All Good Things...

Its been almost exactly three months since I last posted and I'm sorry to say that it's not good news that has broken that slide. I just found out that today my cat, Tangerine, has passed away. God that was hard to type...

Tange has been part of the family since I was in 3rd grade, more than 15 years. She was always a shy cat, though became much more outgoing these past few years. Sometimes she was a pretty wonky little cat, but she was my cat and I loved her very much.

She wan't just a good cat, she was the best cat.

I wish I could have seen her one last time.

I'm going to miss her like crazy...

Lovers Again?

Those of you who regularly read my posts may have noticed that food has been showing up less and less frequently around here. In fact, I think there has only been one post about something I'd cooked myself since last October, almost a full year ago. The truth is, food and I have had something of a falling out.

That's not to say that I stopped eating or anything like that, it's just that somewhere along the way food stopped being special to me. It's hard to put a finger on when or why it happened, but I just lost the will to put effort into it anymore. I stopped cooking for others and I stopped doing any more than scrape together dinner for myself, even on weekends. I was hardly even went exploring new restaurants, even on the occasions I did go out to eat. I was in a real food slump.

Generally speaking, things haven't been going so great lately and I found myself staring down a three day weekend with absolutely no plans. Feeling a little desperate, I decided something had to be done about this. And so, on that Monday, I tried to kick start my love affair with food again.

It started with breakfast. I tend to neglect breakfast as a proper meal and just throw together a bowl of cereal or yogurt, so I decided to go a bit further and settled on making pancakes. Pancakes are one of those things that seem really easy to make, but tend not to be. For me, the problem always has been ending up with thin floppy pancakes. The obvious answer is to make thicker batter, but no matter what I try they always end up like sad little frisbees. A quick review of my last attempt will illustrate my problem.

To be honest, my mission almost failed before it even started. Despite having made sure I had enough flour and eggs, I neglected to buy milk and almost abandoned the project on the spot. However, I happened to have some yogurt chilling in my fridge and a few minutes on google confirmed that this was indeed an acceptable substitute! Into the mix went the yogurt and I was back in the game. I'm not big on being exact with measurements, so I took rough amounts for everything in true tekito fashion and hoped for the best.


Success! From the minute I poured the first batch into the pan, I know these bad boys were going to rock and sure enough: fatty thick, fluffy pancakes! I had lunch plans (more on that later) but I snarfed down my wonderful mountain of breakfast goodness anyways. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm



The pancakes were a step in the right direction, but it was going to take more than just a good breakfast to get me and food back together again. So on to lunch, where I had plans to eat at Cicada, which I visited waaaaaay back in September '09. I have to say, it probably would have been good to look back on original post in advance as I reminder what I had or hadn't eaten, but oh well. This time I made sure to have my camera!

Last time, the the star of the show was the little stuffed squid appetizer (there was no forgetting that one!), so that was a must have. I have to say, it was every bit as delicious as I remembered and it completely blew me away once again. That's the kind of food I want to learn how to make.


For the second appetizer, we got roast piquillo peppers stuffed with tuna, beans, and some other goodies. Though not on the same level as the squid, this was definitely another success.


The main dishes is where the reminder of last time would have been most helpful. Once again, the other side of the table went with the grilled snapper and, though delightfully tender and skillfully prepared, it was nothing stunning.


I opted to try the swordfish steak, which was nice and meaty and tasted good enough but, again, was not a dish that will live long in memory. The couscous(?) salad that came with it was kind of weird...


For dessert I went with a "Marsala" creme brulee, expecting some sort of cool twist on your standard creme brulee. It ended up tasting more or less like plain creme brulee with maybe a little bit of a whiskey flavor. I'd say it was just ok.


On the other side of the table was the tiramisu. A lot of places in Tokyo offer up little tiny servings of dessert with course lunches, but not Cicada. This was a freakin slab and it was delicious. Tiramisu isn't the most difficult dessert to make, but a lot of people manage to screw it up anyways, so it was nice to taste a really quality one for a change.


