Interview Travelling (Seattle WA, Madison WI, San Jose CA)

This semester was crazy because I was interviewing for a job, which involved quite some travelling. In this haze, I somehow managed to visit a whole handful of airports and hotels. The places documented here include Seattle, Madison, and the Bay Area.

Seattle!
I had a nice breakfast at the hotel. I know that it's not the fanciest but it beats most of the breakfasts and lunches I've had all semester (wow, I sure have been neglecting my ... life). I mean, hot food! More than one item in my sandwich!

I went to downtown Seattle after my interview and got some pumpkin and coconut gelato at Gelatiamo. I didn't particularly enjoy the pumpkin one because it felt too heavy. I got to sample the rice gelato, which was delicious (but I wasn't in the mood for it). They had all these beautiful baked desserts but I really wasn't in the mood. I languidly walked around downtown chomping on gelato, checking out people going to dress-up/Halloween parties. 

 

I went to dinner at The Crab Pot with a friend I hadn't seen in almost exactly 7 years.  The Crab Pot is famous for, well, the crab pot.

The bread was really dense and hard to chew (or I was just tired) and the entire place was happy and rowdy. We were given mallets and cutting boards! Bibs! I did not wear the bib because it just felt over the top. The food arrived in a giant bucket and was poured onto the table. Cleanup was therefore very easy. What a feast! I really enjoyed the corn, mussels, clams, and sausage. There was a lot of overcooked shrimp, but the crab was good. Everyone was super nice and I found the place unique. I would definitely go there every time I visit Seattle in the future.

The SeaTac airport has the best restaurant ever - Anthony's Fish Bar!! This place made me so happy! I got delicious clam chowder and mediocre Alaskan rockfish taco with mango (awkwardly sweet and fishy, while also savoury).

 Cold rockfish taco on the plane, while attempting to study.

An airport store had quite the selection of candy (blurry due to my phone camera).

I had a layover in Minnesota, where I bought some candy corn gummies (which tasted like generic gummies) and a "Montana bar", which was actually just a oaty bar covered with chocolate and coconut.

Madison, Wisconsin
At the layover in Cincinnati, I got a turkey club from the Wolfgang Puck restaurant/bar. I find it humourous that Wolfgang Puck's name is being used in restaurants at airports, since I associate airport restaurants with... well, solely Burger King or restaurants along those lines.
The sandwich was ok.

I had a super fancy breakfast at the Concourse Hotel on the morning of the interview, but I was too nervous to enjoy it. I had an amazing meal during my interview!

Bay Area
My first flight got delayed so I had some time to check out the crochet cakes in display cases at the Philadelphia Airport. They are really nice and I think I would make some when I have time.

In N Out Burgers!! Whoo! Our cab driver was really nice and we made a pit stop here (latent dream come true!) and I wanted to buy everything. I got a chocolate shake that I had to chug down because I forgot that I wasn't allowed to take this through airport security (I had made the same mistake in Seattle where I bought some coffee right before entering security).

The burger, fries, and In N Out sauce packets did make it through security! Huzzah! I got to eat them both cold while waiting for my flight. At that point, I wasn't even hungry. The burger was fantastic.

 The animal fries were not that good. They were really soggy, possibly due to it sitting in a paper bag for half an hour, but I was not impressed.

I had a layover in Phoenix, where I found the presence of "Icelandic water" quite funny. The airport was completely packed with people, even though it was one in the morning. I was tempted to get a pumpkin shake but at that point I just felt exhausted and thirsty. Deflated would be a good word, and the only thing I wanted was to  sleep horizontally, undisturbed for 15 hours.

Spring Fling 2011!

Spring Fling 2011. The yearly event that everyone loves, because of the blatant alcoholism and horde of people wavering around drunk. The event in which alcohol is in every bottle and cup. The event in which wearing neon is purely acceptable, and wearing those huge sunglasses and no pants is classy snazzy.

Despite missing the Fling concert, my friends and I did have a lot of fun with a lightsaber fight with glowsticks, and walking around, eating food, and watching movies. We went to the Burger Fling, an event right before the Fling concert. It was advertised as a huge barbecue, but it was nothing of the sort; all we did was stand in line indoors, get a plate of food, and disperse. Because I asked for a veggie burger, I had to wait an extra 11 minutes for them to cook it :( but it was pretty good, and I got an extra slice of cheese with it. I also got a pretty fresh and yeasty pretzel. It wasn't bland, airy, and untextured.

Tonight, I present you with the carnival! The carnival was supposed to be on College Green, but since It's been raining for the past 12 hours, it was moved into Houston Hall. Somehow, they managed to stick in a whole bunch of food samples, a jumping castle, two mechanical bulls, and over the fire-hazard-limit number of people&umbrellas onto two floors, and everyone actually seemed happy about it!! I had arrived a bit early, and there were already lines forming. I got some key lime water ice, and the best part was that it was a full container of it! It was delicious, although I think that the cookies and cream flavour was way better (I tried some of CC's. He actually preferred the fruity ones since mixing cream and water didn't seem to be his thing).

I also got some Chipotle, but they didn't really offer what I wanted; it was just a flour tortilla with cheese, tomato, and lettuce. Dude. Where're the beans? The guacamole? The salsa? Where are all the things that make a Chipotle burrito a Chipotle burrito? Yes, I understand that they had to feed some 1000 or so of us with a limited budget, but this gave TJ a bad impression of Chiptole. As I am already biased towards Chipotle, I don't really mind but now TJ will value Qdoba over Chipotle :(

Actually, I did try some Qdoba tortilla chip dip. It was pretty good-cheesy, spicy, drinkable like soup, so I ended up chugging most of it since we ran out of chips. My friend took a picture of me drinking it, and that's the closest picture I have to the cliche plastic-red-cup-filled-with-vodka image. Haha.

