It begins
And just like that, the long, uncomfortable process of keeping a personal blog begins. Hi, I’m Niko (you can call me that or Nikos or Nick or Disco, whatever is easiest for you, don’t worry about it) and long story short I am a university dropout who quit in order to pursue a career in the cooking/baking world. From about the beginning of 2016 up until October 2018. Due to injury to my spine (herniated disc pressuring the sciatic nerve) I had to quit my job and seek re-education in another field. I was an engineering and business administration student prior to this in Loughborough University and KULeuven respectively. I have always found myself far more comfortable working with/around computers so when a close friend of mine was about to start a new one-year course in Java development, I followed him through the registration process which included 3 days of lessons and a test on the 4th day. I was told that due to there being an unusual amount of people with some experience with Java, the few seats that they had were given to those that scored highest, even though I had achieved a decent grade. That’s when I caught the second bug of my life: coding. I found another course that begins in mid-April, although it is in Ruby and focuses more on web (and app, kinda) development but thankfully it is in English, unlike the Java course where I found that the people there had a hard time understanding my semi-broken flemmish and alien accent. It was surprising to see how frustrating it can be to not be understood.
I have created this page in order to document that journey and everything revolves around it like side projects on java on codecademy, epiphanies and whatever else comes along with it. The idea is to develop an idea that I have had for an app during my time in the pastry business. Failing that, I will find a job as a junior developer, hopefully.
There has been odd sets of circumstances and events that have led to this point. If you are curious to find out, read on. If you don’t wanna be attacked by another huge wall of text avert your eyes now!
Back in the end of 2015, I was initially working as a part-time deal for funds while being a student, but I fell in love with the work, the intensity and funnily enough the stress of it. I quit my studies 3 months in, and took on every contract they offered me. These were at most week contracts for interim work and I believe the official title was either cook or cook’s helper. After about two years of this, I was sent to a client who was making these incredible structures from pastries. Choux “glued” together with caramel towering above the guests, tartes tatins as far as the eye could see while also the pâtissiers, who were all working in a synchronous rhythm.
I was mesmerised. I knew I had to at least learn the basics.
When it had come to regular kitchen work, I was very fortunate to have learned from my mother how to cook from a very young age. Being the youngest, I usually would come home first, having to wait for my sisters to finish their classes and my parents to return from work. My poor mother at the time had been working almost every day of her life since she was 15. I would call her a woman who had to be a superwoman in her times in order to achieve what she has achieved, both professionally and in her private life. She would have food ready for all of us in pots and casseroles when we came from school, but I was not a very patient child. I would eat half of the food that was available, at first stunning my family but later aggravating them slightly. So, instead of my mother having to cook more quantities and spending more etc, I decided I would cook for myself something extra. It’s very funny to me still, how children don’t have any self-doubt when they set a goal. If I wanted to eat more than the rest, I had to cook something more. The early days are mostly a blur of Greek, Italian, Turkish, French recipes. I couldn’t seem to stick to one, since we had shelves full of books to choose from. Eventually, I found my favourites and would endlessly perfect them over the years with each iteration.
But when it came to baking, to me it was a whole other world. You can fuck up a recipe and many points in regular cooking and you can quite easily remedy them at many, if not all, stages of the process. With baking, however, the margin for error seemed to be unforgiving. It would be the ultimate test of ability: preparing something to perfection, every single time, in order to provide a consistency and quality that I had not seen before.
I asked for a small raise after working for that interim company for 2 years and was denied. I basically asked 1-2 euros more per hour, seeing as I was accepting the jobs with asshole clients that no one would take. Since I never said no, always did what was asked, covered for my colleagues when they made a mistake. Accepting the blame for something that I knew exactly who had done it, but choosing not to make a big deal of it and rather keep my head down and work harder, faster. I must say to this day, that really surprised me. Kitchens environments in general are as bad as they seem in television. The people who work there are uncultured or uneducated most of the time, the level of humour is very, very low. I had thought I had a great relationship with my boss and the many planners we have had. Many of whom I had saved their ass when they double-booked someone or had no one available (or willing) to take on the jobs with lazy clients. So I wrote myself in a 6 month crash course in baking much faster than I had expected.
