A New Year Dinner

My dinner on New Year's day in Taipei!

We get New Year's dinner when we're away. Part of our "welfare". I don't know if our company or the hotels pay for it though. Sometimes, the dinner is a 3-course affair - soup, salad and main. One year in Narita, it was a 10-dish buffet with karaoke! All I could remember from that dinner was the awful singing!

We had just checked into the Taipei hotel at 6pm and the dinner was at 6:30pm. We didn't even have time to shower as we didn't want to keep others waiting. One girl did not have the proper shoes, one only had a polo-tshirt. But we all went in the end and we didn't regret it at all.

This year, my colleagues and I were treated to a fantastic buffet dinner : 2 choices of soup with warm bread, cold cuts and salad, 20 mains, cut fruits and tons of yummy dessert! All that food for 45 of us! We just ate and ate and ate! I did, anyway. There goes my new year resolution! My favourites were 1) Jelly fish with beans 2) Kung-pao prawns 3) Sliced marinated beef with black beans and chilli 4) Drunken chicken.

Besides, the food, I was impressed that the wait staff kept topping up the buffet although we were already half-way through. That's service for you. I did my first good deed of the year - I sent the hotel a thank-you email right after I got back to my room.

Good service should never go unappreciated.