#intercom troubleshooting service new York

[abcsecuritysolution]

3 Major Types Of Intercom Systems For Residential And Commercial Purposes

If you are someone who is planning to install an intercom system in your residential or commercial property, you are doing the right thing to make sure that your property is well protected. Intercom systems are one of the best ways to secure a property from theft and to protect the people and other valuables inside the property. With the help of the best commercial intercom systems installation in New York or any other location for that matter, you’d be able to communicate to the person waiting right outside the entrance door before you even decide to open it or not open it. Having said that, here, we are going to talk about the 3 major types of intercom systems. We hope that with all that information, you will be able to make the choice as to which system you require. Let us begin!

Wireless unit: This is a newer version of the original hard-wired intercom system. The wireless intercom makes use of a different type of radio frequency and it costs less than most other options available in the market. The best part of using this is that there is basically no installation requirement and you can start using them out of the box!

Video Intercom: Another great option is the video intercom system. This is basically used when you want the option to see a visitor who is standing at the entrance door before communicating with them and allowing them to come inside or reject their request. These are usually wired setups as video is more demanding and sending data through a wireless setup won’t be an efficient method.

Carrier-current: It is a type of intercom system that can be integrated into the property’s electrical system. This is an inexpensive option to use an intercom system where it possible to have a conversation with someone at the entrance door. It is fairly easy to install and maintain a carrier-current intercom system; however the other options provide better audio quality.

 Consider this blog and use the intercom setup which you think is going to work best for your requirements. Also, use a credible intercom troubleshooting service in New York in case any issue arises in the setup.

[easyfoodnetwork]

Just Like Restaurants, Culinary Schools and Their Students Are in Limbo

Yuriy Golub/Shutterstock

Culinary schools rely on hands-on training. Can they survive during the pandemic?

The morning of March 13 was normal until the intercom interrupted a discussion during Sarah Roundtree’s fine dining concepts lab at the Providence, Rhode Island, campus of Johnson & Wales. “They made the announcement that campus was shutting down,” she remembers. Roundtree, who graduated from the Charlotte campus of Johnson & Wales with a bachelor of science in culinary arts and food-service management in 2018, was working as a student teacher in the culinary arts program and had no idea what to tell the class about what to do next or when they’d be back. “The students had questions that I couldn’t answer,” she says.

She also didn’t know what it meant for her own studies. Roundtree was in Providence to complete a master of arts in teaching degree with a concentration in culinary arts education, and she was set to graduate in May, with an entry-level job at a restaurant already lined up. Instead, she left campus soon after that announcement, and in the coming weeks, the restaurant rescinded the job offer; it was forced to shut down due to COVID-19.

Today, Roundtree is living in Connecticut with her family, weighing her options for a career in a post-COVID-19 food industry. “Technically, I graduated a week ago,” she says via video call on a recent afternoon. “I’m sure I���ll do a Zoom celebration or something.”

As traditional college campuses shut down in early March, culinary schools followed, vacating their teaching kitchens, classrooms, and on-campus restaurants. But unlike traditional colleges, many of which shifted to online learning, culinary schools have had to contend with moving cooking classes, tactile in nature, to a virtual setting. Most have opted not to, meaning culinary schools and culinary students are stuck in limbo until campuses are cleared to reopen.

San Francisco Cooking School closed its campus March 16 and is not offering virtual learning for cooking courses, effectively putting the current stream of 42 full-time and part-time students on hold. “A hasty pivot to virtual learning didn’t make sense for SFCS because our curriculum is designed around hands-on instruction in a small class environment,” says San Francisco Cooking School founder Jodi Liano. Being in a kitchen-classroom setting ensures students learn to braise, cut, saute, chop, and dice under the tutelage of a trained culinary professional, an environment that’s hard to replicate via video call.

“Cooking is using all five senses,” says Lachlan Sands, campus president for the Institute of Culinary Education. Its campuses in Los Angeles and New York City both closed on March 16, affecting an undisclosed number of students (the school won’t say how many people are currently enrolled). “We believe it’s better to teach culinary arts in a kitchen in person.”

Culinary classes require an infrastructure that’s hard to mimic at home. A typical day of class involves students retrieving whisks, bowls, spoons, mixers, and stock pots from communal storage areas and retrieving ingredients from walk-in refrigerators or pantries to make the dishes that are part of the day’s lessons. Even if basic recipes were provided to students, there’s no guarantee that they would have access to the technology required for video calls. “Most of our students aren’t properly equipped for home study in terms of kitchen equipment, or even access to a kitchen where multiple roommates might be involved,” Liano says. Offering virtual cooking courses that may leave some students behind because of a lack of access, or asking them to venture out to secure ingredients during a pandemic, didn’t seem like the right move. “Simply put,” says Liano, “neither the school nor the students were set up to enable SFCS to fulfill our educational promise through virtual learning.”

Most culinary schools, though, have lecture-style courses for general education and professional studies classes related to specific majors, like menu planning and cost control, foodservice financial systems, food safety, culture, and technical writing; the Institute of Culinary Education, San Francisco Cooking School, Johnson & Wales, and New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute have moved their lecture courses online.

Schools hope to keep their students engaged with cooking during lockdowns, even if not officially for credits. The Institute of Culinary Education started offering cooking demos via Instagram Live with chefs like Marcus Samuelsson and Chris Scott to encourage students to cook along with industry pros. “We really want to get them to try new things and new dishes,” Sands says. But there’s no way to ensure that students are tuning in, and administrators are not monitoring who’s accessing the demos. It’s not a foolproof way of teaching cooking, but it is a way of doing something. “Part of what we can do right now is cultivate an atmosphere of community,” Sands says. San Francisco Cooking School has started a “Conversations With…” Zoom series that connects industry leaders and students via regular calls to “just to get together and talk about things like what they’ve been cooking for friends/family,” Liano says. “Teachers help troubleshoot during these calls, and classmates do the same — it’s been a really nice way to keep them together.”

As many states think about reopening, culinary schools are waiting for the go-ahead to resume classes. Leah Sarris, executive director for New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute, which opened in January of 2019, says the school’s 100-day certificate program moved lecture classes online. Administrators are planning on reopening the campus to “whenever it is safe to do so.” As New Orleans restaurants begin to reopen, NOCHI has a tentative plan “to resume classes whenever the city enters Phase 2,” Sarris says.