Boxes of...

Costco churros! This is the second (?) Costco churro of my life, and although it tasted rather stale and dry, the inside was quite delicious and spongy!

Samosas from...someone, filled with potato and peas and spicy stuff- Amazing! (still vegetarian although it looks like there's cow mince in there)

...And the grand finale...THE MAGIC CARPET MEATBALL PITA! Delicious mustardy cheesy something light kinda sauce (Not sure what it is), seedy nutty delicious falafelish smooshed non-meat meatballs with crunchy lettuce and a crusty pita - AMAZING! I really have to advertise Magic Carpet now! Next year... Gonna buy from this food truck!

Today! - Fall Fest

I'm finally updating about something that happened today. I still have heaps to write about concerning the past two weeks, but for today, I will blabber on about the blubber today. And yes, that is the line for Coup de Taco about an hour and a half into Fall fest.

Fall fest is overrated. I'm not kidding. Sure, you get free stuff, but the cool stuff actually costs money. The first 750-1000 people get a taco and cupcake for free, but that's if you stand in line.

For at least half an hour.

With a wristband, that you had to stand in line to obtain, as well.

Luckily, I had gone to the library from 12-2, so I was basically right inside the door [outside the door? I wasn't "outside" the door, though, since Fall fest was OUTSIDE the library. Anyway. I was right next to Fall fest], so I went, stood in line for a few minutes, realised I needed a wrist band, then went allllllll the way to the LOVE statue to get a wrist band, and jumped back in line. By this time, the line for Coup de Taco had doubled, although it wasn't as bad as it was 10 minutes later, where it had quadrupled. Oh exponential equations...

[Indoor photography pales - I mean, yellows - in comparison to sunlight photography]

I'm not actually sure why I bothered to stand in line for half an hour [ish?]. I do have a meal plan that guarantees that I get food and don't starve. I also have many kilos of adipose tissue that can sustain me for a while. However, I suppose it was just the fact that I didn't want to outline more for Comparative Med. Anyway, halfway through, two guys who were behind me in line were contemplating getting out of line, and then I told them that they didn't have wristbands... and I asked if they wanted mine. They said no, and went to get wristbands, and came back. Later, two girls [their friends?] dropped by, and they decided to beat the system by just cutting to the front. This meant they cut off ... at least thirty of us. Okay, maybe twenty. Which is still plenty [that wasn't meant to rhyme]. Pretty douche-bag thing to do, in my opinion, especially as there were another zillion people standing behind us [quadrupled, remember?] waiting patiently. The guys behind me, however, said "oh, we got honour... we're not going to cut", which is nice to know.

Anyway. I finally got a vegetarian taco.

Then I went to get a cupcake from Call Me Cupcakes, which was extremely fast since all the dude had to do was hand out a cupcake. No toasting or cooking needed.

I'll review the cupcake first because it sucked.

It's just a generic, bland, un-moist, unflavourful, NONchocolately, dry, small-air-holes, cupcake-shaped cupcake. It did not taste chocolatey, which is always an issue for me, especially when something is labelled CHOCOLATE. I tried to be unbiased about the icing. It was too fatty and oily for my liking. It was also quite tasteless [no chocolatey flavour, at all. It was just chocolate coloured]. Oh, it's pretty alright, but most cupcakes these days ARE pretty.

The taco, however, was quite amazing. It was crunchy, due to sliced tortilla chips INSIDE the taco!! The outer shell was a soft flour tortilla. I'm actually confused as to the difference between a burrito and a taco. Apart from the fact that the taco is open, I can't really see a difference. I guess it's like asking what's the difference between a sandwich and an open-top sandwich. Anyway, about the tortilla strips - I was amazed at this piece of ingenuity. It actually reminds me of the time I had a tortilla chip sandwich. It was amazing, too, although this surely beats it. The Cuban rice and beans were full of chunky flavour; the salsa companion was spicy, but not overwhelming. The cheesy-sour-creamy-cilantro thingy was actually pretty good, because I couldn't really taste the cilantro [I don't particularly like cilantro, so it's a plus for me, but maybe a minus for other people].

I also got an apple from the Penn Environmental Group, although it was just a generic fat GMO apple. The International Students Association [I think that was the group name?] gave out some candy and stuff too, so that was cool. Apart from that, I ended up falling asleep at the library again.

[Note the boxes of cupcakes at the back of the truck. I could've totally taken a box of them.]

I did, however, have a delicious Greek salad with a lot of creamy feta cheese this evening, which reminded me of AK. I miss her.

PennFest! 3 Sept

Pennfest is this event in which retailers try to sell their products to unsuspecting frosh. Since I'm not really advertising the companies that I don't love, I'm just going to refer to them as "this company". This company gave out free cups with a ping pong ball nestled inside. I honestly spent a whole week pondering why they would give us a ping pong ball... and yesterday evening, as TL, JX and I walked back from dinner, it finally hit me. The ping pong ball and the cup was for beer pong. DUH!

Way to advertise alcohol to us...

Cupcakes from Insomnia Cookies... didn't take them.

Anyway, Pennfest had a lot of companies selling dorm stuff, selling "online-food-ordering" services, and plenty of "ohh get a discount if you come to our store!" I ended up consuming a taco from Chipotle, an amazing coconut pecan cookie from Insomnia Cookies [very famous on college campuses, apparently] and some mango water ice. There was also popcorn and candy floss but I wasn't actually that hungry. In all honesty, I think my hypothyroidism is kicking in [Yeah, apparently my hyperthyroidism has been lowered way too much, so I have to cut the meds again]

All my pictures are blurry because it was 11pm and I was walking around while taking pictures. This is actually a huge problem; I can't take a picture without getting ominous stares from strangers.