Photo update

From top: Adeline's 21st on saturday. Last week's Green Tea Kaya Special at Toastbar. Last night's dinner at the penthouse - chicken rice, veg, minced pork and french beans. Last week's dinner at the penthouse - can't remember what we had but it was super, as usual. Our Anzac day breakfast. Toastbar menu. First week at the Penthouse, the japanese feast!

Actually, i'm so blessed.

I thank God for Erica, Adeline, Grace, Ellie, Joseph, Jonathan, Ken Vern and Angela. These are the people i've spent the most time with in recent weeks.

Cal came over to Toastbar to say hi today. We had a conversation that I'm so grateful for. The warmth of familiarity and the trust and respect formed from our OCF days just opened up space for us to share. This was a high point of the day. The other high point was just having Angela over at Toastbar keeping me company while she waited for her laundry to be done. The third was when Ben dropped by to see who was on and we ended up talking about relationships as well. haha. Then dinner time. Dinner with the 877 guys is always a highlight. It's like a k-pad dinner, but different yet still good. k-pad dinners are always special because of the level of intimacy we all had i guess. penthouse dinner - not so close, but we know we're all like a family.

I've got a massive shopping list. gonna have to stock up lotsa things for toastbar tmr because the big weekend just emptied our fridge.

I was eavesdropping on a conversation at Toastbar today and it got me thinking. it went something like that..


C: I'm here looking for my housemate
A: Huh? Who's your housemate?
C: Ken Vern!
A: ohh..
C: Except he's not really my housemate because he's hardly at home..
A: that's good wad. you get the whole apartment to yourself!
C: Noo.. the reason why i wanted a housemate was so that when i'm bored there's someone there to talk to too. it gets lonely
A: ah.. that's what Toastbar is for! Just come here la!


I stand amazed at how much Toastbar has begun to mean to her. She asked me today if there was any point in time where i thought that there was no point in having Toastbar. I looked straight at her and told her from the bottom of my heart, No. I know that there are days where i feel like escaping. there are days like yesterday where i was down and moody. But that's does not waver my belief in the vision that i carry for toastbar together with grace, adeline, erica, joshpui and angela. I still believe that Toastbar's vision to build community and relationships will continue being refined. and because this is a new frontier that we're pushing for, trying to meld community and business together in a very real sense, there's hardly a model we can follow. who knows what's right and what's wrong, what will work and what wouldn't? We just find our way through obstacles, mistakes and breakthroughs i guess. Another thing i found really encouraging was to hear from Tim that one of the NZ diplomats who actually came over to Toastbar recognised what we were doing as something he himself was trying to push for in another part of the world as well, having discussion with Kevin (Rudd) on such social entrepreneurishp and commending Tim on how well we (as Life Expedition) have been able to work out community building and business so far. I say we're all still learning. But how cool was that!

People have also been asking me what will happen to Toastbar after I leave in Jan 2013.
Before Toastbar existed, I told myself i'll have to run the cafe in such a way that when i leave someone would be able to take over it. at that point, to me it meant that the financial rewards for managing the cafe would have to be really attractive. but now, i'm not even sure if Toastbar will continue to run next semester. What if we find a better way to build a home in arrow? What if instead of serving people food in a cafe, something else brings people together even better? Then maybe we will just close up Toastbar and try something new all over again because we want to stay true to our vision.  We wont close up just because things get tough. We'll be sure the reason is good. So what will happen to Toastbar after I leave? Maybe the office team can operate it. Maybe customers can operate it. No idea yet. 

Also, tomorrow may be another exciting day for Toastbar. Because David Choi's gonna be having an exclusive Meet&Greet in the events hall just next to Toastbar. which means that there's a chance David Choi may pop in!  I'm supposed to have a meeting with Vong, Gel, Gav, Tim, Waihong and El tmr at 5. BUT i'm opening Toastbar specially for just-in-case-david-choi-wants-a-snack at 5.30.

so when Gav asked me if i could make it, i just went "nooo. i can't! i'm doing david choi tmr!!"
gav stared at me like i just said something shocking. then Gel laughed. then i realised how wrong that sounded. Gav went "ooh. where?" i played along and said "behind the counter *raises eyebrow"
hahaha. gel and vong were laughing their heads off and came up withthe idea of having a chronicle wall where things said in Toastbar could be quoted and written on the wall. and the first one Gel would write up would be "I'm doing david choi". golly. juicy. HAHAHA. I actually only know one song by david choi. and that's only because chris had it on his blog a few years ago. I'm just so out of it. I can't keep track of who's who in the celebrity world.

2am. sitting alone in the penthouse living room. time to go home! gnite peeps! today was a good day! :D