Culinary schools are adjusting to adhere to new safety guidelines at both local and federal levels, says Miriam Weinstein, communications director for Johnson & Wales University. Right now the Providence campus is planning on reopening July 6 with class sizes reduced from 18 to 14 students; a requirement that all staff, students, and faculty wear masks; and plexiglass partitions between cooking stations in hands-on classes. Both Johnson & Wales and San Francisco Cooking School will also introduce separate tasting rooms where students will bring a deli container of whatever they’re cooking to taste with disposable utensils. There, they’ll discuss with their instructor what adjustments should be made before disposing of the utensils and returning to the kitchen. Both schools say it will take some adjusting, but it’s something the students will eventually get used to. “It takes time and it adds steps, but it feels like a precaution worth taking,” says Liano. “I think it will become a routine that will be pretty easy to execute.”

That is, of course, if students elect to come back. Culinary school enrollment has long been in decline: According to data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), 16,792 culinary school degrees were awarded in 2017, down more than 8,000 compared to numbers from five years before. For many students, the costs associated with attending school (tuition for one undergraduate year at the Culinary Institute of America is more than $36,000; at Johnson & Wales, it’s more than $34,000), coupled with a downturned economy, might mean opting out of completing school altogether. And for both current and potential students, the restaurant industry’s crisis — and the likelihood of a lack of jobs after graduation — might affect decisions. An International Culinary Institute spokesperson says the school’s New York and LA campuses expect a “less than 2 percent withdrawal rate” after COVID-19, noting “students have expressed their desires to return to our campuses and resume their studies as soon as they are permitted to do so.” Weinstein, of Johnson & Wales, offers a slightly more pessimistic post-pandemic look: “We anticipate that the difficulties that our students and their families are facing will translate into future enrollment challenges.”

For those staying put, Sarris says that the New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute is being flexible with students’ timelines for class completion. “We understand that the current situation has a lot of unknowns, so for students who are high-risk when it comes to COVID-19 or who wish to take some time off, we are working with them on a personalized completion plan,” Sarris says. Johnson & Wales is offering undergraduates who are part of the 3,366 students across four campuses that were in lab courses (hands-on classes taught in kitchens) the opportunity to finish their studies in July or in the fall semester, according to Weinstein. Students who were on track to graduate with bachelor’s degrees were offered virtual lecture courses to complete their degrees, Weinstein says, leading to their graduation on time this year.

Looking further ahead, culinary schools are thinking about the trickle-down effects the crisis will have on their curriculums, which will need to be adjusted to prepare students to enter a changed food industry. “How are restaurants going to be staffed? What are menus going to look like? How do businesses balance delivery and dine in? There’s so many questions that we won’t be able to answer yet,” Sands says. “Before we can make changes to the curriculum, we have to see what the industry wants.” But he’s also hopeful that the industry will adapt to its new reality, whatever that may look like. “The demand for restaurants has existed for hundreds of years; you’ve got to give credit to the resiliency of chefs and restaurateurs,” he says. “It’s a big challenge, but I don’t want to undercut the resiliency of the leaders of the food industry.”

Roundtree is also looking to industry leaders and thinking about starting an ice cream sandwich business. Her goals have changed a bit, but she’s sure she wants to stay in the food industry. “Long term, I don’t know if I want to go into education,” she says. “I see myself owning a restaurant and maybe writing a cookbook.”

Korsha Wilson is a food writer and host of A Hungry Society, a podcast that takes a more inclusive look at the food world. She lives in New Jersey.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2UCX5AG https://ift.tt/3d0UgiR

Yuriy Golub/Shutterstock

Culinary schools rely on hands-on training. Can they survive during the pandemic?

The morning of March 13 was normal until the intercom interrupted a discussion during Sarah Roundtree’s fine dining concepts lab at the Providence, Rhode Island, campus of Johnson & Wales. “They made the announcement that campus was shutting down,” she remembers. Roundtree, who graduated from the Charlotte campus of Johnson & Wales with a bachelor of science in culinary arts and food-service management in 2018, was working as a student teacher in the culinary arts program and had no idea what to tell the class about what to do next or when they’d be back. “The students had questions that I couldn’t answer,” she says.

She also didn’t know what it meant for her own studies. Roundtree was in Providence to complete a master of arts in teaching degree with a concentration in culinary arts education, and she was set to graduate in May, with an entry-level job at a restaurant already lined up. Instead, she left campus soon after that announcement, and in the coming weeks, the restaurant rescinded the job offer; it was forced to shut down due to COVID-19.

Today, Roundtree is living in Connecticut with her family, weighing her options for a career in a post-COVID-19 food industry. “Technically, I graduated a week ago,” she says via video call on a recent afternoon. “I’m sure I’ll do a Zoom celebration or something.”

As traditional college campuses shut down in early March, culinary schools followed, vacating their teaching kitchens, classrooms, and on-campus restaurants. But unlike traditional colleges, many of which shifted to online learning, culinary schools have had to contend with moving cooking classes, tactile in nature, to a virtual setting. Most have opted not to, meaning culinary schools and culinary students are stuck in limbo until campuses are cleared to reopen.

San Francisco Cooking School closed its campus March 16 and is not offering virtual learning for cooking courses, effectively putting the current stream of 42 full-time and part-time students on hold. “A hasty pivot to virtual learning didn’t make sense for SFCS because our curriculum is designed around hands-on instruction in a small class environment,” says San Francisco Cooking School founder Jodi Liano. Being in a kitchen-classroom setting ensures students learn to braise, cut, saute, chop, and dice under the tutelage of a trained culinary professional, an environment that’s hard to replicate via video call.

“Cooking is using all five senses,” says Lachlan Sands, campus president for the Institute of Culinary Education. Its campuses in Los Angeles and New York City both closed on March 16, affecting an undisclosed number of students (the school won’t say how many people are currently enrolled). “We believe it’s better to teach culinary arts in a kitchen in person.”

Culinary classes require an infrastructure that’s hard to mimic at home. A typical day of class involves students retrieving whisks, bowls, spoons, mixers, and stock pots from communal storage areas and retrieving ingredients from walk-in refrigerators or pantries to make the dishes that are part of the day’s lessons. Even if basic recipes were provided to students, there’s no guarantee that they would have access to the technology required for video calls. “Most of our students aren’t properly equipped for home study in terms of kitchen equipment, or even access to a kitchen where multiple roommates might be involved,” Liano says. Offering virtual cooking courses that may leave some students behind because of a lack of access, or asking them to venture out to secure ingredients during a pandemic, didn’t seem like the right move. “Simply put,” says Liano, “neither the school nor the students were set up to enable SFCS to fulfill our educational promise through virtual learning.”

Most culinary schools, though, have lecture-style courses for general education and professional studies classes related to specific majors, like menu planning and cost control, foodservice financial systems, food safety, culture, and technical writing; the Institute of Culinary Education, San Francisco Cooking School, Johnson & Wales, and New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute have moved their lecture courses online.

