February 20, 2004

Good Fortune

Some mornings I wake up, and I know luck is on my side. Today, for example. I got up late, walked to the train station knowingly five minutes behind schedule. But one has to take a chance, right? I got there a full three minutes ahead of the train. It had been delayed due to "heavy passenger loading", we soon learned over the intercom. This week has been horribly busy at work, and so I expected to be buried. But today, I was miraculously able to catch up on some items, and delegate the rest.

But the best part came at noon. Out of the blue, it was a colleague's birthday. Of course, we had to celebrate that, so a group of us drove over to King's Buffet. I rarely make it out of the office for lunch, so this was especially lucky.

And, as luck would have it, they had plenty of Mongolian Beef:

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I should point out that this much food is usually enough to force some belt-loosening. But, luckily, that plate didn't even make a dent in my stomach. So I helped myself to another:

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I should count my lucky stars: 16 ounces. (312 total) Even enough room for some (non-beef) fake crab. Luck has its limits, however. For example, how many people have walked away from commercial jet crashes? Not many. So, as my stomach clearly has finite dimensions, I wasn't going to push my luck with a third plate. But who could turn down a fortune cookie?:

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You bet I will.

Posted by eric at February 20, 2004 12:59 PM
Comments

You earnestly expect me to see a pound of meat concealed somewhere amid the piles of vegetables and sauce presented here?

Posted by: Guy at February 21, 2004 04:50 AM

I was actually being generous. The consensus of my dining companions was that the first pile of beef (whose mountainous dimensions are perhaps not accurately reflected in the 2 dimensional photo) weighed in at 13 ounces. I settled at 11. The second pile they estimated at 8 ounces. I disagreed, and estimated 5. There was no scale. And as it was Buffet, there was no available waiter. So, my friend, how else would you have me judge?

Posted by: Eric at February 21, 2004 11:10 AM

And these friends are impartial are they?

We need some kind of standardization or we may never truly know for sure who will have won this concourse.

Posted by: Guy at February 21, 2004 08:01 PM

These friends are impartial. There were five in all, one of which chose not to participate because, in his words, "I'm not good at estimating these things."

You have to trust me on this one. Plate 1 really was a mountain of beef (Plate 2 was more like a foothill). And yet, I agonized over the weight, knowing that you'd almost certainly attack my credibility. That's why, in the end, I decided to shave off from their estimates.

In fact, I endured a great deal of discomfort the rest of the day to log in that pound of beef, and I even skipped my otherwise regularly scheduled steak dinner. Had a light salad instead. But, if all of this effort, and hundreds more meals like it to come, are regarded with suspicion, so much so that my glorious crown will be the source of your lasting envy, then it's all in vain.

And let me tell you, no matter what kind of standards we adopt for home cooking, I'm not bringing a scale into a restaurant. They'd send me to the booby hatch.

Posted by: Eric at February 21, 2004 10:41 PM