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Boy, am I a dummy! I wrote yesterday all about the Social Review points Shobhit will soon be getting to pull further ahead of Laney on the next rankings, and I didn't even think to mention the dinner plans we had last night. It was Valentine's Day, for fuck's sake!
Here's what amuses me the most about the fact that we actually went out for dinner on Valentine's Day this year—for the first time
since 2020, incidentally (and technically that year we went out to breakfast): we went
all the way across the street: to a new-ish restaurant on that corner of 15th & Pine, called Kedai Makan. There have been several different restaurants in that business unit of the Vox Apartments, since it was
costructed a decade ago; our server—who informed us she's lived in the Vox Apartments building itself for three years—said Kedai Makan opened about a year ago.
Kedai Makan means "Wok House" in Hindi, by the way. We asked our server and she confirmed it means the same thing in Malay. (This is a Malaysian restaurant.) This made sense to Shobhit, as he noted—and I never knew this—that Malaysia is largely made up, ethnically, of Indian (South Asian) people. In fact he posited that it's about a third Indian, but apparently it's only
about 7% people of Indian descent, compared to 23% Chinese, as the major minority ethnic groups; 70% of the population is "Bumiputera" or Malay. Still, with a relatively significant Indian minority, it makes sense for there to be some crossover in language.
The most important thing I have to say about Kedai Makan is about the food, which was fucking amazing. The place is pricey, with entrees all being about $18 or more, and I budgeted $50 for this dinner—we ordered one entree, one side, one salad, and no drinks: the total with tip still came to just barely over $50.
They do have a Happy Hour though, which makes it possible to eat there a bit more reasonably, and I now hope to return with Laney for Happy Hour sometime. The "mango salad" was too spicy for me, but the "Nasi Biryani"
dish and especially the "Roti Jala" side were both phenomenal. I want to go back just to get the Roti Jala with a side of rice. Oh my god, I'm in escasy just remembering it.
We were in and out pretty quick, actually. I made reservations weeks ago, knowing that's the only way to do it for Valentine's Day, for 6:30. When we got over there the place was nearly full, the few empty tables all reserved. I only saw two or three empty tables, all of them two-tops. When we were first guided to the one on the upper level, Shobhit pointed to the one down on the lower level and asked if we could have that, so we'd have a view of our building across the street through the window. That table was already reserved but the hostess managed to rearrange information on her handheld tablet and got us the table we wanted.
I would guess we were there for 45 minutes at most. We practically inhaled that food. When we were done, we went right across the street and for the first time went into the current interation of the business tentant on that corner of
our building, which has also been countless different things over the years:
Coche Valley Dessert Cafe. This place was last a bubble tea cafe, run by the lady who owns the unit; the same lady owns the unit now but closed the business and this other lady opened the desserr cafe, which is mostly desert crepes.
I had wanted to try it for a while, so I agreed when Shobhit suggested it after dinner last night, even though, stupidly, I went kind of hog wild on pastry and cookie samples all day at work yesterday. Fucking get ahold of yourself, Matthew!
At least Shobhit and I split the
strawberry cheesecake crepe. It was also delicious. And, now that the Pappy Van Winkle whisley
has been opened, we had some more of that. Funny how Shobhit waited four years for a "special occasion" to open it to begin with (last month we paid off the mortgage), but Valentine's Day the next month was enough of an excuse to have more of it.
A coworker of Shobhit's at Total Wine said it was likely to taste better a while after the bottle was opened, as we didn't think it was that great to begin with, and it does make sense for Shobhit to want to put that to the test. He declared last night that it was indeed better. Whiskey is very much a "take it or leave it" booze for me, so I thought it was . . . fine. Shobhit, for his part, is enamored with the enormous market value of this brand of whiskey. I don't care that much.
Once we finished with dessert, we found something new to watch, and we burned through half the season of
Percy Jackson and the Olympians on Disney+. We're both into it because the story is compelling, but damn, is the acting bad. It feels like they spent no time rehearsing and then did every scene in one take.
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In completely unrelated news, except that this was the first time I had one on Valentine's Day, yesterday afternoon was my first annual performance review (APR—where would we be without acronyms!) exclusively with Gabby. Last year she had
just started—apparently just a few days ago Justine too Gabby out to lunch to celebrate her one-year anniversary—and she simply sat in with Eric as he went through it.