Schools hope to keep their students engaged with cooking during lockdowns, even if not officially for credits. The Institute of Culinary Education started offering cooking demos via Instagram Live with chefs like Marcus Samuelsson and Chris Scott to encourage students to cook along with industry pros. “We really want to get them to try new things and new dishes,” Sands says. But there’s no way to ensure that students are tuning in, and administrators are not monitoring who’s accessing the demos. It’s not a foolproof way of teaching cooking, but it is a way of doing something. “Part of what we can do right now is cultivate an atmosphere of community,” Sands says. San Francisco Cooking School has started a “Conversations With…” Zoom series that connects industry leaders and students via regular calls to “just to get together and talk about things like what they’ve been cooking for friends/family,” Liano says. “Teachers help troubleshoot during these calls, and classmates do the same — it’s been a really nice way to keep them together.”

As many states think about reopening, culinary schools are waiting for the go-ahead to resume classes. Leah Sarris, executive director for New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute, which opened in January of 2019, says the school’s 100-day certificate program moved lecture classes online. Administrators are planning on reopening the campus to “whenever it is safe to do so.” As New Orleans restaurants begin to reopen, NOCHI has a tentative plan “to resume classes whenever the city enters Phase 2,” Sarris says.

Culinary schools are adjusting to adhere to new safety guidelines at both local and federal levels, says Miriam Weinstein, communications director for Johnson & Wales University. Right now the Providence campus is planning on reopening July 6 with class sizes reduced from 18 to 14 students; a requirement that all staff, students, and faculty wear masks; and plexiglass partitions between cooking stations in hands-on classes. Both Johnson & Wales and San Francisco Cooking School will also introduce separate tasting rooms where students will bring a deli container of whatever they’re cooking to taste with disposable utensils. There, they’ll discuss with their instructor what adjustments should be made before disposing of the utensils and returning to the kitchen. Both schools say it will take some adjusting, but it’s something the students will eventually get used to. “It takes time and it adds steps, but it feels like a precaution worth taking,” says Liano. “I think it will become a routine that will be pretty easy to execute.”

That is, of course, if students elect to come back. Culinary school enrollment has long been in decline: According to data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), 16,792 culinary school degrees were awarded in 2017, down more than 8,000 compared to numbers from five years before. For many students, the costs associated with attending school (tuition for one undergraduate year at the Culinary Institute of America is more than $36,000; at Johnson & Wales, it’s more than $34,000), coupled with a downturned economy, might mean opting out of completing school altogether. And for both current and potential students, the restaurant industry’s crisis — and the likelihood of a lack of jobs after graduation — might affect decisions. An International Culinary Institute spokesperson says the school’s New York and LA campuses expect a “less than 2 percent withdrawal rate” after COVID-19, noting “students have expressed their desires to return to our campuses and resume their studies as soon as they are permitted to do so.” Weinstein, of Johnson & Wales, offers a slightly more pessimistic post-pandemic look: “We anticipate that the difficulties that our students and their families are facing will translate into future enrollment challenges.”

For those staying put, Sarris says that the New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute is being flexible with students’ timelines for class completion. “We understand that the current situation has a lot of unknowns, so for students who are high-risk when it comes to COVID-19 or who wish to take some time off, we are working with them on a personalized completion plan,” Sarris says. Johnson & Wales is offering undergraduates who are part of the 3,366 students across four campuses that were in lab courses (hands-on classes taught in kitchens) the opportunity to finish their studies in July or in the fall semester, according to Weinstein. Students who were on track to graduate with bachelor’s degrees were offered virtual lecture courses to complete their degrees, Weinstein says, leading to their graduation on time this year.

Looking further ahead, culinary schools are thinking about the trickle-down effects the crisis will have on their curriculums, which will need to be adjusted to prepare students to enter a changed food industry. “How are restaurants going to be staffed? What are menus going to look like? How do businesses balance delivery and dine in? There’s so many questions that we won’t be able to answer yet,” Sands says. “Before we can make changes to the curriculum, we have to see what the industry wants.” But he’s also hopeful that the industry will adapt to its new reality, whatever that may look like. “The demand for restaurants has existed for hundreds of years; you’ve got to give credit to the resiliency of chefs and restaurateurs,” he says. “It’s a big challenge, but I don’t want to undercut the resiliency of the leaders of the food industry.”

Roundtree is also looking to industry leaders and thinking about starting an ice cream sandwich business. Her goals have changed a bit, but she’s sure she wants to stay in the food industry. “Long term, I don’t know if I want to go into education,” she says. “I see myself owning a restaurant and maybe writing a cookbook.”

Korsha Wilson is a food writer and host of A Hungry Society, a podcast that takes a more inclusive look at the food world. She lives in New Jersey.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2UCX5AG via Blogger https://ift.tt/3fh5nWE

[geek-patient-zero]

Part 2, Chapter 1

Or:  Gratuitous? I'll Show You Gratuitous

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Death Trilogy Volume 1

Before starting Part 2, Robert Weinberg gives us another Edgar Allan Poe quote. This one’s from the short story “Ligeia”.

That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned as no ordinary passion.

Who could this chapter be about, I wonder?

New York, NY—March 14, 1994

The most dangerous woman in the world rose each day with the sun.

She lived in the penthouse suite on top of one of the tallest skyscrapers in New York City. The building, from foundation to lightning rod, belonged to her. Few New Yorkers realized that the owner lived on the premises. Even fewer knew what she looked like or how much she was really worth. None were aware of the other, darker secrets the structure held.

A strong start so far. From here, the chapter will emphasize four things when introducing our new protagonist, Alicia Varney:

She’s super hot

She’s super horny

She loves being alive to a decadent degree

She’s a ruthless and unapologetic member of the 1%

In that order. Look, it’s the 90′s, this is a nerd property, and the story’s talking about a woman. You knew where this was going.

The name “Varney” might be a reference to Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood by either James Malcolm Rymer or Thomas Peckett Prest. It was a penny dreadful vampire story that predated both Carmilla and Dracula and introduced several classic vampire tropes, like fangs that leave two puncture wounds and hypnotic powers. It’s also remembered for being terrible, so it’s maybe not the best story to associate your own book with.

As the sun rises, the light shines through her windows and slowly creeps over her lush carpet to her king-size bed.

It splashed across bright red silk sheets until it crested like a wave on the nude body of the woman sprawled in deep sleep in the middle of the crimson sea.

‘Cause sleeping naked on top of your bed covers is what anyone does when they live in New York City, a hundred floors up, in mid-March.

Her dark hair flared around her head in a halo, the sleeper had the face of an angel. And the body of a devil.

Her features, young and wrinkle-free, glowing pink with perfect health, were those of a twenty-five year old. Her body was taut and lean, well-muscled and deeply bronzed. Firm breasts, long, tapered legs, and flared hips proclaimed her one of those rare beauties who looked exceptional either dressed or undressed.

