I was nothing but a failure based on my overestimation of what my job as "parent" entailed. And yet, I don't think anything is above repair. If it hadn't been for me taking that course, and then my paying for my son to take the course too, and my husband taking that course as well...we wouldn't be where we are today.

Thanks to everything we did, to learn how to see ourselves for who we are and how much more we could be...and how to accept others the way they are and not the way we want them to be...life has forever been altered, our perception has forever been altered, the way the world and all its inhabitants in it occur to us, has also forever been altered.

Its like once you know, you can't not know. There are things in life you know you know. There are things in life you know you don't know. And then there are things in life you don't know you don't know. Once you wrap your head around those facts, you can actually look at the world in a whole different way, with curiosity vs fear. Like those moments when you realize you are capable of so much more than you ever imagined you would be capable of.

The whole experience of these last 3 years, its taught me so much of what I am capable of, its taught me so much about what others are capable of if you give them that trust and support, and its made me so grateful for the opportunities I have been gifted, the human connections I have been fortunate enough to have made, the incredible range of human nature I have had an opportunity to witness and learn from...you learn a lot about people, what makes them tick, what even you are made of, what triggers you into being disappointed, angry, sad, happy...and how to manage all of that.

Running a restaurant, serving people, you truly get to meet a lot of different kind of people and you get to read someone within seconds.

For someone like me, who used to read "cards" before...for fun...its all about reading people. I used to do psychic readings for people, friends, sometimes random strangers, I never took money, of course I never said no to them paying me in beer or smokes, those were the days! Lol. I would read cards for people in bars, coz it saved me the trouble of them coming to my home, and then some random stranger would always get curious and be all, "hey, can you read mine?" and I was always a good sport and I loved to read people, so hey, I would.

Most people, they always have the same questions: Will I find love, if so when? Will I get another job? Is my family going to be ok?

Sometimes I would be able to read that a family member had cancer or surgery, sometimes it was a cheating partner, sometimes it was a new job or a prospective love interest...but most of the time I did it all as a means to give to others, and I genuinely enjoyed reading people and understanding what made them tick.

So yeah, its much the same when you run a restaurant...sometimes people wanna be left alone, sometimes they are open to chat, sometimes they got a lot on their mind, sometimes they are lonely, and many times they just want you to tell them what they really want to eat! Lol.

You know how many times I hear, "I don't know what I want, what do you suggest?"

You know, I actually remember each person who asks me this sort of thing, not only do I remember what they ordered last time, but I know their likes and dislikes...and sometimes with total strangers, I just "get a feel" of what it is they would like. Its like reading cards! So they eat, they return an empty plate and they say something like, "Man, that was EXACTLY what I wanted!"

People all want to feel loved, thought about, cared for, and what better way to do that than through communication. Much like a simple "hello" is communication, food also communicates with people, at least that is how it is for me, I could tell myself I love myself when I feed myself something nutritious and healthy, and I can also secretly tell myself I am unhappy with myself by binging on something quite obviously shit for me. Its how I hope people will remember us, that everything we served, we did so with love. We have been able to serve with love because there is love within us and a shared bond of love and kinship that we partake in as members of a strong team.

And its this bond that has also been the source of the return of Hope.

My husband has been my biggest support and my strongest team mate. He has seen me at my worst and still loved me through it. He has picked up the pieces of my broken heart, my broken mind, my broken dreams, and he has set them carefully, piece by piece, back together again so I can keep loving, keep coming up with ideas, keep dreaming in color, and I cannot say I would have been able to do any of this without him by my side.

I am genuinely so proud of us. Proud of how we have grown stronger for this experience. How we have learned that nothing can stop us, as a team of two. And I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to learn everything I have the hardest way possible.

I am lucky. I am so frikken lucky.

The future is coming at us like a hurricane, and its all a matter of being open to every possibility and to letting go of the fear.

Covid19 as a pandemic has felt like the crazy fear of watching a loved one die a slow and painful death. In my eyes, its not just the shop, but its also the world we live in. We went through all the stages of grief.

• denial.
  
• anger.
• bargaining.
• depression.
• acceptance.
  

Yeah, we went through them all! And we have come out on the other side so much more self-assured of our purpose in life and our shared philosophy in life, that I am almost grateful for this global shit-storm that brought us to where we are.

