Blog

This excerpt comes from a blog http://inpraiseofslow.com/blog.php that praises the virtues of taking life a little more slowly.

Strangely enough for a small tropical country many of is do run around like crazed people. So this advice is pretty apropos

When was the last time you took a real lunch break? In workplaces around the world the mid-day meal has shrunk or vanished altogether. Never mind dining al fresco; these days you’re lucky to find time to dine al desko. What a waste. Stopping for lunch makes us more productive, more creative and less stressed. It allows us to enjoy our food, smell the roses and indulge in a little social time.  

January 20 2008

Marcus is a good customer, who likes to spend the day in the orange room drinking copious amounts of fruit juice, while tapping away on his laptop. I always wondered what he did other than appearing to be a professional cafe habituant.

Well all was revealed when he directed me to his website,  www.voiceofguyana.com which of course is about all things Guyanese. Well worth a visit. marcus also managed to wangle an interview out of us talking about why she chose to open Oasis among many other formerly top secret topics.

http://voiceofguyana.com/2007/10/26/oasis-cafe-guyana/

Friday January 26...
The only way to maintain your sanity as a businessperson in Guyana is to go away every so often. 
Not only to rest and recuperate from the multitudes of  mini-crises that bombard you daily ...be it problems with water, electricity or the all consuming VAT .. but also to get a bird’s eye perspective on your business and begin again to think about why you started this adventure and how you can make it better.
That's why our recent weekend in Tobago was such an inspiration. We stayed at the Kariwak Village Holistic Haven and Hotel (www.kariwak.com) , which sounds a lot like cold showers and brown rice but is in fact quite luxurious and very, very comforting. The award winning gardens include herb beds which the restaurant uses in its cooking. Any of you who had the pumpkin and dill soup on Wednesday at Oasis too …well the dill was kindly donated by Cynthia the co-owner of the hotel, a woman who glides about like Florence Nightingale attentive to the every need of her guests.

When we told her we owned two restaurants, she said, "But the food business is a bugger!" 
She said she spends a lot of the time in the kitchen and tastes every dish. It shows since the food is pitch perfect, being unpretentious but decidedly accomplished. The fish in particular is exceptional….and the service something we should aspire to. Between meals, we spent much of the time in various hammocks, reading and sleeping, in a state of contented paralysis.    

We did visit Pigeon Point beach and had crab and dumplings, although the dumplings were rather chewy –apparently that is the way they like them. We also visited Scarborough, a rather rundown town but which in its heart has a small coffee shop, Ciao Café, run by an Italian straight out of central casting. We sipped a very good cappuccino, made from Illy coffee beans, outside on the balcony and watched the inhabitants, 60% of whom appear to be Rastafarian, go about their business.

During our half day in Trinidad we managed to escape the suffocating traffic and headed for Maracas Bay to eat bake and shark, returning in search of doubles by the highway.

 It was a welcome break and we hope one that would inspire us to improve our offerings and service, while also letting us remember we are actually sane.