She must also smell like a gym sock dipped in stale perfume, given that she’s just waking up.

Quick comparison: In Part 1, Chapter 1 we didn’t get a physical description of McCann for about two and a half pages, and when we did all we were told was that he was a “big, broad-shouldered man” along with his height and weight. Before then we learned his name, profession, the situation he was in, what he’d been doing in the recent past and what he’s doing at present, and some exposition about a different character. For Varney, we get some brief hints at her wealth and power before being presented with a Playboy centerfold description three paragraphs into the first page of the chapter.

The sunshine caressed her face, causing the woman to smile in her sleep. Sighing softly, she rolled over, burying her head in the silk.

Varney has a grand old time waking up. She wipes the sleep from her eyes (or as we of the lower classes would describe it, scrapes off the hardened crust gluing her eyelids shut), does some lazy, sensual stretches, and shimmies her shoulders and back against the sheets to enjoy the feeling of them against her skin. After that “face of an angel/body of a devil” stuff it’s not like Weinberg was gonna write her groaning, scratching herself, and farting.

Still, I gotta call bullshit on this next line.

It feels good to be alive, thought Alicia Varney. It feels very good to be alive.

I don’t care who you are, how high your Humanity stat is, or how much you love being alive. No one likes waking up at sunrise.

Varney shuffles herself over to the intercom on her nightstand to alert the help.

“The princess in the tower has arisen,” the young woman declared. Her voice, low and sultry, was as smooth as melted honey.

That’d be the morning phlegm doing that.

She requests her usual breakfast and says she should be out of the shower by the time it arrives. The voice on the other end of the intercom acknowledging her wishes is a guy named Sanford Jackson, and he’s one of those fictional servants who’d be overqualified for their job if their employer was your average rich person. A former Green Beret and CIA troubleshooter, Jackson now serves as Alicia Varney’s manservant, chauffeur, bodyguard, and all-around sidekick.

And emergency cock.

During the rare periods where she was without a lover, he handled that job with reasonable competency as well.

“Reasonable competency,” hmm? Can’t tell if that’s a playfully coy way of saying he’s an excellent lover or a polite way of saying he’s meh.

Whatever his sexual skill level, the thought of Jackson’s “hard, muscular body” excites Varney. For the past few nights she’s been going through one of those previously mentioned rare loverless periods.

It was a situation she meant to remedy as soon as possible. Alicia Varney squeezed every drop of pleasure possible out of life. She did not like being denied anything for very long.

Still, she’s not quite desperate enough to fuck the help yet. Smart, since you don’t want a henchman in your stable getting too attached. It could also be evidence for the second of my two theories about Jackson’s Athletics ability.

Varney jumps into the shower, and as expected the narration doesn’t waste time on mundane actions like her scrubbing her armpits or rinsing the dandruff off of her scalp. Nor does Weinberg do the average male author thing of writing the woman doing an exotic dance in the shower while describing the water running down this curve and that tit. Nah, he skips all that and has Varney just go for it.

A few minutes under hot, pulsating streams of water, along with a session with the magnificent detachable shower nozzle, would serve for the moment.

You could give Weinberg credit for writing a woman masturbating for her own pleasure, rather than as foreplay or to show how lonely, pathetic, and manless she is, but keep in mind Varney’s only doing it because she didn’t have the real thing at the moment.

But self-stimulation was no substitute for the real thing. Later today she would go on the prowl. She needed a man.

We’ve only known Alicia Varney for two pages and I’ve read more about her struggling with her libido than I have Kindred with their inner Beasts since the start of the book.

When she steps out of the shower, Jackson has her breakfast prepared in her penthouse.

Dressed in a totally transparent dressing robe (because of course she is), Alicia nodded in satisfaction at the three slices of cinnamon French toast, selection of imported fruit jellies, pot of coffee, and copy of the Wall Street Journal.

This is very relatable to me. I, too, start my day by eating the Wall Street Journal.

She asks Jackson if she has any messages. He says she has a few, but nothing important enough to deal with before breakfast. He stands at attention nearby as she eats, and thanks to that transparent robe he does so literally and euphemistically.

Old habits died hard, Jackson never rested easy in the presence of his commanding officer. He always stood at rigid attention in Alicia’s presence. Though he couldn’t help sneak sideways glances at her firm breasts tightly pressed against the thin material of her gown.

I can guess why he ain’t with the CIA anymore.

As the former Green Beret tries to get his privates to stand at ease, Varney sets up her breakfast the way she likes it. Then she eats it the way you’d expect a hedonistic immortal billionaire to: like an asshole.

She feasted slowly, savoring each bite much like a condemned convict eating his last meal. Alicia rarely hurried doing anything. Eating, drinking, sleeping, making love,

using the bathroom, getting money from the ATM, deciding what to order at the drive-through,

she did them all at a controlled, measured pace that defined her existence. She believed in devouring her pleasures mouthful by mouthful, chewing them to a fine pulp, then swallowing. She was never in a rush. She had all the time in the world.

The WSJ doesn’t have anything in it that Varney hadn’t already learned from the better contacts her billions can afford her. This is typical even though reading the paper remains a part of her morning routine. Maybe so her sexy manservant won’t dare to try and start a conversation with her?

The mention of her billions leads to us learning more about the earnings of her company, Varney Enterprises, one of the largest corporation on Earth. Nothing about what services or products the company actually sells, though.

Estimating its actual worth was impossible, but corporate yearly reported income was more than the gross national product of many small countries. And that did not include funds from the company’s more profitable but quite illegal secret enterprises.

Someone’s muscling in on Cyberpunk 2020′s territory.

Eventually Varney puts down the paper, surely confident that Jackson won’t suddenly ask about her feelings, and gazes out the window. She lives in a skyscraper’s penthouse and the weather’s clear enough to see “for miles and miles,” and you’d think she’d admire the sight of New York City at sunrise. Instead, she looks toward New Jersey.

Her sharp gaze traveled past the slums of Tenth Avenue and the Bowery and across the polluted green and brown waters of the Hudson River. Beyond the river were the moldering Hoboken docks and the huge toxic waste dumps that had earned the town the nickname “the cancer capital of America.” At the edge of her vision, Alicia could catch sight of the crumbling coastal palisades that guarded the New Jersey swamps.

The World of Darkness is a Harsher, Crueler Version of Our World; a Stark, Desolate Landscape where Nothing is as it Seems. So obviously nothing about New Jersey changed.

The view makes Varney feel like “a medieval princess in her tower surrounded by a world of peasants.” The narration explains America’s social situation in the World of Darkness: The rich are like aristocracy, there’s no true middle class, just rich and poor. Same old, same old. And while Varney has a history that should give her a unique and profound view on this social problem, the only conclusion she’d come to is that being rich is better.

