German Armour
Howdy Folks!
I have some question to ask y'all. This is for my career exploration program I'm taking.
1. What is your job???
2.How did you get started?
3.What keeps you up at night?
4.What do you love/hate about your job?
Thanks!
1. What is Your Job???
Jazz Musician, Chef, Sushi Chef, General Contractor, Factory worker.
My father was a professional trumpet player and played in the Royal Hawaiian Band. It is the only band in the USA that is run by the City and County of Honolulu. This happened due to King Kamehameha III in 1836 ordering a concert band under his rule hence the continuation of a royal band. My father also played jazz at night and I used to follow him all over the island.
2. How did you get started?
At five years old, I got got my first trumpet and of course without question my first teacher was Mr. Allan T Miura Sr. My father. At thirteen years old I got to play my first professional jazz gig. By the time I was fifthteen, I was playing professionally all over town. I recall very fondly as always having the honor of having “Bruno” opening up for me. He was five years old at that time. He later became very successful and changed his name to “Bruno Mars”.
During this time I took my GED and left Honolulu, Hawaii to continue my career in The West Coast of the US. In San Francisco. I created my own band called “Jazz Attack”. We first travelled throughout the US and preformed concerts. My percussionists played with Miles Davis, my bassists played with Ella Fitzgerald, the pianists played with many famous jazz artists, and finally my saxophonists was none other than ”Pharaoh Sanders”!
I made so much money In that I purchased a original “1966 Mustang”, it was green with a white racing stripe right up the hood and continuing up the side of the of the Mustang. I rebuilt the transmission as a six speed and installed a eighty pound clutch. I then added a Ford 427 Big Block Engine with chrome accents and high performance parts ie: Accel Coil, Spitfire Sparkplugs and Wires, etc. I drove my exciting vehicle throughout the Bay Area. The second evening I drove her she decided to die off the freeway. I realized it was the alternator. Then I could see through my rear view mirror in that there was a Camaro coming at a high speed behind me at full blast only to hit my rear end and literally destroyed my Mustang! Her fiberglass camaro was a complete mess, luckily no one had a single scratch. The female driver was drunk and arrested! My Mustang ended up in a junkyard to owner called Humble Harrold for seven hundred dollars.
During the day time and down time from Jazz Attack, I learned to cook at a Japanese Restaurant called Yoshi’s in Oakland, California. I became very efficient and was worked up to Sous Chef and finally Executive Chef. I was only sixteen! I then also learned how to make sushi. Things really picked at this time as we were asked to travel and open up for other bands. Of course I jumped at it and the first place we went to was New York. We were so busy playing, we then had to travel to Europe ASAP so we got to fly in the Concord. That was so cool! Once we landed we played in England at the Live Aid concert.
From there we toured to Amsterdam, Belgium, France, and Switzerland. At this point our tour ended. Everyone was ready to go home after touring for a year. I got to meet so many great artists it’s too many to speak of. The band wanted to return to the US while I wanted to stay hence in the end that’s what happened. I decided to make Amsterdam my home. I again took up sharpening my skills as a chef during the day while playing at various jazz clubs. I stayed there for five years.
I then found out that my father was very ill, I decided to move back to Honolulu and care for him. At this point in my career, I met Mrs. Toshi and we’ve been married for twenty six years coming up in May sixteenth. I started up Jazz Attack and we did some minor tours, one of them was Tahiti. I had a son by this time and felt that touring with a band while raising a family was not a good situation, I needed to settle down. I disbanded Jazz Attack, put my trumpet away and called it quits. My father who couragiously fought his illness finally succumbed to his cancer at the age of fifty eight.
Since I had been previously a Executive Chef I decided to go back into the culinary world. It was another form of art for me. I settled in with Marriot and moved to Maui. It was in Maui that I met Yuji Sekiguchi. He was the student of the Sushi Chef, (Kinjiro Oomae whom wrote a famous book called ”The Book of Sushi”) of the Empreor of Japan. Then it was off to Palm Springs, we stayed there until the attack on the Twin Towers in New York. I then realized that the hotel industry would drastically slow down. Mrs. Toshi’s sister whom lives in Ashtabula, Ohio called and said why don‘t you come this way? So we packed everything up into a very large Uhaul and drove across the Great Nation of America. It was my two children and I. There was know room for Mrs. Toshi so she flew to Cleveland, Ohio.
I became the Corporate Executive Chef for Giant Eagle a large grocery store. There my job was to set up a sushi program for them. After that job, I worked for The Wolfsteins at their Hotel in Aurora, Ohio called the Bertram Inn and Conference Center. It was next to Six Flags. In the summer, I was so busy in that I could afford to fly Mrs. Toshi and my two children back home to Honolulu, Hawaii. They got to stay there for a month as I was making upwards of up to ten thousand dollars a month. When Six Flags closed that was the end of the great run.
I then met a entrepreneur and became a General Contractor of my own company called Allan’s All American Services. I built in ground pools. I had the time of my life! This was so fun I couldn’t believe it. The first year we made one hundred thousand dollars for the summer as winter we had to shut down. That hundred grand was literally made in four months! Wow! Then came 2008 in which the economy tanked!!! That was the end of Allan’s All American Services.
I then went looking for a job. Any job. I worked four jobs in one month. A landscaping company, a butcher, Walmart, then finally a corrugated making company called Temple Inland. They made boxes. I had the responsibility to deliver ink and printing plates to each machine. The on 5/5/2010 I got seriously injured and became incapable of just not being able to wash myself, shave, use the bathroom etc.
3. What keeps you up at night!
I had Traumatic Brain Injury or TBI. That was eight years ago. I’m a lot better now due to the fantastic members of FSM Forums!!! But what truly keeps me up at night is severe headaches and neck and back pain. Unfortunately that’s what I’ve got to deal with. I am now retired and a stay at home sitter, my wonderful and cute grandson!
4.What do you love/hate about your job?
I must say when I contemplate and visually meditate on my love or hate of my job, I don’t feel like it was a job. I loved every minute of it. I physically and mentally feel that it was a way of life, a experience if you will. Even my job at Walmart making minimum wage as a third shift or grave shift employee it was fun, looking back at that. This I feel is a way or path that you choose to move forward with like Dorthy in the Wizard of Oz. She had to follow the Yellow Brick Road. We all should follow the Yellow Brick Road, with each step you’ll find the friends, relatives you don’t like lol, and most important of all, we will seek the great and powerful Oz in the end. So make everyday count.
There are two days in the year that you cannot control. Yesterday as it has already happened and tomorrow as you don’t know what to expect!
Dalai Lama
Your friend, Toshi