So was it all enough for me to fall back in love with food again? To be honest, it's hard to say just yet, but it certainly made me want to give it a second shot. Hopefully the coming weeks will see at least a couple of interesting dishes come out of my kitchen!

Taipei

It's been almost a month now and I'm only just now getting around to writing about it, but I spent a few days in Taiwan at the end of August. I'm going to keep this short and just let pictures do the talking, starting with a pair of photos that pretty much summarize my time there.

This is what happens to you in Taiwan:

Before -----> After

To be fair, there several choices made along the way that led to this outcome, such as the "every time you see shaved ice you have to eat it" rule. These delicious beasts will put that little Snoopy snow cone machine you had as a kid to shame.

But shaved ice alone isn't enough to make you look like you're second trimester. To go that far, you need some help from dim sum, fresh out of the steamer. When in doubt, always order an extra item. It'll taste so awesome you'll forget the concept of "feeling stuffed" and gobble it down anyways, plus it would cost 3x as much in Tokyo and still not be as good, so you've got to take your chances. Din Tai Fung is awesome but there's another place one block behind it that was nearly as good and had way shorter lines, making for a good Plan B.

But there's so much more to Taiwanese food than just dim sum, so you've got to expand beyond that. It's all so delicious and you've got to eat your veggies some time. (A quick note to any Japanese people reading this: if you're using the 地球の歩き方 guide book, skip the restaurant 青葉. The food is good, but ridiculously overpriced. You can definitely do better)

But what about later in the day you ask? (Ok, you probably didn't ask, but just run with me here) Night markets! Full of street vendors hawking little bits of deliciousness for just a couple dollars a pop, it's easy to just wander around stuffing your face. The best of the night markets was definitely Shilin, which absolutely blew the other ones away.

All that food will leave you pretty thirsty. Fortunately, Taiwan is also the land of pearl milk tea and doles it out in huge glasses. After drinking this stuff, I want to walk into the Bubble Island in Ann Arbor and kick the manager in the shins for pawning off that rubbish on us unknowing Americans for all those years, when the real stuff tastes this good.

Just to be clear, I didn't spend 5 days and 4 nights doing nothing but eating. I wandered around the city a lot (gotta walk off the calories and make room for the next meal!) and Taipei isn't a very big city, so I managed to get around a lot of it. A typhoon was heading our way at the time, so I decided not to take any day trips out of town on the chance that I'd get caught out, but Taipei has a lot of cool parks and temples which kept me busy.

Visually, Taipei has a lot in common with most of the other big Asian cities I've seen. The boatloads of scooters and backstreet eateries with cheap metal stools are just some of the visual cues that remind you that those these places are on the cusp of joining the "developed countries" list, they still have a little ways to go.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of this movie poster. They were promoting this movie super hard (though it wasn't out yet) and it was everywhere, but all I could think every time I saw was "this guy is so badass he draws rainbows with his sword!" Turns out the movie was "Seediq Bale" which was apparently highly anticipated internationally and was all over the news ahead of the Venice Film Festival. Who would have guessed?

I'm also a big sucker for skylines and love going up high buildings, so Taipei 101 was a must-see for me. It's far and away the biggest building in Taiwan and offers a great view down on the city.

All that eating and walking is enough to tire a guy out and Taipei offers some pretty awesome places to stay on the cheap. The first three nights were spent at the sharp and modern-looking Ambiance Hotel. The location isn't the most convenient for using the subway system but it gets you out and walking around the city, which I actually think is a plus, and at ~$60/night it's an absolute steal.

As good as that place was, splurging on a room for the last night was definitely the way to go. Enter the Studio Suite at the San Want Residences. This place was PHENOMENAL. The bed pretty much swallows you whole in big fluffy goodness .See the TV in the middle of the room? That bad boy rotates 180° so you can watch from bed. The bathtub was like a small pool. They even got the room number as my birthday! So much sexiness. I might not be able to stay at a Motel 6 ever again...

So that's my Taiwan adventure in a nutshell. Check another country off my list of places in Asia to visit. Many many more to see before I head back stateside!