Having experienced both extreme poverty and extreme prosperity many times in her life, Alicia knew without question that incredible affluence was the better of the two.

Wise words, Upton Sinclair.

She reveled in her riches, her lifestyle, and, most of all, in the physical sensations of life itself. There was no way she would give up any of it. For anyone or any cause.

Now with a set-up like that, you could normally predict a character’s arc. This time I have my doubts, as extremely long lived immortal characters tend to be set in their ways, but we’ll see.

(Spoiler: There's only one damn character in this trilogy who grows, and it's not this one.)

Oh, right. If you haven’t figured it out yet, Alicia Varney is actually Anis, Lameth’s former conspirator and lover, or whatever the ancient Mesopotamian term for “friend with benefits” was. It’s not revealed for another two chapters, but it’s obvious, so...

Having reflected on how the hardships she experienced over the millennia have taught her absolutely nothing beyond “fuck you, got mine”, Varney starts feeling philosophical. She asks Jackson if he can imagine living without the sun. Unfortunately the guy’s a bit of a dumbass when it comes to this sort of thing. Or so we’re told.

“Pardon, Miss?” Jackson was poised, bright, and articulate. He did not, however, possess an imagination. He viewed the world in terms of blacks and whites, positives and negatives. A wonderful bodyguard and right-hand man, he was less satisfactory as a conversationalist.

Jesus, all he said was “pardon.” No need to insult the guy’s worldview or conversational skills just yet.

She paused, gathering her thoughts. “Have you ever given any thought to what it would be like enduring in a world of eternal darkness. (I see what you almost did there, Mr. Weinberg) Without hope of ever seeing sunlight again?”

The big lug thinks she’s talking about being blind.

“Can’t say I have, Miss Varney. During the war, I trained wearing a blindfold, learning how to rely on my other senses if my eyes were injured.

Jackson’s secretly a kung fu movie protagonist.

But that never happened. I’ve been lucky that way. Always had perfect vision.”

Alicia sighed. She wondered why she bothered. With a shake of her head, she tried one last time.

“Big bright light in sky. What if... could kill you? Can only do awake things when big bright light go sleep at dark time? You like?”

But seriously. Varney tells Jackson to imagine he caught a theoretical disease that would kill him if he were exposed to sunlight, and cost him the ability to enjoy “physical pleasures” like eating and drinking. Never again able to see the sun, to eat or drink. Would he go mad? Would he adapt, if he even could.

Jackson finally figures out that his boss is talking about vampires, like the ones she deals with at a place called The Devil’s Playground.

“Became one of those vampire things who spend all their time plotting against each other? Or haunt the streets, drinking the blood from bums who don’t have a place to hide.”

“They are not prime examples of the Kindred,” said Alicia. “But close enough.”

Nah, that’s an accurate description of your average WOD vampire, even the older low-gen ones Varney no doubt thinks of as prime examples (and secretly is).

“It wouldn’t make a difference to me, Miss. I’m a survivor. I enjoy my food and drink,” his eyes widened suggestively, “and my lovemaking.

“Uuuuuuuugh,” groaned Alicia as she once again regrets banging him.

Can’t say I’d be thrilled if I had to live without them. But I ain’t quite ready for the great beyond, if you catch my meaning. If I had to drink some blood to stay around, I’d do it in an instant. Did worse in the war, ma’am. Lot worse once or twice. Survival ain’t pretty, Miss Varney. Still, death is awful final.”

“You are a practical fellow, Mr. Jackson,” said Alicia.

Me, I would’ve asked him to clarify on the war crimes and possible cannibalism he just admitted to, but fine, let’s go with practical.

Varney concludes that she sometimes thinks an eternity of darkness is no better than a short life followed by death, and Jackson can’t really understand because “Mankind is born of the sun” (not me though, I was born after nine o’clock PM) and “Humans are truly heirs of the morning.” Jackson counters by saying he’d heard vampires being called the Children of the Night. Varney says that’s poetic, but very true, proving that neither of these two idiots had watched the damn movie. Dracula was talking about wolves. If anything, werewolves are the Children of the Night. Vampires are more like the Stuffy Old Dudes or Moody Teenagers of the Night, depending on the story.

That was all a fancy way of them agreeing to disagree. The conversation ended, Varney stands up and reminds us that she’s not so much wearing a robe as a big sheet of Saran wrap.

She rose to her feet, grinning as her assistant’s expression froze, his thoughts as transparent as her robe. “Keep hoping, Mr. Jackson,” Alicia purred as she walked to the huge closets that covered one entire wall of her bedroom. “If I don’t find a candidate to satisfy my carnal desires within the next few days, I will be forced to rely on your services. I’m positive you will rise to the occasion.”

“Yes, ma’am. I will have an erection for you when the time comes.”

“...Mr. Jackson. We’ve talked about you explaining my wordplay.”

“...?”

“That you shouldn’t.”

“Of course, Miss Varney,” said Jackson politely. “I’ll try my best.”

“That will be quite satisfactory, I’m sure,” said Alicia.

It’s more clearly playful than the last time Jackson’s fuckin’ skills were brought up, but the fact that he still has to wait a few days before his boss gives up and settles for him still makes me doubt his ability to please.

This reminds me of some Spider-Man history. Do you know why Spidey’s relationship with Black Cat didn’t work back in the day? It’s because while she was in love with the mysterious, wise-cracking and crime fighting Spider-Man, she had absolutely no interest in boring old sad sack Peter Parker. Sure, he was dating this incredibly beautiful lady, but the nature of the relationship meant his self-esteem was at rock bottom.

The situations are different, but the results are similar enough. Jackson occasionally gets to have sex with his gorgeous and seductive boss, but she straight up tells him she’ll only do it if she’s going through an extended sexual drought and can’t find a different boy toy, and she’s too coy to straight up say whether or not she enjoys those rare times with him. It makes me wonder about poor Jackson’s mental health. That and that war time cannibalism he mentioned earlier.

Ah well. Next chapter we learn that Varney pays him enough for her to have no doubts about his loyalty, so he has that going for him at least.

Speaking of paying him enough to deal with her bullshit, as Varney enters one of her closets she orders Jackson to bring up her messages and Sumohn, her pet panther she hasn’t seen in several days. Not only is Alicia Varney a selfish corpo yuppie, she’s one of those people who thinks it’s a good idea to own an exotic animal.

Jackson blanched. His big hands clenched into fists as he scowled at Alicia.

Even her boner-addled henchman is judging her.

“That beast is dangerous, Miss Varney. Black Panthers aren’t made to be household pets. Not even for ladies like you.”

“Nonsense,” said Alicia, her tone of voice brooking no disagreement. “I can assure you that Sumohn is incapable of harming me. I repeat, Mr. Jackson, incapable. We have had this conversation before and it does not please me to repeat it again. The subject is closed.”