I am looking forward to us selling everything we own, buying a mono-hull (yacht), taking our kids out of the education system here and sailing the world. We will home school the kids, we will raise awareness about the environment as and when we experience it, we will show how it is possible to live a sustainable life, and hey, I could share cooking tips and recipes of stuff I create along the way, nothing is going to be impossible if we have each other to lean on.

I know it was a dream we had as part of a 5 year plan, but thanks to everything we have come to terms with due to the pandemic, seeing the economy tank, we've had to consider bringing our plans forward because nothing seems sure anymore.

These next few months and how they play out will be the true test of how we manage our finances, our expectations, and how we plot a future out into the great beyond, the unknown outside the comfort of the Matrix.

The Matrix...that truly is what we all live in. Connected by social media and with big brother keeping our attention captive...its going to be a brilliant thought experiment to see how we can harness the positive side of what is available at the click of a button, to affect some real change, to share a bigger story, and to world school our children without the shadow of an oppressive and exclusive system.

Anyway...I am legitimately optimistic about the future. And that, let me be honest, is a welcome change.

Thank you for letting me share, and I hope to share more positivity in the months to come. :)

Hoooooooo man, I could write a book about the ups and downs of the past few months, but I won't.

As of yesterday, we know for sure that we have a cheque in the mail, the final one of the round of government funding, and honestly, its barely going to put a dent in the next few months bills, but hey, its better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick!

We have six months left on our lease.

Six.

Months.

Its nuts to think about the future without the level of anxiety we have all faced these past six months.

At some point the anxiety grew into full blown depression and I had a hard time being able to face each day without crying or curling up under my weighted blanket in my darkened bedroom, unwilling to face the world, let alone parent or support a team.

I am all good now, we all are. Morale was low, so low because there seemed no end in sight. And honestly, now that dining access has been "upped" to 4 people a table, its not like we have seen a sudden uptick in the number of diners, if anything, numbers seem to be staying painfully the same. Its weird, why?

Who knows.

None of this makes sense.

People are just scared to eat out, or have gotten into the habit of cooking at home, or they are worried about spending money, or they are worried about getting Covid19 even though you have more of a chance of being hit by a car then catching it...I don't know.

What I do know is that we are gonna make the most of the next six months, to do fearlessly what we have not been able to do prior to this point in our operation. We can slowly cut back on ordering processed items that people genuinely do love to order, and bring in more whole foods plant based items that we were worried about doing purely because we didn't have time for what was pretty labor intensive and we feared no one would eat it if they had no idea what it was, lol. Yeah, we are gonna roll our sleeves up and make it so.

Reality is, we may be short-staffed, but we also have time on our hands. Its simply not as busy as it used to be and I don't see that changing drastically any time soon. I see that many restaurants in our neighborhood are closing and bizarre as it may seem, many more are opening!

I shake my head in disbelief, really, I am not sure what they are thinking, and I have to hand it to them that they have the pig-headed optimism, commendable optimism, that has been steadfastly beaten out of me these last 18 months.

I am done, stick a fork in me, I am so legit when I say, we are done. We did it, we gave it everything we could, we built a good brand, we built a brand without spending a dime on marketing, we cooked from the heart, we served with dignity, and we formed some lasting bonds with people in the plant-based community, I think overall, we did what we set out to do. We wanted to bring a fusion plant-based menu to diners, we wanted to "confuse" people who eat meat, to show them what is possible and how delicious food can be without dead flesh on their plates. We wanted to make people feel emotional about food again, like memories of childhood, and I think we have been able to succeed.

I have nothing to prove, much like when I said, "Dammit, gimme the epidural already!" when I had my third son, yeah, I had nothing to prove by then! I always say, the only person I need to prove anything to is myself. I hope to always be learning, improving, constantly evolving and becoming a better version of myself.

If I have learned anything from the last 2.5 years, well, almost 3 years, if you count the seed of a dream all the way to where we stand now, with a fully operating restaurant that has been able to wrestle through the tough blows of political protests and pandemic, determination matters. Most importantly, Self-Determination matters! We did things on our own terms, the way we wanted to, committed to consistency and integrity, and under any other less trying times, we would have seen our little kitchen flourish along with our bank accounts, its just unfortunate Force Majeure shit that has made us think conservatively about the future of the house that plants built. 

We are a team, most of the team has been with us from the day they joined, some of them from ground zero. My feelings about the end of the lease are mixed, yet for the most part, they are phenomenally positive and upbeat. The future is wide open. Not merely for me, or for my team, but for my family as well.

