Chore Day

So the Extend-a-Family chore day wasn't all that exciting. I moved some stuff in the morning, then weeded their garden, then spent the rest of the day filing.

I had one of the strangest experiences of my life when I was weeding the garden, though. Some woman stopped her car next to me, got out, walked up to me, said "Excuse me, can I have one of those?" I was holding a bunch of thistles and cattails, so I offered her a thistle. She said "No, the other one" and took a cattail. She hesitated, then said "Could I have some more?" So I gave her a handful of cattails. She said "Thank you so much!" got in her car, and left.

Huh.

Next day, I was filling in for a guy who supports someone during the day. Circumstances had me meeting the person at the Cambridge Centre. Now, Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge comprise the Tri-City that I live in, and each city has a major mall. Kitchener's is Fairview Mall, Waterloo has Conestoga Mall, and Cambridge has the Cambridge Mall. In the almost-four years I've lived in this area, I've been to Fairview and Conestoga Mall more times than I can count, but this was the first time I'd been to Cambridge Centre. It was pretty typical.

I gotta say, the name "Cambridge Centre" seems pretty uninspired when Kitchener and Waterloo were able to come up with names that weren't the same as their city's.

I went to a Mongolian Buffet a while ago. It was build your own stirfry, and I wasn't sure what to make of it. They have a buffet of raw material that you put into a bowl, and then they have a chef prepare it. The chef stands in the centre of a circular grill with two huge metal paddles. He puts everyone's stirfries in piles around him and proceeds to chop, flip, and shift your stuff as it cooks, moving from serving to serving.

On one hand, I really like stirfries, and getting to choose your own material is fun. On the other hand, when I'm building my own stuff, I feel like it's one step away from leaving me with the paddles and a set of instructions until the only thing I'm paying for is the material. I also thought that the way the chef prepared the food was super awesome and very unique. A number of the chefs were young and since it's a University area, I figured they might be students, and I just had to imagine what training might have looked like, and couldn't imagine having a cooler entry-level position.

On the other hand, they weren't washing their paddles before going to the next meal, and I could see them getting sauce and bits of other meals stuck to them. Everyone gets a bit of everyone's meal. They had vegetarian options at the front, but if you're a vegetarian, you're definitely getting someone else's meat juice in your stirfry. Even for people with food sensitivities or allergies, I can't say the place is safe for them. I wasn't even sure if they should be having raw vegetables and meats together. I remember something from my Safe Food Handling course about cross contamination, where raw material should be separated and different tools should be used or sanitized between uses for different food groups.  But my certificate is expired, so maybe I'm forgetting something.

Really undecided about how I felt about the whole experience.