Aug
12

Food vs Service

Most people laugh at the phrase “No soup for you” and immediately remember The Soup Nazi Seinfeld episode. All joking aside, how far do you let something go into the bad service side if your food is some of the best?

One of my favorite places to eat is a semi fast food place. They are one of the places that has allowed me to cut down on my meat consumption for a while now. I go there at least once a week, but I have struggled with the bad service for a while. The owner is the person that greets you and takes your order most of the time, he know me, knows what I order and even goes as far as to ask me how much it is going to be because he knows I have the amount memorized. The food is prepared well every single time and I have yet to have a bad meal from the place.

The food equation in my head for price is simple. If it is something I can prepare at home in less than 30 minutes and the ingredients are 50% what the cost of the meal is, I think it is a good deal and I am not too overcritical. My favorite dish from this place is something that I think I can imitate or get very close to, but I have not tried yet. I have been trying to guess one of the exact ingredients but since my ear surgery my taste buds are still just enough off that I don’t have as discerning a palate as I used to have.

Strike one against this place came when the owner had a case of mood swings. He was always friendly and greeted me and one day acted very Soup Nazi like when I wanted to replace and ingredient that I had before, heck the food is not pre-made, and also told me they had one of the side dishes only to find out they did not have anymore when I picked up the food. I figured, bad day, and I let it go. He then surprised me the week following by saying that he tried the dish with my ingredient replacement to see how it tasted and said he loved it.

Strike two came a couple of weeks after. Most of the people actually making the food and serving the tables speaks Spanish, heck one of them even has my last name which made me easy to remember. Every time I show up they say hi, and one day the place was empty and I had a conversation with one of the cooks. The conversation was probably just a couple of minutes but the owner got supper upset, possibly because the guy has limited English so we spoke in Spanish and maybe thought we were talking about him. So I let it go again. The food is still too tasty and well priced at this point not to continue giving them my business.

Strike three just made me put them in the, probably not going to go back as often list… or maybe not even at all. I call this place about once a week for take out, he knows my order and I very rarely get something extra. I called during probably a busy time and I was put on hold. No big deal, it happens. He left the phone off the hook and I could hear him taking orders in the background.

Service logic to me dictates that if someone calls for a phone order and you have a line, you ask for the person to hold and GET HELP if you are overwhelmed. Even if you are swamped with people out the door, come back after you finish the first order and tell the caller it will be a while. Nope, the dude left the phone unhooked for a while. I hung up and try to call again to see if a new ring or light might make him remember he had someone “on hold” with no luck. Eventually I got to his restaurant and proceeded to drive past it and hit the fast food joint down the street.

To some this might not be horrible service, but I have been eating there consistently even when the place was a ghost town at the beginning of the year. I don’t think I deserve special treatment, but to just forget that someone is on the phone without answer is something that not even pizza joints do very often anymore. If your restaurant advertises that you do take out and give out menus promoting it, then make sure you at least have two lines.

So do you keep a balance between food and service? I know we talked about a similar subject before when we discussed tipping, and it brought out some opposite views. Do you value service at all, or does good food override any horrible service?

Aug
10

Voice Over Work

Anime fans know how important voice over work is. You get the wrong voice actor to do a part and a classic can turn into a joke. Many people cannot even stomach watching dubbed stuff, so purist always go for the subbed content using the original language. I was used to watching things dubbed and was almost condition to recognize voices and Mexican or Spaniard accents on most of the American shows I watched down in Colombia. Then 3D cartoons came up and recognizing voices has been kind of a thing Bea try to do when we watch a cartoon to later look at the credits and see if we were right. She is way better at it.

So voice over work has always fascinated me. I am not in love with the sound of my own voice, lol, but I have ventured into the podcasting world before and people have not totally hated my accented voice. I have been told that I sound a lot different when I speak Spanish, but for me it is hard to notice. So when the opportunity presented itself to do some voice over work in Spanish I was very excited.

