Trustees Dinner

Alright, I have to admit that food draws me to places. Greedy, right? For every student, whether in high school or college or even kindergarten, [and, okay, maybe the workplace but I wouldn't know], food is a motivator.

It's a good motivator too, because otherwise, I probably wouldn't have met the Trustees of UPenn, which was pretty cool because they're pretty accomplished people. Although they state that they don't get paid to do anything, I kind of doubt it ... because would they truly fly over [from Hong Kong! London!] to Penn 3x a year [or more] to just... meet up? Do their loyalties really lie that deeply with Penn? Then again, I'm just a first year student, so I probably haven't gotten to the point where I simply adore UPenn.

There was a lot of leftover food and a lot of the stuff was actually vegan. Vegan orange vinaigrette dressing [which I really... didn't like], vegan asparagus [well, duh.], amazingly crispy roasted roots/tubers, vegetarian lasagne, and "seasonal" fruit, which included the most unseasonal fruits ever for February: blueberries, strawberries, and pineapple.

This was catered by Bon Appetit although TJ refused to believe it since the food was "so good". I think the food was quite nice and my picture is terrible.

It's kind of funny how context changes how "delicious" food is perceived; in a dining hall, the same cooked asparagus appears much less savoury than a nice metal tray of perfectly organised asparagus on a heating block. Fruit that's usually in a metal canister plopped on ice appears much less "exotic" [I guess?] compared to fruit that's thinly sliced on a tray.

That's the theory of plating, anyway, but I don't think I believe in it. My brother does though, so he always reprimands me for not plating my food whenever I cook. Really, why does plating matter so much? Is it really necessary to have a small 5cm^3 chunk of lasagne, cut perfectly, on a 24-cm diameter white plate, with exactly 3 sprigs of parsley as garnish? Does that really taste better than a lump of badly cut lasagne splattered onto a plastic plate that's also filled with carrots and salad and other stuff that make a meal [save plates!! Save dishwashing liquid!! Save water!]? I think I prefer the latter...

Another reason I went to this dinner was that they were giving out scarves and shirts. The really sad part was that for the class of 2014, there were T-shirts, not scarves. These weren't even new shirts; they were the ones we got during Orientation! They were leftovers! The scarves were leftovers too, but they only had the class of 2011/12/13.

The smart thing to do, of course, was to take a 2011 scarf and using thread to sew the 1 into a 4.

Which I did later, and it looks alright from far way. TJ has decided just to wear a 2011 scarf. It's not everyday we can be seniors, after all.