Tuesday, July 06, 2004

I went to a Chinese restaurant yesterday with a group of INSEADers still in Fontainebleau. We met three other groups of INSEADers. It is nice to see that a few days after graduation, we will have an overwhelming presence in this town.

One of the groups we met had a funny adventure. They were all invited by an Asian participant to have a typical Asian dinner. Her parents are over and they had spent the whole afternoon chopping and cutting things. In the evening, they started frying and steaming the chopped and cut ingredients. A lovely lemony smell invaded the house - just in time to make everyone realize that as the cook ran out of vegetable oil, they picked another type of oil. Not understanding French and not discouraged by the picture of dead crawling and flying bugs on the bottle, they used lemon grass-based Mosquito repellent as cooking oil...Fortunately, they realized before consuming the lovely dinner that they were at risk of serious poisoning (and the first person to notice would have been the next September batch, not arriving before late August...). In the end, they had to throw away all this magnificent food and join us in the restaurant...

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