I have spent the greater part of the last three years committed to Confusion, committed to my team, committed to creating healthy, hearty, worthy-of-pride, plant-based dishes that would make good memories and fill hungry bellies. I have done all this at the cost of quality time with my children who were just 4 and 5 when I started and are now midway through primary school! I mean, one was in kindergarten when I started and he's in form three now! Wth! Where did the time go?

I can't waste any more precious time looking back, the future awaits. The future awaits the whole Confusion Familia, actually.

Clara & Jaime are moving to Scotland, they used to work with us for about a year or so. Even though they were both part-time, we were so blessed to have shared a journey with them and are beyond proud that they are heading off on a 2 year working holiday adventure to the rainy highlands, far away from the uncertainty that is Hong Kong right now.

Shan will hopefully move to Holland to start a new life with her beau, again, a move I think is a good one and well worth committing to.

Swati & Anh will likely enjoy being able to spend more time with their families, Confusion has been a wonderful place for them to contribute wholly of their experience and culinary creativity, on their own terms and with the hours they were happy to work, not many places offer this opportunity and we have been so fortunate to have found both of them and to have shared (and to continue to share) this life-enriching journey with them both.

Jakob, my son, he will head into his final year of University by the time we cease to be more than just a memory. To think he had just graduated high school when we first started! Its nuts!

Peter wants to get trained in Acupuncture! That is something we all think is the right path for him, he is often seen swilling awful TCM teas for one thing or the other, the guy loves that stuff, or maybe he loves to hate it, but hey, the shoe doth fit!

Maggie is still deciding what she will do with her future, and no matter what she chooses to do, we will support her wholly, what I hope more than anything is that she goes back to University and makes that happen for her, that or to get the hell out of Hong Kong, but hey, she's a grown woman with a strong head on her shoulders, she's got this! :)

Marianne got married and just had a baby, and so in so many ways, everyone is settled, everyone is sorted, and I no longer have this heavy weight on my shoulders as I worry about the future of my "kids" and my fellow "mums".

Me?

People keep asking me, "Why?" when I say, hey, we get to the end of the lease and we call it a day. It doesn't have to be forever, it could be for a few years, or it could be longer, but right now is not a great time for F&B in Hong Kong, the economy is hurting, once government funding stops, many small businesses will fold. I am not being negative, I am being realistic.

I don't have a crystal ball, I don't think I can see the future, all I can see is the numbers, the trends, the painful graphs of what the last year has been like in comparison to the year before and the numbers don't lie, especially the numbers on the bank balance.

To expand, you need money. To continue operation, you need to have money. To keep paying salaries and rent and buying provisions, you need money. Now you could have money, a pretty decent amount of money, honestly, but the longer you run at a loss, you don't even have to be a Nobel Prize Winning Mathematician, you will run out of money.

Its different if you are landed gentry, like, your parents happen to be bankrolling things, or if you are part of a big group that owns 20 restaurants, or if you happen to have started this after you won your billions playing the lottery, but nah, that ain't me. It hurts my heart enough to consider my business partner and the capital invested and to see business where it is and the numbers where they are. Like, dammit, why indeed!

I am realistic about the future. I see the numbers. Things may pick up in the next 6 months. Maybe they would even pick up enough that we see our numbers go back to the old days, but I ain't holding my breathe while that happens.

What matters is that we do the right thing by everyone, we avoid debt, we ensure we are on the right track, supporting our team and our community so that by the end of March 2021 (yep, mark that in your calendar) we are ending on a high note.

Its not really bittersweet, its a chance for each of us to be grateful, not just for the experience, but for each other, the time we have had together, the growth we have experienced, the people we have fed, the education we have had from the school of hard knocks, its all good.

I will do what I can to unplug from The Matrix once we get out, maybe I will maintain a blog, maybe I will make documentary videos of travel and food, there are many options for what is possible and I am excited about how much freedom awaits on the other side.

The key to all of this is that we make the most of the remaining time, six solid months of plant-based creativity and hard earned accolades, truly enjoy our time together, work hard at making money when we can, have fun doing it, and even if things never go back to where they were before, we will still make sure we enjoy doing everything we can to bring some life back to the Hong Kong F&B scene through our plant-based food.

Its been a good experience, all of it, Never say never aside, I think we've had a good run! :)

So until April 2021, we will continue to operate, continue to share the joy, continue to bring it, and know that we will be counting on your support to make the next 6 months the best ones yet!

Mahalo.