It was a government funded program intended to help those who were seeking re-education in another field. During that program I did my internship at a local bakery where in the area I had just moved in to. While I may not have been treated as a real employee there all of the time and was given a lot of crap for being the young new guy (which, honestly, is understandable and common in many kitchen environments) I loved every second of working there, even on the bad days. I learned more there than I ever could have at any other educational facility. Most importantly, I lost a part of my innocence and gained more self respect. Unfortunately, being the young new guy, I always found that I had to work as fast as possible and as hard as possible (even though while I did that, I was nowhere near the level of skill of my colleagues or my boss). Which in turn meant that I didn’t always lift things properly, lifted things that I probably shouldn’t have (in order to save time or to avoid bending over every time). I first started feeling the pain on a flight as the plane was taking off and my lower back was pressed on the corner of the seat. Still kept working, thinking it was just a mild sciatica, but it became worse. I never took a break from my job during that time, seeing osteopaths for a quick 30 minute session during work and then returning back to the workshop immediately to continue working. That’s the deal with small businesses like that. We were only 4 people working in the production and that meant that if any one of us was absent, we were fucked in the sense that we would have to pull off a 18+ hour day rather than the usual 10-13 hour day and still being behind schedule. I loved most moments of it though but the pain was getting worse and worse until eventually I was stuck to the floor while emptying the dishwasher. One CT scan later I find out that I have a badly herniated disc on the L5S1 (right side). My boss was understandably not happy about this.
At the same exact time, I had been living with an old colleague from when I was an interim cook. He had many demons he had been avoiding to face over the years, always avoiding his problems with cocaine or other hard drugs and a lot of alcohol. At some point, the housemate had a mental breakdown and came to the conclusion that the people who had stood by him over the years where not worthy of his friendship (this coming from him that would always avoid his friends because he was never in a mood to talk to them just because he was in a funk all the time). I was evicted and forced to move out with no help of his, even though he knew about my back. I begrudgingly moved back to my parents place with the help of a close friend and have been living here ever since (November 2018).
Since then I am following online courses and also in-person courses concerning programming.
So there, now we have come full circle. Onward now to much, much shorter (maybe even daily depending on if I feel like it, I don’t know..) updates.
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Blondie on a Budget (1940)
11:31 PM, Wednesday, 2 October 2019
Here we go again. What are we watching this time? Let’s see…
Blondie on a Budget.
LET’S GET HYPED Y’ALL READY FOR-
Nah I can’t get into that wedding MC vibe. “ARE YOU EXCITED? I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!” That’s because I’m at a wedding.
So! Let’s watch Blondie on a Budget like civilized people. No hooping and hollering, just a quaint suburban american family and some comedic misunderstandings.
11:42
Alright, I just bought my ticket to go see Joker tomorrow NOW LET’S WATCH THE REAL JOKER, DAGWOOD BUMSTEAD
And we’re going to be VERY careful this time not to let Mr. Amazon spoil the movie for us.
...Never mind this one isn’t on Amazon.
11:45
Hey hey! Dick Flournoy’s back in the writer’s chair! Is that a saying? Probably not. I mean everyone has a chair if you think about it.
First shot of the movie and Willie Best is back. (For real this time.) Now instead of working at a hotel, he’s delivering newspapers. Not to be confused with the young guy who said he was gonna look for Daisy on his bike last time. Come to think of it, did anyone tell him they found Daisy? Maybe Willie Best got his job because he didn’t come to work the next day. Maybe he’s still looking for Daisy. Maybe he’s gone all noir detective, questioning dames and drinking from a flask, sitting under a window so the shades throw stripey shadows over him.
“Someday I’ll find Daisy. Or I’ll find the hoodlums that put her out of the picture. Then I’ll make ‘em pay. Until then, I just gotta keep looking. On my bike.”
11:54
Alexander wants Blondie to read the funnies to him from the newspaper. I absolutely won’t be able to tell from the picture quality, but how much do you wanna bet that there’s a Blondie strip in there? I think superhero movies can get away with comic books existing within their universe, but I can’t think of a way that Blondie the comic strip can coexist with a real Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead.
Although Dagwood’s reaction to finding his life in the funnies could lead to some interesting The Truman Show/The Matrix shenanigans.
11:58
When Blondie ignores Alexander’s plea to read him the comics, (she’s busy doing some kind of accounting) he walks away, and then she says “Get daddy to read it to you.” And Alexander says:
“Hm. Heard every word I said. That’s a woman for ya.”
Just a reminder that Gladys Lehman isn’t writing this anymore.
12:02
Dagwood just did a pretty impressive somersault pratfall. I mean, it wasn’t funny, but it was mildly impressive, so good job Arthur Lake.
12:03
HEY OKAY I LIKED A THING! Again, wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny, but:
Dagwood came in, inhaled deeply through his nose, and sincerely delivered the line “Blondie, would you believe it? I could smell that good old coffee all the way in the backyard.” And Blondie replies solemnly: “I’m sorry, dear, I forgot to make it.” And Dagwood does his “Ye-huh?” but the one where he doesn’t make any noise so I don’t mind it. The facial “Ye-huh?” we’ll call it.
