Mon parcours
My name is Christine and I am the one-woman-show that is fermentable. The support of my husband Nicolas is priceless and I hope that as fermentable grows, his presence in the company will too.
My full name is Christine Anne Reika Syrad (Nakajima). If anyone remembers that, they should consider taking up competitive chess. As you might have guessed, I have Japanese origins via my mother and my father is a British polyglot, both of whom reside in Japan. I often get asked where I was born, the enquirers often expecting my answer to help them plop me into a conveniently comprehensible category, but the truth is, I was born in the Midlands (UK) but moved to… the outskirts of Milan when I was three, where we stayed until my sister was born and I was ripe enough to be plucked and placed in school. Aged six, I found myself back in the UK, on the South Coast this time, so that I could attend a school using one of my supposed mother tongues. After four years of trying to convince myself that I am in fact British, my parents saw it fit to nourish my Japanese roots so we moved to my mother’s hometown, Osaka, where I grew to wield a dialect that has me sounding like a comedian and a gangster, often simultaneously.
As for my education, well, let’s just say I had languages covered by virtue of embodying a continent-hopping tumbleweed. And yet I chose to read English and Italian Literature at University. My ulterior motive was to spend a year indulging my senses in Turin, which is where I woke up to the Slow Food Movement. I wasn’t the most arduous of students and spent most of my time working in a restaurant and redistributing my earnings at other ones.
Photo by Nick Lobeck
Photo by Nick Lobeck
After all that revelry came 2009 – the year by which I was meant to know what to do next. The recession saved me from joining a bank in London and as luck would have it, a company based in Zurich was looking for a Japanese and Italian speaker. Three years later I found myself clawing at the doors of a large bank and snuck in as a Japanese-speaking Assistant in Private Banking. When in Rome and all that – I wanted to see something truly “Swiss” and brush up on my German skills.
Working in industries and positions that didn’t suit my character, with an overabundance of enthusiasm and nowhere to channel it, took its toll on my physical well-being and I found myself battling recurring mononucleosis. At age 25 I was also surprised to find out that the hemorrhoids I was ashamed to go to a doctor for turned out to be an intestinal polyp.
It was time to reflect on my eating habits. I would say I’ve always eaten fairly well but what I hadn’t considered was the toll all the moving and changing of diets and climates had taken on my body. My ailments provided the impetus to explore fermentation and its health benefits – what better place to start than with the foods I was raised on – miso, soy sauce and otsukemono.
After all that revelry came 2009 – the year by which I was meant to know what to do next. The recession saved me from joining a bank in London and as luck would have it, a company based in Zurich was looking for a Japanese and Italian speaker. Three years later I found myself clawing at the doors of a large bank and snuck in as a Japanese-speaking Assistant in Private Banking. When in Rome and all that – I wanted to see something truly “Swiss” and brush up on my German skills.
Working in industries and positions that didn’t suit my character, with an overabundance of enthusiasm and nowhere to channel it, took its toll on my physical well-being and I found myself battling recurring mononucleosis. At age 25 I was also surprised to find out that the hemorrhoids I was ashamed to go to a doctor for turned out to be an intestinal polyp.
It was time to reflect on my eating habits. I would say I’ve always eaten fairly well but what I hadn’t considered was the toll all the moving and changing of diets and climates had taken on my body. My ailments provided the impetus to explore fermentation and its health benefits – what better place to start than with the foods I was raised on – miso, soy sauce and otsukemono.
Photo by Nick Lobeck