Creating Memories

 

Since I worked at the Bistrot on New Year’s Eve, I’m reminded of the fact that one of the things that people find curious about me is the fact that I continued to wait tables even when I was officially employed in a respectable job. I only really stopped working in restaurants when Covid hit and the restaurant business got shut down.

There are several answers that I give. The first one is simple – I’m not going to turn down extra money. They few dollars an hour I earn waiting tables happens to be a few dollars an hour I would not have had otherwise. Then, there are the perks. Instead of spending money on food and drink, I work and get fed and if I am lucky, I get a beer on the side.

Then, I also make the point that I can’t be too proud about being a director of this and that but being “embarrassed” to do certain work. The reality is that the fancy title that I currently enjoy can easily go tomorrow and if there’s anything a decade in the insolvency business has shown me, it’s the fact that its not that difficult to be kicked out of your livelihood. So, its always good to be willing to take on manual work should you ever need to do it.

I’ve also tried my best to cross-pollinate my activities. I’ve met certain lawyers in the Bistrot and worked with them in my corporate job and I’ve also made a point of entertaining people from my corporate existence at the Bistrot. Given that I’ve spent my earliest years hustling and am likely to spend the rest of my life hustling, I need to be in constant circulation.

These are my personal reasons for working in a restaurant, even at the age when one expects me not to. However, there is something greater for me. Working in a restaurant taught me the importance of “creating memories.” I think of the day where one table was a man proposing to his lady and on another table, you had a girl celebrating her hen night. Now, I appreciate the fact that we were only going to know the tables we served for the duration of the service. However, it dawned upon me that even in that brief moment when we were dealing with the two tables, we were playing a role in creating special memories for people.

Memories are what you’d call an important part of what makes us who we are. For me, that message was brought home during my last trip. Ended up in Covent Garden and it became important for me to have a cider in the Punch & Judy.

The reason was this simple. I was brought to this pub 31 years ago, when I was 18. The girl who brought me there was the first girl I was in-love with. Relationship never got off the ground but that particular pub signified something important in my life. Would often drink there when I was studying in London. I developed more memories of the place from every subsequent visit but the memory of the place as being where I first fell in love with someone.

It made a good story for the pub when I last visited – a 31-year absence from the place where I fist fell in love. Helped that my junior colleague and I ended up sitting with a couple who had just gotten together and wanted to travel (he was a PwCpartner in London who just left to set up his own thing, she was a creative director at Diageo).

https://www.tiktok.com/@tang.li0/video/7308456155808845063?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7274292816955999746

 

 

I think my relationship with the Punch & Judy and I become conscious of the role I have in creating memories. It affects the way I do things. A lot of times, I do get walked over for being too nice and I am getting a little sharper as I get older. However, I am always conscious of role I have in creating memories for other people. I always ask myself; how do I want the people who come into my life to remember me and I act accordingly.

At the end of the day, what you make or don’t make in terms of monetary gain will be history. The only thing that remains are the memories.