Like last year, between the three options of "Below Expectations," "Meets Expectations," and "Above Expectations," I got "Above Expectations." Unlike any year or any other performance review in my life, Gabby actually sent me her completed evaluation on Tuesday so I could read over it before we met. This is the kind of thing, among many things really, that sets her apart as a manager. And you know what? She's already brainstorming ways I could evolve my role or grow what my position is, in spite of my longtime assertion that I have no ambition (I really don't), but if any role change were in the cards, I would be significantly less inclined to go for it if it meant I had to have a different boss. I suppose it would also depend on the position, but still. I don't know. I'm still not especially eager for a massive shift in my responsibilities. Although to Gabby's point, it's kind of been happening a bit organically over the past year anyway.
We always also have to fill out a self-evaluation, which we send in ahead of time. Gabby seemed genuinely mystified as to why I would not have rated
myself as "Above Expectations"—another first. There are actually three reasons for this. First and foremost, the way I see it, I do the job that is expected, and don't make any huge effort, at least not consciously, to do more: I never regard my performance as "above and beyond," the consistency of open love I get from brokers (and sometimes POS people) notwithstanding. That only makes me think it's sad all the other people they work with are dipshits, not that I'm genuinely some superstar. And I say this as someone with no problem whatsoever openly regarding myself as a wonderful person with a sterling personality.
Second, there's the point Alexia often makes when talking about this: if she does a performance review for someone that is "above expectations," that just means a new bar has been set. If the next year that same bar is met, then from that point forward it's "Meets Expectations." I actually explained this to Gabby and she was pretty skeptical of it as a point of view. Never mind that I got the feeling she felt I actually did exceed whatever bar I may have set
last year (maybe I did, I genuinely don't spend a lot of time thinking about it); I think she essentially rejects it as a premise.
That said, Gabby is also just very generous. I do trust she would talk to me about anything she felt I was doing that she thought was not up to par, but I also sort of feel like we have somewhat differing definitions of what "expectations" are. That said, to the third reason: I am never above beying tactical in these matters. Rating myself lower than I can fairly easily predict my manager will rate me is simply the smarter play.
But, you know, overall: whatever. Gabby had scheduled her APR with Amy the hour before she scheduled mine, and they were done in half an hour. She messaged me to ask if I wanted to start early, so I went right over to the small meeting room she was in, at about 1:35. I have already
publicly noted that the upside of performance reviews is getting the chance to just sit and talk about me—in that original post, I said "for forty minutes." Yesterday we had pretty productive conversation for nearly ninety minutes, finally breaking at the actually-scheduled end time of 3:00.
It went about as well as I expected, honestly—which is to say, quite well. Any evaluation form prompts for Gabby to offer "constructive criticism" was honestly a bit milktoast. And I am
down with that. Truthfully, the biggest takeaway from that meeting is that I am already "growing in my role" more than I even realized. Gabby even said she's had other people compliment how much more involved I seem to be lately. As much as I genuinely have a tendency to assume people are saying
good things about me behind my back (a potentially dangerous ongoing assumption to make, but take it from me, it's a great way to live), I must admit some skepticism that there have been many instances of this specific sort of thing. It's not like I think she's lying about it, because I don't. She could be slightly exaggerating. I only say this because it's difficult for me to see it, which is maybe a me problem.
Overall, there is also a slight sense of relief at finally having a first full-on APR with my most recent manager (a term I never used before but which Gabby uses a lot; she certainly seems to prefer it over "boss" and I've never heard her say "supervisor"), having no idea before she was hired whether I'd get a new boss who was a pain in the ass in some way or another. I told her I debated whether to tell her about this, but then went ahead and did it, telling her the horrid experience of my six-month evaluation all the way back in 2003, when I was completely blindsided and given the weekend to consider whether I wanted to stay or quit the job, with no warning before that Friday that such a thing was coming. Gabby, whose approach all along has been the polar opposite of this, was flabbergasted by the whole story. (She also had a similar, and arguably worse, story of her own from her Amazon days.) I now have years and years of consistently great performance reviews, but because of that first one more than 20 years ago, I stil get this slight sort of ball in my stomach every year when they come around again. I think they actually have proved useful, but I would sure love it if I never had to deal with them. And it's all just because of that experience in 2003, which is a little bit ridiculous.
On the upside, great as it was, the APR for this year is all over now, and we can just move things along. Onward!
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[posted 12:31 pm]
