It's been pretty hectic on my front the past two weeks. Little did I know that when I had my one on one with my manager on the night of Halloween, that it would be my last. We chatted about the work I had been doing, and particularly that morning I had led a meeting that aired out some undercurrents and by doing so, made them confrontable and what I theorized, solvable. The meeting outcomes met my hypothesis, and helped solidify us in the direction of my vision of where I wanted my work and the team's work to go. After chatting with him for a while about this, we also turned to discussing what I had been exploring in Portland which as you probably noticed in my previous posts, just happened to be alcohol related. In fact, I was going to a beer meet up the next night at Bridgeport. My manager was more of a sake enthusiast though, and chatting with him on a local sake, it put me in the mood for sake and to Dragonfish I went, again.

As it turned out, on Monday morning, my manager ceased to be my manager because my team was laid off… except for me. I was moved into what was previously our internal client's team and now reported to one client instead of being in a central services area. That Monday was pretty surreal- I had come in with a list of things to do since I was going on a trip to gather customer input the next day and I wanted to have a paper prototype. Instead of working with my team, I ended up building that prototype that late afternoon after some of my former co-workers had already left and that evening before my flight by myself. Instead, the day became one of trying to help the people I had chosen to join in a team make their exit, and also transfer as much as that knowledge to me as possible so it wasn't lost. One of my coworkers had been with the company for 30 years, and it was the only employer she had ever had. Keep in mind that I had only been with the company for 5 weeks.

So as you can imagine, these past two weeks have been busy days in which I am trying to understand my roles and responsibilties- both what is expected of me, and then also trying to carve out the space so that I can continue doing what I intended to come to the company to do in the first place. It has taken two weeks, but I think I have basically regained the foundation that I thought I was establishing two weeks ago- now it's on to the planning how to execute the work and getting buy-in from the next level up in the chain on that plan now that they are warm to the concept at least.

Here are photos from that dinner at Dragonfish that Halloween night though. I found the sushi rolls disappointing, the guacapoke had too much avocado and needed more tuna, and the dessert was disapointing. You'd think that they would realize that after a dinner of cold to room temperature food, dessert should be either a really cold temperature like green tea ice cream something or a oven-warmed tart to finish, and with the dessert we ordered it seemed a perfect combo of the two, but the tart was room temperature and the bananas inside slightly chilled/room temperature instead of being warm and gooey inside.

I should have tried the Lobster Roll, which is the only thing left on the menu now that I am curious about (lobster salad and cucumber wrapped with tuna and avocado, with blood orange sauce and lemon mayo). But on the waitress' recommendation I tried the other roll that had caught my eye, the Dragonfi Roll (tempura shrimp, enoki and shiitake mushrooms, and asparagus wrapped with eel, tuna, orange and green tobiko and eel sauce and lemon peel mayo). Unfortunately, this turned out to be a flavor mess- I was hoping it would be a cool twist on the rainbow roll which also has quite a medley of ingredients but winds up being like a neopolitan in sushi form, but… well, it wasn't. At least F's spicy mushroom fried rice was delicious! Also per my ex-manager's recommendation, I tried the Momokawa Flight, which consists of Ruby, Silver, Diamond, and Pearl, and I really did like that. The Ruby was described as "soft and lightly sweet with hints of honeydew", Silver as "smooth with a dry tart green apple finish" (this was our favorite), the Diamond as "dry with a crisp favor and granite aroma" (much sniffing and tasting was done trying to figure out this granite description), and the Pearl, the cloudy one pictured, is "unfiltered and sweet with a coconut undertone" which I didn't find too bad either.

Tonight I am going to Le Pigeon, which was Portland Restaurant of the Year in Diner 2008. I've also volunteered in one of my dining groups to host a dinner meeting once a month, so there will be more food reports!