My dad’s restaurant was profiled on the Food Network and my dad couldn’t stop talking about it when I went to go visit him. He’s responsible for the Slippery Shrimp dish so he gets about ten seconds of camera time, two of which you get to see his face and the rest you get to see his hands. Below are some of the gems I was able to capture while he was rambling on about the “commercial”.

- director kept telling me what to say and what to do, she might as well have taught me how to cook!
- when yao ming came to play the lakers, channel 5 put us on the news right in the middle of a laker game, we were so busy afterwards, just like we are now after this commercial
- i don’t need to cook on thursday, i was on tv!
- customers come back to sneak a peak inside the kitcen, so when i walk out into the restaraunt, i pretend to not see anyone so people won’t recognize me
- it’s so difficult to get on tv, i was the only one who made it on the tv!
- the commercial nationwide!!!
- how did they get the commercial onto the cd? it’s amazing. did they record live?
- business is so good now that we have a commercial

Thankfully, the dean reminded us that we’ll have bigger problems than remembering names, namely trying to keep our heads above the water while juggling our academics, career search, and personal life.

The guest speaker, a very accomplished Owen alum, gave some very unconventional yet sage advice. Her advice was, “Don’t network. Build relationships”. I don’t remember what her other nuggets of wisdom were because my back teeth were floating, but that slide stuck.

After lunch, we had a team building exercise conducted by Afterburner Inc. The instructors, a bunch of retired military guys, taught us an organizational model called Flawless Execution. I totally wasn’t expecting to plan a military campaign against “Floribama” so the whole thing was entertaining but cheesy. The only problem with the event, at no fault to the Afterburner guys I’m guessing, was that a lot of people were falling into a food coma because of all that heavy cheese and cream we ate for lunch. And there was no coffee.

At night, we went to a reception at a grill called Cabana. There was more meeting and greeting and more small talk. I think I’ve retained most of the names of the people I met today, but thank goodness for name tags. Oh look, there’s mine.

The food at Cabana looked horrible so I only drank my two free comp’d beers. The international students however really went to town on the springs rolls. I ate dinner at Jackson’s with a classmate I met during Welcome Weekend. The grilled chicken sandwich I got was bombtastic.

And so concludes day one of being a lifelong Owenite.

• The restaurant business is a tough grind but at the end of the day, if business is good, then it is a good day, particularly if you own the restaurant.
• After working in the kitchen, you will develop one of two mindset: one, you will never want to eat out ever again or two, you continue to eat out but only because you can ignore the horrors of what goes on in the kitchen.
• Wear Under Armour in the kitchen.
• You’ll meet all sorts of people (customers) working in a restaurant. Some of the more memorable people I met include: Frenchie, the Jamaican Wing Chun instructor, Mr. Doe, the Kung Fu researcher, the Drunken Cyclist, and Mr. Cornell, a HH resident and has traveled all over the world.
• The reason, and not the only reason, that it’s so hard to make money in the restaurant business is perishable inventory.
• Drink lots of Super Supau to stay hydrated in the kitchen. Nothing worse then fainting into a boiling cauldron of oil.

Thanks to youtube, I found the song and it really is an ad. The song is so good however that the singer turned it into a single. I’m not exactly sure what the song is about but there’s something about believing in himself, believing in tomorrow, and believing in being able to touch the sky with both hands. But the bottom line, believe in Taiwan Beer and its magical powers to bring good times.

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MV 我相信 – 楊培安

On Saturday, John took us to eat a late hotpot lunch (2pm) at Go Bar (?). I had already eaten a late breakfast @ this place called Apple 203 where I ordered a Taiwanese Omelet, and I had to go to my uncle’s place after lunch to eat dinner, so I was limited by the amount of all you can eat hot pot food. It was tough not to eat a lot because the selection of hotpot stuff was overwhelming and the quality was stupendous. I must have eaten twenty different kinds of fish ball/paste things and the beef was off the heezy. Sorry SSH, you might not be my favorite hotpot place anymore.

