2015 - April 22, Strait to Taiwan
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Contents |
Event Captains
- Food (Tian Mi)
- Decorations (David Wong)
- Booths (Cynthia Lo, Jimmy Zeng)
- Logistics (Julia Huang)
Event Overview
Another year of ATS's famed Strait to Taiwan =).
This year, it fell on the Wednesday right after CPW, giving us less of a break after the rush of CPW events. We decided to move Xifan Sunday to May because CPW is technically over by Sunday morning and usually only students show up anyways. We hope to give exec a slight break between Midway/Bobafest and Strait to Taiwan prep. As a result, we only have 2 days of prep instead of 3 (like last year).
We managed to save time because we reused the stands that Staly built last year. Get lots of volunteers! We had more volunteers than last year during prep which made things like chicken skewers go super quickly! Also, more people = better morale, try to keep people's spirits up during the day. The only thing that took longer than expected was mochi making because we accidentally tried to make double the amount from last year (oops, don't do that). It helped a lot that we focused on two things at a time to prep for so people had company and we were working in basically two circles of 5-8. Don't forget to cover the tables with trash bags, it makes cleanup sooooo much easier!
2015 Shopping List
Food/Shopping List
DO NOT BUY THESE THINGS NEXT YEAR
- aluminum foil -- we have like sq yards that will probably last 20 years. We're not joking.
- chicken skewers -- we have a LOT left in storage so you probably won't need to buy them (double check before shopping trip)
- glutinous rice flour -- we have a lot in storage -- check before you buy!
- tea leaves -- we have one or two bags in Walker
- gloves
- lysol wipes
- sponges
- napkins
(you should check out the two boxes in walker for S2T)
Attendance
Ticket sales were around $1500
Notes
Contacts
- CAC Stata: Lianne Scott (liscott@mit.edu)
- Campus Dining: Michael (Mike) Myers (myersm@mit.edu)
- Electricity: Bob 617-771-5083 (emailing Lianne Scott takes care of this)
- Tech Cash: Card Services, Basement of Student Center
- Make sure to reserve the card reader VERY early in advance! It's new and easy to use.
- Tim the Beaver: http://studentlife.mit.edu/cac/forms/reserve-tim http://studentlife.mit.edu/cac/forms/reserve-tim
Driver's Guide
- Dont drive on Marathon Monday. There are alternatives. ie. HMart and Super 88
- Zipcar is good for short trips but if keeping it for over 6 hours, might want to consider renting it for the day or using budget car.
- If using budget car, get codes from MIT to get car without satisfying age requirement
- May want to look into Uhaul for large shopping trips
- Shuttling equipment for prep/cleanup
- Walker
- Parking at Walker next to tennis courts
- If comfortable, can actually back down slope to use unloading area for kitchen.
- Otherwise, side door near parking lot gives easy access to elevator. Dont leave door open for long though. Door has silent alarm that alerts police if left open for a long time.
- Student Center
- Can stop in the circle Saferide uses. Might be safer to have driver sit in car though because you cant actually park there for long.
- McCormick
- Only 30 min parking without a parking pass. Best to leave someone with the car in case someone comes to ticket the car. (BIG No-No)
- Word out is McCormick desk called MIT Police on van sitting outside McCormick for a couple hours. Dont do that.
- Walker
- Chinatown Run
- Took the T there and ubered back
- Costco Run
- Have someone look for a route online and print it out beforehand to minimize stress
- Mobile version of google maps takes you on a road that doesnt exist, hence stress and confusion
- Lots of splitting roads. Directions will probably just tell you to go straight. It is ok to stop in the center of the split and figure out where to go. U-turns are hard to come by.
- Shuttling food/equipment day of
- UHAUL opens at 7. Be there and wait for them to open to maximize set-up time.
- Parked at shaws because closer parking garages were full.
Logistics
- Reservation issues this year - none
- got Tim the Beaver, make sure to reserve at least 2 weeks in advance
- no Girl Scouts yay!
