Swapping his keyboard for a sizzling frying-pan

By DITA DE BONI

When Stephen Long, aged 36, exchanged cables and keyboards for Cordon Bleu around six years ago, he took what he describes as an "enormous" pay cut.

Even today, he says with a rueful chuckle, he is still making around $10,000 a year less than he was a decade ago.

But the computer science graduate-cum-chef says he is still happy about changing course and is on track to eventually open his own cafe or restaurant, which has been a dream for many years.

"If you have a passion, you have to go and follow it," he says. "Because if you don't, you will regret it because you'll look back in 10 years time and it might be too late."

Mr Long was 29 when he made the radical career change, after five or so "very lucrative" years in the computer industry.

One reason for leaving IT was that his job was "a bit dead-end;" another, his wife had a job which provided the couple with a flat and few expenses.

"We didn't really have commitments so I could actually train and do something else. It was then or never.

"Also, my family are really good cooks and I've always been around good food. I used to do it to relax when I came home from work - it was kind of a natural thing.

"I was starting to think that I wanted to work for myself one day as well, and I think to do that you have to be passionate about what you are doing."

Computers, while a living, were certainly not a passion. So the fervent foodie took a night course in chefing to train himself. When course requirements changed and he needed on-the-job assessment, he took the leap into full-time kitchen work.

Does he have any regrets about taking a different route to his computer co-workers?

"There was scope for movement in the [IT] industry, when I see what my former colleagues are doing now. I have certain financial regrets, I suppose, and the hours aren't very sociable and the work is physically very hard."

But, he says, he is very happy to be on track to his dream of owning his own business.

"I don't see the job I'm doing now as necessarily the job I'll be doing for the rest of my career.

"Even if I do get my own business, there's other things in the industry that this could lead to, like educating the public about food or teaching perhaps."