Jackson relents, understanding who writes the checks and provides the magic pussy. He says he’ll send word to the kennel, because of course the ignorant billionaire keeps the poor wild animal in a kennel. Following this is what I think they nowadays call a #girlboss moment, but I’m a little out of touch when it comes to cancelled Netflix shows and the social and anti-corporation essays they inspire. It’s the 90′s so let’s call it a Girl Power moment.

“You’re getting better, Jackson,” said Alicia, with a laugh. “But you’re still not perfect. I run my life the way I want. You worry about my business rivals sending assassins after me. I’ll worry about Sumohn.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Jackson, his tone of voice indicating he thought his employer was crazy. “You’re the boss.”

“Exactly,” said Alicia. “Now go.”

Alright, Robert Weinberg, I believe you. Alicia Varney is a Strong Female Character and not the result of typing one handed.

The gimp goes down to warn the kennel people while Miss Varney gets dressed. Now, this is a young rich woman getting ready to take her pet out for walkies. It’s an... eccentric choice of pet, but still. You’d expect her to wear something trendy but casual enough to sweat in. But this is vampire fiction, so she’s gotta dress a little more extra than that. She puts on a long black velvet skirt, the Seinfeld puffy shirt a frilly white blouse, and, get this, a black toreador jacket. In this one case, it’s “toreador” as in a bullfighter, not an undead hack artist.

No word on whether or not Varney’s jacket has epaulettes, but I choose to believe they do.

She completes the look with a black beret worn at a “jaunty angle”, so that by the time Jackson gets back she looks like the french foreign exchange student from a 90′s high school movie.

(The only thing we were told about McCann’s wardrobe was that he wears a topcoat.)

Jackson came back with a folder full of documents and word from the kennel that the panther’ll be up in a few minutes. Varney can’t help but snark at Jackson one more time about his earlier common sense argument with her.

“At least they understand the wisdom of not arguing with me,” said Alicia, thumbing through the documents.

Making anonymous calls to the ASPCA, on the other hand...

Halfway through reading her messages, she learns some bad news about Russia. The Shadow Curtain has affected the country’s economic plans as well as secret vampire crap. Now we learn how Miss “I Run My Life the Way I Want”, earlier described as someone who “did not like being denied anything for very long,” reacts to being told she can’t have something.

Not well, as you guessed.

“The Russians refuse to let our people into the country? What the hell is happening there? It doesn’t make sense. Varney Enterprises has been doing business with the Communists since 1919. Did that fool in charge, Andropov, give any reason for the abrupt change in policy? I thought we were bribing the miserable son of a bitch plenty.”

She’s most likely referring to Yuri Andropov, third General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and, as of ‘94, someone who had been dead for ten years. I can’t find anything about him being a secret vampire who faked his death and ruled from behind the scenes, so Alicia Varney hasn’t been paying attention for the past decade. 

She also seems to think the USSR’s still a thing when it fell three years ago. I don’t think WOD is one of those fictional universes where the Soviet Union stuck around. That only happens in things like Star Trek, which came out before the Soviet Union fell but takes place in the future and made the wrong prediction about Russia’s. It’d be a waste anyway. There’s plenty of darkness and misery to be found in post-Cold War Russia.

Jackson informs her that rather than dying of renal failure in the 80′s, Andropov has vanished without a trace, along with other people they’d been dealing with in the country, thanks to either Boris Yeltsin or the true power behind Old Drinky. They’d been eliminating the “Old Guard” and replacing them with their own people. Either a reference to the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis or just ”business as usual”. In any case:

“They’ve made it absolutely clear that foreigners are no longer welcome into the country. And that includes us.”

No McDonald’s for World of Darkness Moscow.

“Fuck,” said Alicia harshly. “That move is going to cost us millions. We spent years setting up that network in the Soviet Republics. It can’t crash just become some reformer has taken charge. I refuse to believe it. Russia doesn’t work that way.”

This is the second big change Russia has gone through in less than a century. Nothing stays the same forever. Countries and cultures change. You’d think an immortal would know this.

Jackson says that “things have changed drastically in the past few months,” and their agents, presumably the ones that haven’t become Nictuku food yet, delivered some disturbing rumors about Yeltsin’s secret advisors.

“Word is that to consolidate his position, he’s cut deals with some awfully ruthless characters.”

“Ruthless?” Repeated Alicia. “What’s new about that in Russia? Those bastards are colder than ice. They’d murder their own children and sell the bodies for medical research if it paid enough.”

The urge to include a vodka crack in that rant must have been so strong that if this were the tabletop it would’ve needed a dice roll to resist.

Unfortunately, no one knows the exact truth. Jackson says that despite all the talk, anyone who gets too close to the real truth disappears.

“I’ve studied the reports from the past twelve months.”

This has been going on for a year and you’re only now telling the head of the corporation?

“The closest thing we have to actual facts are several garbled reports of a gigantic old bitch with iron teeth and iron claws meeting late at night with the Premier.”

That sobers Varney up immediately. Or gives her a stroke. You decide.

Alicia froze, her mouth open in stunned surprise. All the color drained from her face, leaving her white as a ghost. Her eyes clouded, as if focusing on something deep within her mind. She stood unmoving, like a statue, for nearly a minute. Then her jaw snapped shut and she ground her teeth together.

“The hag,” she murmured, as if dredging a name out of her subconscious. “The iron hag.”

If Yeltsin had been in league with a powerful witch of legend in real life, I think he’d be remembered more fondly.

Jackson asks her what she means but she snaps out of it and dismisses it as remembering a story from her childhood. Then the elevator arrives and her mood brightens. Sure, Baba fucking Yaga is messing with her bottom line, but right now, KITTY!!!

She turned just as a short, swarthy man (oh for fuck’s sake) entered the parlor. Accompanying him, barely controlled by the steel chain leash around its throat and jaws, was a huge black panther.

The poor thing’s not even wearing a muzzle. They just wrapped a chain around its mouth.

She squees about how much she missed her giant baby as she rushes toward it to run her fingers through its neck fur.

The beast growled, a deep rumbling sound that Alicia insisted was its way of purring.

Oh surprise of surprises, the exotic animal owner knows jack shit about it. The largest species of cat that can purr are cougars. You can argue that some of the noises big cats like jaguars and leopards can make are equivalents to meowing, but I can tell you from experience that cats only meow when they want something, like food, or to bite your throat out and escape because you took it from its natural habitat and regularly stick it in a kennel for days in a row.

(Black panthers are jaguars and leopards with black fur, not a separate species, but we aren’t told which of the two Sumohn is. Cougars are sometimes called panthers, but there aren’t any with black fur, they’re smaller and, despite what the Red Dead Redemption games would tell you, they aren’t as deadly to humans as the actual big cats, and thus aren’t as impressive a thing for a sexy rich immortal to own.)

