A few months ago, Subway introduced a special $5 price for all their footlong subs (except of course those premium subs that are really just a gimmick anyway). I am here to tell you that upon experience of this offer, it simply is not worth the hassle my friends.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been to some decent subways and the experience has been fine. My local Subway, at the Caltrain station, has been my regular lunch stop at work approximately 3 times per week since this offer began.

I blame this mostly on the staff. They’re all foreign workers, which I have absolutely no problem with. I do, however, expect that if you work at an establishment where the customer is going to give you specific parameters for creating their valued lunchtime meal, you should at least be able to understand English. Honestly, some of the people’s level of English comprehension is worse than those voice recognition telephone switchboards (”did you say ‘Technical Support’?”). Their training must be painful, assuming that is that they actually receive training.

Subway staff have 5 preset questions, and anything that can’t be answered in one of these 5 questions causes a lot of confusion. Plus, even if you answer the question, don’t expect them to remember your answer.

“Footlong Tuna on Honey Oat bread please”, I say.
“You want cheese?”, the response.
“Swiss, please”, I reply
“What type of bread”, the heavily accented girl asks.
“Um, Honey Oat…” I reply, annoyed somewhat that this is the second time I’ve answered this in 10 seconds.
“Toasted?”, she asks in truncated question format.
“No, not toasted”. This is actually where they get you - if you ask for it toasted, you get slapped with a hot food tax.
“What type of cheese?”

It’s a vicious circle.

By the time I’ve reached the end of the production line, I’ve got my sandwich, with lettuce because they guy has already assumed that I want it, and when I tell I don’t want it, he questions my judgement in sandwich fillers.

“You said lettuce, right?”
“No lettuce, I said!” comes my reply. Still he proceeds to wrap it up. Moron.

Ok, so it’s $5 dollars but the amount of work involved is enormous. I used to go to Subway almost every day and the guy there knew me, and what I wanted so it was quick and painless. Fortunately for him, he thinks independently and has found a real job. Sorry to offend any ’sandwich artists’.

Weekends are a different matter entirely. That’s trainee time.

2 people in front of me in the line. It takes 20 minutes to get my sub made. It’s still wrong, and he charges me the tax for a toasted sub. I point out his mistake, he doesn’t understand. Typical.

I checked out Quizno’s once, who are Subway’s main rivals. They take too long though, and are much more expensive. I hate Subway more though.

Yesterday was fun.

Work

I started the day quite badly. Sunday night I worked the late shift at work, answering the calls until 10pm, then I worked the early shift on Monday which means answering from 6am. I forgot to turn my phone off between 10 and 6 and in the middle of the night, someone called to cancel their tour for Monday due to illness. 2am in the morning I answered my phone thinking it was 6am. I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night so I arrived at work exhausted before I even started.

Playstation

But I got off work at 4.30pm and walked up to Mission St. I had been checking on Craigslist for a Playstation 2 just so I would have something to do if it was wet outside and I was totally bored (which thankfully doesn’t happen often here). There was a guy in Mission selling one with a ton of games and controllers or $100, so I needed to take the 14 bus into the Mission.

Stupid me, I took the wrong bus. I didn’t know there were 3 14 buses!

I ended up in outer mission, which is miles away. I eventually found my way back and got the Playstation, but without half the games. They were mostly crap. And I bargained him down on the price a bit, so I got the whole deal for $95. Tried it out this morning and it works like a charm. He also left one of the disks inside, so I got another one without even knowing it.

Free tickets to Advanced movie screening

I had to rush back downtown as I was meeting Valerie there. It was six months yesterday that we’ve been together so I planned a bit of a date. I met her (about 30 minutes late) at the Metreon, which is essentially a glorified cinema, and we waited in line for a movie that I had got free tickets to.

