We were lucky enough to be able to dine with a member of the Qualicum City Council this evening over at the Red Radish Bistro. Another very fine meal on our last night here in Qualicum Beach.
Many of the members had crepes. A few of us had steak sandwiches. One member opted for the *over the top* Rooty Burger. The salads were crisp and fresh and the cream of potato soup with cauliflower was inspired.
The service was beyond excellent.
I really have to hand it to folks who wait tables. Both the last tour and this one I’ve ended up trying to translate menus and am generally responsible for taking orders for food. At a certain point, group members will often give up and order the same thing everyone else is ordering. If I am fast enough and *doing my job right* I can keep that from happening and give people a chance to get more of what they want instead of the
*I’m-overwhelmed-I’ll-have-what-everyone-else-is-having* choice. I am also trying to pay attention to the types of foods people like to eat so at each successive restaurant I can suggest things they might like…oh…and then there’s ordering a few things now and again to make sure folks get a chance to either try something regional (meibutsu) or something I know they just wouldn’t have a chance to eat in Japan. In a way there’s a philosophical edge to the process, too…the whole making sure the artists are getting a broader and clearer understanding and perspective of things they wouldn’t ordinarily get to experience…while at the same time making sure the order is as economical as is reasonably possible because tour budgets almost always have a very slim margin.
The great thing is that most of these meals have been sponsored by the restaurants and so it’s a bit easier to work in a variety of dishes…and, yes…being considerate of the restaurants/businesses who are feeding us is also something to be factored in, so I don’t go hogwild, but neither have I been exceptionally frugal.
I am striving for *reasonable* and *healthy* and we are all pitching in for the extra stuff that’s not covered (which is a given because drinks are not generally covered and beer is almost always a part of the order).
I am getting better at taking orders and keeping them straight. I even have a system…but those last minute changes (not soup, salad…5 beers, no 6, no 4…and so on) still rattle me a bit. It doesn’t seem to go with the job description, but being a taiko drummer often means doing a bunch of different odd jobs one might never have expected.
Some are more obvious like event planning and production, woodworking (drum and stand building & repair), grantsmanship, bookkeeping & accounting, translating, graphic design and website maintenance…and then there’s things like tour and travel planning (for individuals and groups, air-sea-rail-ground reservations and ticketing), long haul freight transportation (and the difference in capacities and fuel consumption between 16′, 20′ and 24′ trucks), import/export shipment brokering…the list goes on and on and on…and ok, you can often hire people to do a lot of this stuff, but even then you still have to know enough about it that you can readily achieve your own desired goals, and more often than not groups can’t afford to hire someone outside of their own organization (even when it would probably be better to).
It helps to be very flexible. It helps to have at least some knowledge of things like color saturation (both in terms of lighting and printing), the difference between serif and sans serif, lead times, the difference between 40-60-80-100-120-150-220 grit sandpapers, the difference between .jpg’s .tff’s & .bmp’s and let’s not forget resolution and dpi, or currency conversion rates & international tariff rules…or the weights and linear measurements of everything you plan to travel with for the next three weeks (break a couple of bachi you had included in with your carnet shipment and give them away to people in the audience? plan on the possibility of having to throw in a piece of 2×4 to make the correct weight on your shipment home).
That’s just a smattering that doesn’t even begin to cover the kinds of things that need to be factored in, figured out and decided on…every day…and like everyone else, I’m just a drummer who really loves Taiko…and all I wanna do is play.
It’s such a wild ride. More often than not, however, the blessings and bonuses outweigh the frustrations and moments of exhaustion and occasional bouts of sheer terror.
This last week has been crazy hard, but the connections with the other artists and the ability to go to sleep and wake up every day in a place filled with such natural beauty…the chance to make a difference in the lives of so many people just by being here…t’ain’t nothing else like it in the world.
Big thanks to Ron & Corinne and Liam & Jim…to Bob & Cherry…and Jim who shared stories of his hole-in-one, logging, pipes & drums and diamond socks & sweaters…to everyone in Qualicum Beach that supported this tour…to Megan & Eileen & Earle & Kristy & Heather & Teresa & Elaine & Ryan (especially for breakfast).
hrmm…that’s not everyone. More as I can remember…or not if I can’t