Now, Dagwood being his lovably oblivious but well-meaning self, just tried to say something nice, and Blondie interpreted it as sarcasm. Which as a misunderstanding doesn’t put Blondie into any awkwardness, but puts Dagwood in the position of having tried to open the conversation with a compliment and it instead being taken as a snide jab at Blondie for not making his coffee. But Dagwood isn’t about to correct Blondie, so this goes completely unremarked.
THAT’S ACTUALLY A PRETTY NICE PIECE OF WRITING.
12:13
I think they’re trying harder this time to give Dagwood those little hair points he has in the comics. I’d probably appreciate that if I were a Blondie comic aficionado. But as I hope I’ve made clear by now, my only goal is to be a Blondie movie aficionado.
12:18
Blondie: “I was awake half the night, dreaming. I dreamed that you asked me for 200 dollars. We had a violent argument, and I killed you. Wasn’t it silly? Why would you want 200 dollars?”
I’m a little worried about Blondie. And a lot worried about Dagwood.
12:24
Haha, Alexander just did what I’m assuming is meant to be Dagwood’s double-take. It doesn’t look like his, because he’s a small small child, but what it does look like is what would happen if the makers of a Blondie movie tried to explain how to do Dagwood’s double-take to a small small child.
12:28
Um. Okay. What the fuck.
I don’t know if I really want to describe what just happened? But it’s more of “hey look a woman didn’t write this one.”
A woman showed up at the Bumsteads’ door. As Alexander answers it, he looks up at her, and catcalls, he whistles at her. He’s 6 years old in this according to math. She says “I’m an old old friend of your father’s.” He says “You’re not so old.” She says “What a lovely thing to say! I could kiss you for that. Would you mind if I kiss you?” And then she does.
I nEeD aN ADuLT
12:35
Addendum: It wasn’t Alexander, it was Alvin, who pretended to be Alexander so as to talk to this woman. That makes nothing better. Also while we’re at it, Alexander doesn’t actually look like he could be 6 in this?
Man I just had do Google “What does a 6 year old look like.” For one thing I’m absolutely terrible at telling what age any child is, and for another I’m definitely on some kind of list now.
12:36
OK BUT THE SECOND I FINISHED WRITING THAT AND HIT PLAY, it became a plot-point that Alvin is 6, but once he tells the woman that, that’s how she finds out that he isn’t Alexander, because Alexander “couldn’t possibly be 6.”
I’M VALIDATED! I WASN’T CRAZY!
12:41
Alvin just said “Baby Dumpling, meet the woman who was almost your mother,” a line which is absolutely 3000% too real for a Blondie movie, back-to-back with Daisy’s ears going up, and her running over and pushing the door shut so Dagwood and Blondie can’t hear.
Which is maybe the most anthropomorphized and funniest thing Daisy has done so far. I mean, that time she closed a cupboard door after herself was good, but that was self-preservation and fear. This is Daisy actually getting wrapped up in the drama of what’s going on and trying to prevent it from developing.
12:50
My dad just told me when he was in university, he had a picture of Dagwood in a straightjacket, screaming, on his wall.
This is just a reminder that all fan-art is appreciated.
12:55
OH MY GOD.
I just found out Alexander’s full name was revealed in the comic in 1934. It is Alexander Hamilton Bumstead.
I promise you I didn’t know that when I opened the last review with a Hamilton parody.
(I was trying to figure out at what point in the strip he stopped being a baby and started being a teenager. I couldn’t find that on the Wikipedia article.)
1:43
Took a break. Back now.
1:55
Y’know, I guess Blondie is, from a certain point of view, equally demeaning a thing to call a human being as Baby Dumpling is. I decided to check if that was her real name, and found out that it is, and also her maiden name is “Boopadoop.”
2:00
Somebody is doing an impression of Dagwood to try and fool Blondie over the phone. And it’s amazing.
...awwww, he’s just dubbed. Man, I thought he was actually doing a great impression.
2:05
The return of Snort Watch 2019:
Daisy put her hand in her mouth, in the “that’s bad” kinda way.
2:09
Decent joke: A car won’t start. Dagwood, giggling, says “Where’s the tools? I’ll have it fixed in a jiffy.” Hard cut to the car being towed.
2:11
Dagwood just did the “I’m ready to punch someone in the face at the drop of a hat” thing again, and threw his hat on the ground just to emphasize it.
2:13
Dagwood’s a little infuriating. He realizes when the situation he’s in is going to end with Blondie threatening to divorce him again, but he’s such a pushover that he’ll only ever whine about it a little, and then continue on. It somehow makes it feel even more crushing to know exactly how this is going to go when Dagwood also knows how it’s going to go, but isn’t going to stop it.
2:22
It’s also frustrating that Dagwood never learns anything. He lies to Blondie about whatever misunderstanding there is so he doesn’t get in trouble with her, and then the lying just makes it worse and prolongs the drama, and then she finds out the truth and everything’s resolved. And then there’s a new misunderstanding and he starts lying to her again like he’s a goddamn 6 foot goldfish.