The movie is called ‘21‘. It’s based on a true story about a guy who is trying to get to medical school, but can’t raise the $300,000 he needs to pay the fees. His teacher notices he is very good with numbers and invites him to join the MIT Blackjack team, who use a system of counting the cards in a blackjack game to beat the dealer. Every weekend, the team flies to Vegas and uses their technique to win big at the casinos. Apparently this method of counting cards is not illegal, but casinos have strict measures in place to stop this activity.

The movie was pretty good, an intriguing story and well acted but it was a little Hollywood for my liking. There were all the cliched things, and at times it was predictable and a little fantasized which made it difficult to believe in parts.

Q&A

But by far the coolest part was that the guy who the movie is based on did a brief Q&A after the movie. He answered a lot of questions, and was very interesting. He’s basically banned from Las Vegas and can’t be within 20 ft of a blackjack table at any casino. Every casino in America knows his face and he can’t play anywhere.

The movie comes out on Friday here, and on April 11th back home, I think. It’s worth checking out if you like those sorts of movies.

Italian Food

The cinema organised some blackjack after the movie at nearby Jillian’s bar across the street, but I took Valerie to Buca di Beppo instead, which a great Italian restaurant that I went to over Christmas. It was great, I really love Italian food over here - it’s one type of restaurant that I could order almost anything off the menu and know I would like it. Usually there’s only a few things on a restaurant’s menu that I would go for. In the end we both settled for lasagna because it looked just too tasty. And it was. It was just the perfect size because I was just able to finish it and no more. Very satisfying.

Happy six months Valerie. Poor girl has been stuck with me for too long…

It’s been pretty miserable in the city the last fews days.

This photo (from the SF Chronicle) was taken on the campus at Berkeley (where my girlfriend now studies). It’s been pretty heavy rain for a few days now, I got soaked on my lunch break and we now have a leak in our office right beside my desk. Excellent.

So what is there to do about the city when inclement weather forces you to retreat to the sanctuary of indoors? Aside from the mundanity of going to work (six days a week at the moment!) there is plenty to do keep bored students occupied.

On Sunday the weather let up a little so I ventured out to do a few messages. My first stop was at the fantastic little shop called ‘You Say Tomato’, which is a British style cornershop that sells all British food. I bought Ribena, Weetabix and a bag of Dolly Mixture and paid the handsome sum of $23.00 for all of it. I believe the cashier was Dick Turpin.

Conveniently, Guitar Centre is only a few blocks from there so I spent several hours testing their new stock of Mesa’s. I have also fallen in love with a Taylor acoustic guitar they have there. It’s not cheap, around $2800 but it is quite possibly the greatest acoustic guitar sound I’ve ever heard. I went a stage further and plugged it into a little Fender acoustic amp and was blown away by the clarity and response from the guitar.

In the evening I did some baking. Yes, even guys can bake. I’m actually recognised as a great chef with my friends. My shepherd’s pie was a great success and all subsequent dishes have been the envy of many. Valerie and I baked a Bailey’s cheesecake using a recipe we found online. It was quite easy to make but unfortunately we didn’t have a blender and we got the proportions of some of the ingredients wrong so it came out looking a little brown and tasted only of Baileys. It wasn’t terrible, but not as good as we’d hoped. I think we’ll try it again this Sunday. I can steal a blender from the kitchen in my office for the day.

Tuesday night was good fun. I got a group of people together (including my new Korean roommate Sid and his buddy Ringo/Pingu - I can’t remember his name) to go to a Karaoke bar. Personally, I’m a terrible singer but I really have fun at Karaoke bars so I came prepared with a list of possible songs. Unfortunately we were competing for stage time with a birthday party and 2 strange but funny guys who sang the Spiderman theme song and other bizarre tracks. This meant that my performances would be limited so in the end I performed Any Way You Want It, by Journey, as a duet with Valerie and a solo performance of the Wilson Pickett classic, Mustang Sally. I have few photos which I’ll dig up and throw up here soon.