GMAT

The GMAT is one of those nasty little tests that nobody really wants to take, but it's one of the big items on the requirements list for MBA programs around the world. As that is the direction in which my life is headed these days, it was a not-so-little hurdle sitting in my way that needed to be overcome. I'm planning on aiming for some top-class schools, so rocking the exam was pretty much a must.

I'll let you know how it turned out, but I just wanted to give my account of taking on the GMAT as a reference for anyone else who is thinking about taking it too. There's a lot of material on the internet relating to the GMAT that I looked through and it was interesting to see what approaches other people had taken to prepare for the test, so I just want to add my experience into the mix.

The test is done entirely on a computer and you can't go back to review questions later; once you submit your answer that's that. It's a computer adaptive test, where the computer selects questions for based on how well you are doing. What that really means is that if you get a question right the computer gives you an even harder one. You could view it as the computer just trying to push you in order to accurately gauge your skill level, but the way I see it is that the test just wants to break you; it wants to throw you a question that you can't answer. It's also timed and gives you about 2 minutes per question, so it's pretty much go-go-go all the time and you really can't afford to play around with a problem you aren't sure about to see if you can sort it out.

There are two sections: Quantitative and Verbal. None of the actual subject matter is all that difficult and everything in it is part of a standard high school education. The Quantitative section is mostly algebra and geometry, the Verbal section mostly grammar and critical thinking. On a basic level, it's not particularly challenging stuff. But they've got some very smart people writing up these questions and they are very good at writing rather tricky questions.

I started preparing for the test about a month and a half ago, studying mainly on weekends as work tends to run quite late on weekdays. I'd picked up a couple of study guides when I was back in Ann Arbor in March, but I was a little nervous if that would be enough. As I looked around online for study information, I was amazed by the lengths that people go to in order to prepare for the GMAT. There were stories all over the place of people completely discarding their social lives and spending half a year or more studying, $1,000+ prep courses, and $200/hr private tutors. Many people take the test multiple times (and it's $250 a pop!) in hopes of getting a score on par with those of students at their dream schools. Some refer to the GMAT as "The Beast" and there are plenty of accounts of the heart break following a disappointing attempt. Was I really studying hard enough for this??

To be clear, here is a list of the exact resources that I used:

-GMAT Review Official Guide

-GMAT Verbal Review Official Guide

-GMAT Quantitative Review Official Guide

-Cracking the GMAT by Princeton Review

-Free flashcards from Manhattan GMAT

-Manhattan GMAT CAT practice tests (x6)

-GMAT Prep practice tests (x2)

I started with the Princeton Review book, which I think gives some great insights into how to approach the test and how to work your way through the answers. It won't do much for you in terms of really knowing the content of the subjects covered by the GMAT, but it was very good in terms of test taking techniques.

From there, I moved on to the Official Guide, which is pretty much just a big collection of practice problems. The book has sections briefly covering the core topics, but not nearly thoroughly enough to be of real value if you are aiming for a high score. Fortunately it has a ton of problems to work through, each of which becomes a little lesson in itself for understanding what the GMAT wants from you. Most important, every answer also has an explanation, so you can see exactly how to tackle each type of problem. Most of the early questions are quite easy and I flew through them, but they definitely started getting trickier later on.

Once I had finished the main Official Guide, I started taking practice tests and working my way through the two subject-specific official guides. The subject guides are pretty much just additional practice questions and don't teach anything more about the respective subjects, but I think one of the most important things is just seeing a ton of questions and getting comfortable with the sorts of problems that will come at you come test day. This is also where the practice tests come in handy. The first practice test I took was provided free by Manhattan GMAT and I liked it so much that I happily shelled out the $30 or so to get access to their five other tests. Like the Official Guides, the Manhattan GMAT tests offer explanations for all the problems so you can look at what you should have been doing or, in some cases, how you could have been more efficient about solving the problem. Though they let you set the time limit for each section of the test, I took them all under the same time limits as the real test to get used to the time crunch. I also used the GMAT Prep practice tests that the company which runs the GMAT provides, but found the questions less challenging than Manhattan GMAT's and was disappointed to find out they only tell you what the correct answer was, but not how to solve it.