2:25
Blondie just said she went to Church off-screen. I think this might be the first allusion to religion in the Blondieverse? Presumably they worship their lord and saviour Richard Flournoy.
2:29
Weird race joke just happened. Earlier Blondie I mean Dagwood (I’m still doing that) was in a movie theater, and he was looking around at people, and then they’d morph into Blondie, glaring at him and making him feel guilty. The last time this happened, it was an Asian mother with a baby that morphed into Blondie holding Alexander. I didn’t notice that they also did it that time, but this time, now that he’s home, he looks at Blondie and Alexander, and they have black hair and what looks like eye makeup to make them look Asian. And then he looks down at Daisy and she’s turned into a Pekingese (which I had to Google dog breeds to figure out was the joke.)
And now I’m concerned what post-Pearl Harbour Blondie is going to look like. (I’m looking at you, 1942’s Blondie for Victory.)
2:43
“That scheming hussy.” -Blondie Bumstead, formerly Blondie Boopadoop, 1940.
2:47
Uggghghhghghg. They just had a scene where Dagwood confessed the truth about everything to Blondie, most of which were things she’d figured out for herself. That might’ve fixed what I’ve been complaining about. Then Dagwood gets a phone call, which is telling him he won 200 dollars in a raffle that we’ve seen him tear up the ticket for, and now he’s decided he’s going to spend the money we know he won’t get on a fur coat Blondie wants. So when he goes back up, he wants to keep who he was on the phone with a secret from Blondie, and starts lying again. And Blondie knows he’s lying, and punches her pillow in frustration.
But then she goes to sleep.
AGAIN she sees where this is going and DOESN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT WHICH MAKES ME FEEL LIKE I’M GOING INSANE. EVERYTHING IS FUTILE, THESE ARE THE THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN EVERY BLONDIE MOVIE AND EVEN WHEN THE CHARACTERS INSIDE THE MOVIE HAVE BEEN READING BLONDIE COMICS IN THEIR MORNING NEWSPAPER, EVEN WHEN THEY CAN SEE THE CODE OF THE MATRIX, THEY DON’T DO ANYTHING TO DISRUPT THE LOOP. THEY KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING AND THEY KNOW THEY CAN’T STOP IT. THIS ISN’T JUST FATALISM, THIS IS OPENING A GUN, SEEING THAT IT’S LOADED, CLOSING IT AGAIN, AND LOOKING DOWN THE BARREL TO SEE IF IT’S ACTUALLY LOADED. AND THEN SHOOTING YOURSELF IN THE FUCKING FACE AND TELLING ST. PETER “yeah it was loaded.”
I’m going to bed.
10:56 PM, Friday, 4 October 2019
It’s been 2 days. Whoops! Let’s get back to it.
11:03
There’s a featured extra that just delivered a line in a way that’s funny, but the line itself isn’t actually funny. Blondie’s buying a bus ticket, I think to leave town because she thinks Dagwood’s cheating on her again. Blondie’s on the brink of tears, and the cashier selling her the bus ticket starts tearing up, and says “I know just how you feel. I wish I could sell a ticket to Niagara Falls…”
I don’t get it. Was there something going on at Niagara Falls in 1940 or is it just a total non-sequitur?
11:09
I think… Blondie might’ve skipped town, but left Daisy.
11:13
And now Daisy is drunk, through a chain of events that left booze on the floor. I don’t know how to feel about this development.
11:19
There’s something different about the way Flournoy shows Dagwood’s loneliness in this one. I think this is the first time where Dagwood hasn’t had anything to do while Blondie thinks he’s cheated on him. He’s not in jail, he’s not off trying to get a good deal done selling property to some mogul, he’s just at home, alone, and completely defeated. A lot of it has been silent, like right now he’s stacking pillows in Blondie’s twin bed, because he can’t get to sleep without her there. The pathos is through the roof compared to the other movies.
11:30
Blondie: “Oh, I’ve been such a fool.”
Dagwood, hugging her: “Oh, that’s alright. Everybody’s a fool.”
Is that a sweet moment? I think that’s a sweet moment. Something about that is sweet to me.
11:33
A minor twist at the end involved a trout club burning down. I suspect pyromaniac uncle.
11:36
And that was Blondie on a Budget! Took me longer than usual to get through it, I’ll try not to do that again too often. Got real mad at it in the middle, but it was inoffensive and of typical quality for the second half. Maybe a little above average, because Dagwood sad and alone at home was something new.
My Dagwood sandwich rating is: one sandwich that is practically identical to a sandwich you just ate a minute ago, which annoys you, but then once you’ve finished eating it, you can appreciate the minute details that distinguished it from the previous sandwich.
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