I do a lot of market research surveys online. A lot of them ask about travel – where to, why, when, how. Generally my answers are about travelling for leisure, usually with one of my parents or a group of friends.

Today, ladies and gentlemen, my answers change! Today I embark on my first trip “for business”!

I have to do a piece of “immersion journalism” for a literary non-fiction subject at school. Originally, I was planning on getting a bike and making it my sole means of transport, bit of a project ala Sarah Wilson. Even getting my hands on a bike proved too difficult for the time frame I’ve got, and I figured if it was that difficult without having even started, perhaps the idea itself wasn’t feasible for the assignment. I will be doing it some time, when I have my own bike and time (probably over the holidays) – it’ll be interesting. But for this assignment, not ideal.

So my project changed to kitchens. In particular, the kitchen at the Commercial Wine Tavern in Rochester, which my brother runs. Both my father and my brother are/were chefs in high-end, big business kitchens – some of it I understand, some of it I live by (“What’s said in the kitchen stays in the kitchen!”), but there are definitely things I’ve never got about it. It’s a stressful job, people generally don’t stay in commercial kitchens all that long – if it’s so stressful, why come back night after night? Is it like writing is for me, where it’s generally a little shitful, but in the end I’m happy with that I’ve produced? Is it creative, or a power thing? Both? Is it the adrenaline?

This is why I’m off to Rochester today, and I can officially say that I’ve taken a weekend trip for business. I’m a little terrified that I’ll get there and discover that there’s no story. But maybe it will just be something I wasn’t expecting.