The rest of the week has been fairly quiet and uneventful. I have a report for university due in for next week which I need to make a start on. I also found out today that Pixar, the Disney-owned animation studio responsbile for Toy Story, is located in Alameda which is right across the bay between Berkeley and Oakland. I’m going to call them to see if they’ll show me around some day. There’s so many businesses located here. Bebo is on 2nd street I think, and the Wordpress guys are just a few blocks from where I live.

And just while we’re on the subject, what does everyone think of Apple’s new Macbook Air? Personally, I think it’s overpriced and quite rubbish really. I’m a big fan of Apple and stand by a lot of their technology but this one just sucks. Ohhhh, it’s thinner than a regular Macbook…big deal. It doesn’t even have a CD Drive! You have to buy an external one to use with it. Ditch the hype and get yourself a Macbook Pro.

It’s been a slow week for blogging, and a slow week for me in general - evident by the lack of a blog entry for a week now. So, as a little change, I’m going to show you good folks (many of whom are students with primitive cooking skills) how to prepare a cheap, wholesome and most of all, tasty Shepherd’s Pie that will astound everyone.

On Sunday night I made this very dish from a mixture of a recipe I found online and my own creativity. I made lots of it and shared it with some people, who all were looking for seconds afterwards. Je suis un excellent cuisinier.

You will need:

• Potatoes, roughly 4 large ones. If you like a lot of topping, go for 5.
• 2lb of ground beef
• Carrots and peas (fresh is better, but tinned comes ready prepared and is still good)
• 1 tin of beef broth
• 1/2 cup milk
• Small amount of butter
• Pinch of salt
• Lots of shredded cheese (optional)

Cooking Time:

About 1 hour

Serves:

Around 4 people, I fed 3 with everybody taking seconds…so maybe more.

Popular with:

Everybody! It’s Irish food so everyone loves it. Especially Brazilians.

The Recipe

1. The first thing is to wash and peel your potatoes. Afterwards, cut each potato into quarters and place into a saucepan of boiling water. Add a pinch of salt for flavour, and 1/2 cup of milk to make the potatoes really creamy.

2. Let the potatoes boil for a few minutes, then turn down the heat and simmer for about 25 minutes. It might also be a good idea to preheat your oven at this stage. Keep it fairly warm, around 7 or 8 on the dial.

3. Meanwhile, preheat a large frying pan and melt some butter into it to grease it. Chop up your carrots and peas (you may add onion if you wish, personally I think it’s evil) or simply open your tin and drain most of the juice.

4. Add the ground beef to the frying pan and keep the temperature at a medium level so as not to burn the meat. When the meat is brown, add in your carrots and peas. Cook together until the meat is a nice dark brown and the vegetables are hot. Add in the beef broth periodically while stirring to give the whole thing a rich, juicy texture.

So far you should have something like this:

5. By this stage your potatoes should be nearly ready. Test that they’re soft by poking them with a fork, and if all is good drain the water/milk and mash them up. In the absence of a potato masher, a whisk is an effective alternative as shown below:

6. While mashing it might be a good idea to add in the some more butter to improve the flavour. It helps to make the potatoes more spreadable too.

7. When they’re done, use the rest of your butter to grease the inside of a baking tray and add your beef mixture into it. Spread it out over the tray and make sure it’s still nice and moist.

8. Spread the potatoes on top and make sure it covers as much as possible. Use a fork to rough up the top of it so that it can turn a nice golden brown when done. Place it in the oven as close to the top as possible and leave for about 30 minutes.

9. The final stage is to bring it out the oven when the top is crispy and golden brown. Depending on your tastes, you may wish to add cheese to the top. I love cheese, so I added almost an entire bag of 4 Italian cheese to the top of my pie and let it melt for a few minutes before serving.

10. The end result is a really tasty Shepherd’s Pie that will feed a whole house. If you want, you can serve it with chips or some garlic bread, that works quite well. And it goes down great with a cold pint of Guinness!

So that’s it. give it a try and tell me how you get on. I guarantee you’ll love it (not a guarantee). Hope fully I’ll have something more exciting to blog about in a few days.