“Glad to see me too, huh?” said Alicia, scratching the monstrous panther behind the ears.

Yellow eyes stared deep into Alicia’s dark blue ones. The billionairess nodded, as if in reply to an unstated question. It appeared as if the animal and human were communicating by telepathy.

When it comes to animals, vampires are like ghosts and killer robots; animals can sense they aren’t human and freak out. A way around this for vampires here is ghouling the animal. It's heavily implied in Blood War, and will eventually be explained in the third book, that Sumohn is a ghouled animal, which makes it both a superpowered mutant cat and completely loyal to it's master. I also figure that Varney knows the Animalism discipline, which at its most basic allows vampires to communicate with and control animals. The first tier power, Feral Speech, allows one to do exactly what Varney did just now: communicate with animals telepathically if you look them right in the eye. The name of the power wasn’t mentioned, but that same thing happened many chapters ago with Vargoss’ Dominate attempt. There’re also Animalism powers that allow you to summon an animal, sooth its anger, and even possess it; all useful abilities to have if you’ve got a goddamn panther. Animalism isn’t a Brujah power, associated instead with Gangrel, Nosferatu, Ravnos, and, unfortunately for the animal, Tzimisce. But over the millenia old Anis could have learned it from a member of one of those clans. Varney orders Jackson to find out more about what’s going on in Russia by this evening. She tells him to call their people in the State Department and have them check with the CIA, a “subtle” example of her influence. Right now, it’s time for walkies.

“Sumohn’s tired of being kept in a cage. She needs exercise.”

Then don’t keep it in a fucking cage! There’s a reason zoos don’t do that anymore!

They’re headed for Prospect Heights in Brooklyn, to Jackson’s dismay. In this world, New York City has gotten even worse than it was in the 70′s. Here’s what he says about Prospect Heights.

“Prospect Heights isn’t safe. The police have declared it off-limits to civilians. Last week they threw in the towel and stopped patrolling the grounds, even during the daytime. Squad cars won’t enter, even if they spot a murder taking place. Too many gangs and psychos hide in those woods, all armed with heavy artillery and anxious for a chance of blowing away some cops.

“The mayor washed his hands of the whole situation. He called the park a national disgrace. The city council wanted the national guard called out to clean up the place. But the legislature vetoed the funds.”

Jackson shrugged his shoulders. No fan of politics, he was a strict believer in justice delivered from the muzzle of an automatic. ”No way Republicans are going to help a Democratic administration. Meanwhile, the park is a free-fire zone. You’ll be taking your life in your own hands if you go in there.”

What I believe he’s saying here is that The Warriors is canon to Vampire: The Masquerade. Deep down, I think I always knew that.

Varney laughs off the danger. Sumohn will protect her.

As if responding to her mistress’ comments, the panther growled. Despite the big cat’s mouth being muzzled by steel chains, it was a terrifying sound.

Fine, I get it, the panther loves her owner back. But still, GET HER A REAL MUZZLE! ONE THAT KEEPS THE PEOPLE AROUND HER SAFE BUT IS COMFORTABLE FOR THE PANTHER! YOU CAN OBVIOUSLY AFFORD ONE!

How do you even wrap a chain around a panther’s jaws without losing a hand? Christ!

“I hope she can catch slugs with her teeth,” said Jackson.

And take out enough creepy mute baseball bat-wielding psychos before you’re both overwhelmed.

Varney insists she’ll be fine and tells Jackson to focus on Russia. She’ll be back in a few hours. After all, she’s got evening plans at the Devil’s Playground.

“Alert the usual spies. It’s going to be a hot night.”

Which was more true than she could imagine.

[abcsecuritysolution]

3 Most Common Issues Related To Intercom System Repair

For any residential or commercial building, intercom systems can be installed to get benefited from some specific functions. These systems enhance the security of the building, save time and can be highly useful for people when an individual needs to talk to another individual in a different room/area in the same building. Even when intercoms are so useful devices, they also come with some major flaws. We are going to discuss these common issues associated with intercom and also tell you ways by which you can address those taking help from a New York intercom troubleshooting service. Let’s get into that.

Failure of power supply: A power supply failure can render your intercom useless forever (in worst case scenarios). Power failures can be a part of a bigger problem where issues such as static may also play an active role. The good news is that this particular issue does not occur all at once. The system is smart enough to tell you that some kind of power failure may occur sometime in near future and you should remain careful about that. The warning sign can be in the form of humming or static sounds. To remain in the safe side, take assistance from an expert.

Static issues: This is probably the most common intercom system issue that you are going to hear. If the intercom is inflicted with this issue, you can hear it from the speaker or microphone of the device. The causes are: A bad connection because of using old or worn-out parts, loose wire or bad switch, interference, poor power connection, and short circuit. While it may seem easy to take care of static issues, it is advisable that you get assistance from an expert as DIY solutions may further escalate the issue.

Humming noise: This is not a desirable sound from an intercom system. It means there’s something wrong with the system and you need to work on repairing that before it gets too late.

Before calling an expert for wireless video intercom in New York or elsewhere for the aforementioned issues, it is always a good idea to look at the troubleshooting guide and see if something can be done for the same.

[easyfoodnetwork]