Dinner @ my uncle’s was again another eat fest. My aunt cooked a bunch of stuff and I was encouraged to eat everything. My aunt thought I liked oysters, which I don’t, so she cooked a big plate of oyster omelet. My uncle then asked what I liked to eat and for some reason I said pork intestines. More pork intestines later.

After dinner, John took us to the lounge/bar that big brother John has a minority stake in. The place is called Marquee and is across the street from Taipei 101. Fantastic place with a big expat crowd. John and I revealed that we have zero game when it comes to approaching the ladies, hence why I’ve stopped calling him rockstar in this post.

Sunday, my cousin and godmother took me to Dragon Field, a direct translation of Long Tien. It’s a farming community about an hour outside of Taipei where my godfather either grew up or use to live at. We ate throughout the day and went for a stroll along an irrigation ditch filled with dead fish. For dinner, we ate at my grandmother’s place. Since it was mother’s day, dinner was a giant feast with the whole family in attendance. There was a lot of Taiwan beer flowing throughout the dinner. Whenever you wanted to take a sip of beer, you had to cheer someone. It was a bit weird for me to have to do that, but after the first bottle, I was cheering like I had been doing it for years.

After three nights of drinking and feasting, I spent the remainder of Sunday night and early Monday morning packing and drifting in and out of sleep in anticipation of my journey through SE Asia.

Ah, but chicken skin lovers rejoice. CNN, the most trusted name in news, has debunked the myth that chicken skin is bad for you. Article here, along with 9 other food myths debunked. Now you can gorge yourself on all the chicken skin you want at Furaibo and not feel guilty about it. Good eatings.

I think the real name of the sandwich is the “Express Ticket to Double Bypass Heart Surgery”.

Unfortunately, the advantages of the self checkout counters were absent when I visited Ikea today. The store only opened the self checkout lines so everyone had to check themselves out. Myself, and several other customers, grumbled about the fact that the line was ten deep when we entered it. Thankfully I chose the line without the mom with two kids but instead chose the line with the Japanese lady who didn’t speak english and grandma and grandpa who couldn’t find the credit card slider thing. This made for a mess and it took a very long and irritating 15 minutes for me to buy clothes hanger.

While standing in line, I had the following thoughts:

• What kind of numbers did the company that built these self checkout machines pull out of the air to sell all these stores on? Will I learn how to do that in bschool?
• Are the stores really saving that much money? Will the amount of money lost from people who “forgot” to pay for an item be less than the money they save on not having a cashier?
• What about the customer experience? Some people, I don’t know who, might like talking to the cashier or bagger.
• I wanted to pay with cash. I only had dollar bills. And they were crinkled.

My other rant for the day is about Costco. Over the years, I’ve noticed that if a man has a beard, he has to wear the shower cap on his face. This afternoon, I got the urge for a slice of pepperoni pizza this afternoon so I went down to Costco. The cashier was a man and he had a beard, earrings and a nose ring. As expected, the man was wearing a shower cap on his face. He also was wearing tape over his nose ring and he wasn’t wearing his earrings (saw the holes). The guy looked weird, as if he was a leper and was trying to cover it up with all that stuff.

It’s understandable that Costco wants us to enjoy hairless pizza and they don’t want to offend people who find nose rings offensive, but the cashier was just wacky looking. If the cashier is going to look that way, Costco might as well let the guy wear a ninja mask. He might still look wacky, but at least the mask will soak up his sweat instead of having the sweat fall on my pizza.

I wish some chinese restaurants would be half as sanitary as Costco’s food court. I’ll never be able to get the image of the chef @ Supreme Dragon smoking a cig and scratching his head while he cooked. Extra salt and pepper anyone? Yum!

I knew this guy was going to be a winner. The dark and oily beans called out to me. I think this will be my go to coffee whenever I stop by gw.