I don’t want to talk about the actual project too much now because I want to review the book soon. I just received my advance review copy this weekend. Joe Washington, a very talented author and entrepreneur is been a pleasure to work with. He is super supportive and I was one of the people that had no previous experience beyond the acting I did back in High School. There were actual actors and amazing voices doing the work.

My first observation is that everyone hates how their voice sounds recorded. Even the very talented actors that were there still hated how they sounded. They sounded wonderful to me, and they were also very kind toward the voices I did. You sound a lot different recorded by professional equipment. It is amazing to see how much the producer can do to make your voice sound better. Also, the good microphones pick up EVERYTHING. You move, you breath, you touch a piece of paper, your headphones shift, the most innocent movement can be heard loud and clear back on your headphones. Thankfully you have time to get used to hearing every movement before you start recording.

Recording studios seem to be the driest places in the world. It becomes almost compulsive to clear your throat before you start recording, since you know during the actual recording a simple cough can ruin a take. Plenty of water was necessary to get through the sessions.

I played three big parts and two small parts. The funnest was a military trainer, the hardest the Mexican Arms Dealer Abejundio. I don’t have any military training beyond video games like Counter Strike and America’s Army so rattling off a weapon list like it was second nature was challenging.

It was an awesome experience and hopefully one that I will get to do again in the future. We all had great laughs during the experience specially when people would stumble on the same word or sentence over and over. Its funny how the brain sometimes works.

Aug
06

Consequences

“Every person has free choice. Free to obey or disobey the Natural Laws. Your choice determines the consequences. Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices.”
- Alfred A. Montapert

In a conversation with a friend we talked about respecting reality. People sometimes don’t take into account actions and consequences and prefer to act without thinking. I fall into that category many times and like that fact that I am honest about my feelings. When it comes to actions I am a lot more careful because I think of the consequences.

Burglaries happen all over the world. Listening to the radio the other day I heard of a guy in New York that has had over 30 bikes stolen, and how commit ed he is to still riding. It reminded me of when I was a child and someone tried to steal a kids bike in our neighborhood. The guy was quickly stopped after the screams of “ladron” (thief) alerted some guys a block away. It seems like the whole neighborhood took turns beating the crap out of this dude, I vividly remember an old lady bringing a wooden chair and going WWE on the guy. I am sure the guy never tried to steal any bikes in our neighborhood after that.

The monkey story is a piece of writing that even if purely fiction made me think about consequences. The main character in the story wants to fight a monkey, and if just that does not make you want to read the story, lets just summarize that the guy thinks that “fighting was the purest form of physical expression.” As an adult I have only been in an actual fight (outside of martial arts tournaments) once.

Biggie (aka Aaron) is a good friend from back in Chicago. We have lived many good times and they have often involved the consumption of alcohol. We met while we both were going to college and worked together as ushers at a movie theater. We have been friends since and I became close to both his family and his childhood friends. LOL, I could write a blog just about our friendship, but before I get off topic his family are the ones that taught me how to play monopoly and could not beat me even cheating… good times.

Tony, one of our mutual friends’ house was close to where there was going to be a firework show for the 4th. So we decided to do a little drinking with our regular group of friends and Tony invited a couple of people from the new dealership where he had just gotten a job as a mechanic. One of the guys showed up on an 80′s style Mustang GT that sounded like it had been worked on heavily because of the way it sounded. He surprised me because when he saw that the driveway was already full of cars he decided the best option was the lawn almost perpendicular to my car. Because of the proximity to the fireworks other people were doing the lawn thing and people were migrating towards the near by park.

The guy seemed to have been drinking most of the day and was there with his girlfriend and a younger cousin who was a teenager. Most of us were in our early twenties at the time and the dude was probably in his late twenties or early thirties. We had fun drinking and watching fireworks until an argument started between the dude and his girlfriend. They left right before the end of the fireworks and the rest of us started to migrate back towards Tony’s house.