All in all, I took eight practice tests and got the following results: (Overall (Quantitative, Verbal))

660(Q42,V38)

710(Q46,V42)

720(Q48,V40)

690(Q45,V38)

730(Q45,V44)

740(Q47,V44)

720(Q45,V42)

750(Q50,V42)

700+ is generally the target range for Top 10 schools, almost all of which have an average of 710-720, so I was feeling pretty good going into the test. The Verbal score definitely has a larger impact on your overall percentile, which many think is on account to the increasing number of people taking the test who are from Asian countries that have very math/science-focused education systems. They kill the Quant section and get super high scores, but struggle more on the Verbal part which is quite grammar heavy. As such, my Quant score was actually a significantly lower percentile than my Verbal for all but the last test.

There is one other section of the GMAT, two 30 minute analytical essays you write at the beginning of the test, but they're scored separately and getting a satisfactory score on them shouldn't be a big deal. They're put in there just as a language evaluation for schools to reference, so I should be fine and I didn't bother doing anything to prep for them other than looking over some suggestions for organization structures.

Finally, this past Friday, it was time to take my first shot at the real deal. I'd taken both Thursday and Friday off from work to make sure I was well rested and relaxed. I made my way to the test center a good 45 minutes early just to be safe. A lot rides on this test and people invest a lot of time and money to get their target scores, so I suppose there's a lot of incentive to try to cheat and as such security is super tight. They take a scan of the veins in your palm (which apparently are unique for each person like fingerprints) and you have to have your palm scanned as well as show picture ID every time you enter and exit the test room for the breaks between sections. Intense!!

The Quant section of the test went much like many of the practice tests I'd taken, with time being the biggest issue. A few problems took more time than I'd have wanted, but there were a couple that I knew right away and just blew through as well as some where I could tell I wouldn't be able to solve quickly enough, so I could cut my loses, guess, and move on. The craziest part by far though was that about half way through the section a magnitude 6.8 earthquake started shaking the building. The tremors lasted for a good while and kept going stronger, but time was already tight and I've rode out enough quakes over the last 5 months that there was no way I was going to let it slow me down, so I just kept pounding away at problems. In the end, I finished with just 30 seconds left, but didn't have to guess purely for the sake of completing the test on time as had been the case on some of the early practice tests, so I was feeling pretty good about my performance.

The Verbal section was also not particularly different from the practice tests. I got a couple really difficult reading comprehension problems, but all in all it was pretty reasonable. I finished with 10 minutes left, which was how the practice tests had gone as well.

When you're done with the test, a page comes up giving you two options: Submit your score or have it cancelled. Obviously cancelling the score wasn't an option for me, but knowing that as soon as you press the button to submit your score will pop up on the screen builds up the anxiety for that brief moment. I literally just sat there for a good 30 seconds just trying to prepare myself for whatever might happen. I pushed the button aaaaaand....

Overall: 740 (97th percentile)

Quantitative: 49 (85th percentile)

Verbal: 42 (95th percentile)

!!!!!!!

One and done baby! That's a score that will hold it's own on an application to any school in the world. It isn't so high that everyone is going to think I'm some sort of genius, but it will clear all the necessary hurdles. Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, you name a b-school and that score won't be out of place. I couldn't be more thrilled. The Verbal was a little lower than I had hoped and who knows what another couple of points there would have done for my overall score, but it will certainly do just fine.

The GMAT is just one step on the long hard road to an MBA. From here, there are schools to research, essays to write, a resume to polish, recommendation letters to have written, interviews, and more. But it's very much a step in the right direction. Though I have to admit that I did sort of enjoy working through the practice problems, I am more than happy to put my prep books away and move on to the more meaty parts of the application process. First Round deadlines in early October are probably too soon, so I'll be spending the next several months trying to get everything together by the end of the year in time for the Second Round cutoff.

I'm confident that I have what it takes to not just hold my own but really contribute at the top top schools out there and that's what I'm going to aim for. They're super selective, taking 10-15% of applicants, but you'd better believe I'm going to give it my best shot and make something happen. Watch this space, because I'm only just getting started!