Yuriy Golub/Shutterstock Culinary schools rely on hands-on training. Can they survive during the pandemic? The morning of March 13 was normal until the intercom interrupted a discussion during Sarah Roundtree’s fine dining concepts lab at the Providence, Rhode Island, campus of Johnson & Wales. “They made the announcement that campus was shutting down,” she remembers. Roundtree, who graduated from the Charlotte campus of Johnson & Wales with a bachelor of science in culinary arts and food-service management in 2018, was working as a student teacher in the culinary arts program and had no idea what to tell the class about what to do next or when they’d be back. “The students had questions that I couldn’t answer,” she says. She also didn’t know what it meant for her own studies. Roundtree was in Providence to complete a master of arts in teaching degree with a concentration in culinary arts education, and she was set to graduate in May, with an entry-level job at a restaurant already lined up. Instead, she left campus soon after that announcement, and in the coming weeks, the restaurant rescinded the job offer; it was forced to shut down due to COVID-19. Today, Roundtree is living in Connecticut with her family, weighing her options for a career in a post-COVID-19 food industry. “Technically, I graduated a week ago,” she says via video call on a recent afternoon. “I’m sure I’ll do a Zoom celebration or something.” As traditional college campuses shut down in early March, culinary schools followed, vacating their teaching kitchens, classrooms, and on-campus restaurants. But unlike traditional colleges, many of which shifted to online learning, culinary schools have had to contend with moving cooking classes, tactile in nature, to a virtual setting. Most have opted not to, meaning culinary schools and culinary students are stuck in limbo until campuses are cleared to reopen. San Francisco Cooking School closed its campus March 16 and is not offering virtual learning for cooking courses, effectively putting the current stream of 42 full-time and part-time students on hold. “A hasty pivot to virtual learning didn’t make sense for SFCS because our curriculum is designed around hands-on instruction in a small class environment,” says San Francisco Cooking School founder Jodi Liano. Being in a kitchen-classroom setting ensures students learn to braise, cut, saute, chop, and dice under the tutelage of a trained culinary professional, an environment that’s hard to replicate via video call. “Cooking is using all five senses,” says Lachlan Sands, campus president for the Institute of Culinary Education. Its campuses in Los Angeles and New York City both closed on March 16, affecting an undisclosed number of students (the school won’t say how many people are currently enrolled). “We believe it’s better to teach culinary arts in a kitchen in person.” Culinary classes require an infrastructure that’s hard to mimic at home. A typical day of class involves students retrieving whisks, bowls, spoons, mixers, and stock pots from communal storage areas and retrieving ingredients from walk-in refrigerators or pantries to make the dishes that are part of the day’s lessons. Even if basic recipes were provided to students, there’s no guarantee that they would have access to the technology required for video calls. “Most of our students aren’t properly equipped for home study in terms of kitchen equipment, or even access to a kitchen where multiple roommates might be involved,” Liano says. Offering virtual cooking courses that may leave some students behind because of a lack of access, or asking them to venture out to secure ingredients during a pandemic, didn’t seem like the right move. “Simply put,” says Liano, “neither the school nor the students were set up to enable SFCS to fulfill our educational promise through virtual learning.” Most culinary schools, though, have lecture-style courses for general education and professional studies classes related to specific majors, like menu planning and cost control, foodservice financial systems, food safety, culture, and technical writing; the Institute of Culinary Education, San Francisco Cooking School, Johnson & Wales, and New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute have moved their lecture courses online. Schools hope to keep their students engaged with cooking during lockdowns, even if not officially for credits. The Institute of Culinary Education started offering cooking demos via Instagram Live with chefs like Marcus Samuelsson and Chris Scott to encourage students to cook along with industry pros. “We really want to get them to try new things and new dishes,” Sands says. But there’s no way to ensure that students are tuning in, and administrators are not monitoring who’s accessing the demos. It’s not a foolproof way of teaching cooking, but it is a way of doing something. “Part of what we can do right now is cultivate an atmosphere of community,” Sands says. San Francisco Cooking School has started a “Conversations With…” Zoom series that connects industry leaders and students via regular calls to “just to get together and talk about things like what they’ve been cooking for friends/family,” Liano says. “Teachers help troubleshoot during these calls, and classmates do the same — it’s been a really nice way to keep them together.” As many states think about reopening, culinary schools are waiting for the go-ahead to resume classes. Leah Sarris, executive director for New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute, which opened in January of 2019, says the school’s 100-day certificate program moved lecture classes online. Administrators are planning on reopening the campus to “whenever it is safe to do so.” As New Orleans restaurants begin to reopen, NOCHI has a tentative plan “to resume classes whenever the city enters Phase 2,” Sarris says. Culinary schools are adjusting to adhere to new safety guidelines at both local and federal levels, says Miriam Weinstein, communications director for Johnson & Wales University. Right now the Providence campus is planning on reopening July 6 with class sizes reduced from 18 to 14 students; a requirement that all staff, students, and faculty wear masks; and plexiglass partitions between cooking stations in hands-on classes. Both Johnson & Wales and San Francisco Cooking School will also introduce separate tasting rooms where students will bring a deli container of whatever they’re cooking to taste with disposable utensils. There, they’ll discuss with their instructor what adjustments should be made before disposing of the utensils and returning to the kitchen. Both schools say it will take some adjusting, but it’s something the students will eventually get used to. “It takes time and it adds steps, but it feels like a precaution worth taking,” says Liano. “I think it will become a routine that will be pretty easy to execute.” That is, of course, if students elect to come back. Culinary school enrollment has long been in decline: According to data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), 16,792 culinary school degrees were awarded in 2017, down more than 8,000 compared to numbers from five years before. For many students, the costs associated with attending school (tuition for one undergraduate year at the Culinary Institute of America is more than $36,000; at Johnson & Wales, it’s more than $34,000), coupled with a downturned economy, might mean opting out of completing school altogether. And for both current and potential students, the restaurant industry’s crisis — and the likelihood of a lack of jobs after graduation — might affect decisions. An International Culinary Institute spokesperson says the school’s New York and LA campuses expect a “less than 2 percent withdrawal rate” after COVID-19, noting “students have expressed their desires to return to our campuses and resume their studies as soon as they are permitted to do so.” Weinstein, of Johnson & Wales, offers a slightly more pessimistic post-pandemic look: “We anticipate that the difficulties that our students and their families are facing will translate into future enrollment challenges.” For those staying put, Sarris says that the New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute is being flexible with students’ timelines for class completion. “We understand that the current situation has a lot of unknowns, so for students who are high-risk when it comes to COVID-19 or who wish to take some time off, we are working with them on a personalized completion plan,” Sarris says. Johnson & Wales is offering undergraduates who are part of the 3,366 students across four campuses that were in lab courses (hands-on classes taught in kitchens) the opportunity to finish their studies in July or in the fall semester, according to Weinstein. Students who were on track to graduate with bachelor’s degrees were offered virtual lecture courses to complete their degrees, Weinstein says, leading to their graduation on time this year. Looking further ahead, culinary schools are thinking about the trickle-down effects the crisis will have on their curriculums, which will need to be adjusted to prepare students to enter a changed food industry. “How are restaurants going to be staffed? What are menus going to look like? How do businesses balance delivery and dine in? There’s so many questions that we won’t be able to answer yet,” Sands says. “Before we can make changes to the curriculum, we have to see what the industry wants.” But he’s also hopeful that the industry will adapt to its new reality, whatever that may look like. “The demand for restaurants has existed for hundreds of years; you’ve got to give credit to the resiliency of chefs and restaurateurs,” he says. “It’s a big challenge, but I don’t want to undercut the resiliency of the leaders of the food industry.” Roundtree is also looking to industry leaders and thinking about starting an ice cream sandwich business. Her goals have changed a bit, but she’s sure she wants to stay in the food industry. “Long term, I don’t know if I want to go into education,” she says. “I see myself owning a restaurant and maybe writing a cookbook.” Korsha Wilson is a food writer and host of A Hungry Society, a podcast that takes a more inclusive look at the food world. She lives in New Jersey. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2UCX5AG

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/06/just-like-restaurants-culinary-schools.html