We could hear the argument had gotten a lot more heated and the poor girl pleading with the dude to please not drive so drunk. The girl was at the window of the vehicle parked very close to mine. The engine roared and the dude started to back the car but miscalculated the turn and caught his girlfriend’s leg between my car and his. Thankfully both of the car’s body gave in and her leg was not crushed but she was definitely trapped between the vehicles. Everyone started banging on the car for him to stop and he finally moved forward but there was damage to both of the cars. He knew he had damaged my car, but I was more worried about the girl and her safety. Drunken dude was more worried about what I was going to tell the police so he ran towards me because I was dumb enough to see if his girlfriend was ok.

Even though he probably could have pummeled me pretty good if sober, he was debilitated by the unreal amount of alcohol he had consumed. Using my Karate Kid knowledge I stopped his punches and was able to hold both of his arms long enough for a Aaron to wrestle him off me. It seemed his anger was now directed at me because I somehow took his girlfriend side on the fight or because my car was not damaged by his but rather by his girlfriend’s leg. His logic had some holes probably when sober, but alcohol made his decision so much more clear.

I never pressed charges because his girlfriend pleaded with me over the dudes previous record and how me calling the cops was going to send him to jail. Alcohol takes away inhibitions, it does not make people angry, it just removes the filter. I don’t know if a beat down would have made him change his ways, but obviously violence was his way to cope with frustration.

Physical violence is a serious thing when it comes to domestic abuse, but is it something that makes communities safer? man feel more masculine? Are you ok with any kind of physical violence, or is it something that just should not exist in a modern society?

Aug
05

Interview – Mike Piatek-Jimenez

One of the coolest things about friendship is being able to admire the people that surround you. Mike and I became fast friends while I was living in Michigan. We bonded by our mutual love of movies and computer programming. He is now living the “dream” by being the owner of the software firm Gaucho Software developing apps for Macs and iPhones. Mike and his wife Katrina have become one of my closest friends as an adult, and our love for good restaurants and interesting conversation have made their visits to Kansas City as much of a vacation for me as it has been for them. When I heard that through the Mount Pleasant Rotary Club Mike was going to spend a month in Thailand I could not wait to hear about the experience and see the pictures. The more I heard and read about the trip, the more I wanted to interview him to share some of what he learned while being in such a different culture. Some of what he found out while in this trip might truly surprise you.

Logtar:Had Thailand been in your radar at all before the opportunity to do a cultural exchange there?
Mike: Not really. Of course I had heard of the country, but I didn’t know much about its people or their culture.
L: Had you ever thought about visiting places for the cultural experience rather than just a relaxing vacation? if so what was your top pick?
M: Whenever my wife and I go on vacations, we always try to learn about the culture of the place we are visiting. We’ve traveled to different countries in the Caribbean, for example, and instead of hanging out on the beach all day, we will usually try to do things the locals would do. Things like go to plays, or attend fairs or festivals in a park, etc. If I had to visit a country just to learn more about the culture, Ireland and Poland would probably be my top picks, as those are the countries where my family is from.
L: How many different cities did you get to visit while in Thailand?
Read more…

Aug
03

An Award Just Hit Me

Best personal blog in Kansas city? Just as I was about to post one of the things I have been writting and expanding on I get a very weird e-mail. At first I thought it was simple spam, but then I saw that the url was actual and not some link that promised to make me rich via Nigeria. I guess I am the “Best Blog in KC 2009.” or at least just the first and best personal blog. I read the post and I saw that the writing is good but I did not recognize it. The only thing I can tell from the e-mail address is that they are Sienfield fans.

My favorite part about the award post is

The blog also sports clean design and organization (favored indulgences of The Editors), as well as a gratifying lack of blinking gewgaws, polls and other useless crap (dark beasts, one and all).

lol I had never heard of gewgaws before! lol I think I have a favorite word of the week. If someone can help me with how to pronounce it without offending Meesha, give me a call.

Some of my favorite blogs got honorable mentions :) Frighteningly Uncommon Sense and Hip Suburban White Guy, and even one I had not bumped into before Curb Girl. If anything I am excited that we have a place to find new KC blogs :)

Thanks for the award!

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