- CAC and Dining people have real lives, sometimes emails may get back with a “OUT OF OFFICE” response, make sure to contact them during the weekday and between 9am and 5pm
- Reserving Stata
- Fill out the "Student Space Application." Also contact Lianne directly about reserving the space.
- Need to fill out an official event description on the MIT event calendar because we get funding
- In addition to reserving the space, you need to register the event at atlas.mit.edu
- Meeting with Campus Dining - we met with Michael Myers
- Asked for - tablecloths, serving utensils, ice. Got disposal tablecloths at 8:30 (postponed setup because of that) we should still have them in storage. He offered to get us serving utensils but we had enough. No ice because Chartwells only has 1 ice machine that services all three food places in Stata
- TechCASH Machine
- Reserve the TechCASH machine ASAP, much earlier than two weeks before. TechCASH machine is beautiful (also you get a free iPhone with it, borrowed only)
- Publicity
- Let Pub Chairs know early! This year we had a page in the tech and some ads down the infinite, but dorm postering was only half done and our cover pictures were all changed super late.
- Other Logistics
- Lianne got us nice easels and helped us contact the electricity people. Send her the layout plans. She'll want to know how many easels we want, what appliance wattages are.
- Electrical has historically cost between $550 and $600. Remember to include in the budget. In 2013, the cost was nearly $1000.
Volunteers
- Have a laptop at the front booth to let volunteers sign in
- We paid volunteers 2 tickets/hr. Serving is more important than prep because you need the coverage
- Serving shifts: 1hr, Prep shifts: come whenever you can
- Pay volunteers at booth on day of
Food
- TIAN ROCKED FOOD CAPTAINING (if you're not experienced, probably a good idea to have more than one food captain). Even if you're reusing recipes, it takes a lot of work to plan the logistics of cooking.
- Chicken Skewers
- Make more of them. Like, even more. They're cheap, easy, and delicious. ("Why didn't we get 10 bags??")
- We also lost a whole box of chicken skewers ._. (moving them from Next House Country Kitchen to the UHaul is a nontrivial task)
- We initially sold at 1 for $1, but later sold 3 for $2 -- Don't sell them at the reduced price ever.
- Since we make such a large profit on S2T (shhhh), consider getting boneless chicken. Even though it's more expensive, it makes prep less sad for the chicken cutters.
- Add scallions to the marinade?
- Sellout: 1:12pm
- Zong Zi
- Video of Steph Yu teaching how to make zongzi is here.
- We had wayyyyyy more tea leaves than we could make zongzi -- we had to throw a lot out. :(
- Make sure we have enough rice!
- Amount of rice to filling ratio was off and we ran out of sticky rice -- Steph Yu saved the day and fried some rice with the filling that we filled the zong zi's with
- MAKE SURE YOU LABEL VEGGIE AND MEAT CAREFULLY -- some meat ones ended up in the veggie bag and that was very embarassing
- Sellout: 1:47pm
- Pork Rice
- Get smaller bowls, pork rice went fast
- Think out the pork to rice ratio more carefully (i.e. measure how big the spoon is; not too hard to do)
- Sellout: 1:15pm
- Scallion Pancakes
- We ran out of flour -- went through ~40 lbs of flour, and 100 sq feet of parchment paper
- Line is forever (people said they waited 30 minutes for it) -- we ended up repurposing veggie dumplings hot plate for scallion pancakes
- Good idea to have 3 skillets for scallion pancakes -- might need to rethink layout
- Sellout: 2:10pm
- Dumplings
- Frozen dumplings from Chinatown are just as cheap as dumplings from Costco, but taste like 10x better. However, they need to be cooked in water; they cannot be simply fried. Consider an additional hot plate at the dumpling station (this means the electrical layout needs to get changed!)
- We accidentally got mini won ton dumplings at Costco this year, but people still bought them...
- Sellout: 12:30pm
- Tea Eggs
- Went pretty well; there are complete tea egg tea/seasoning boxes in Chinatown, those were pretty useful (though you might want to add a little more sugar and soy sauce)
- Sellout: 2:07pm
- Shaved Ice
- Bring can openers... It's easy to forget about Shaved Ice since it doesn't require prep beforehand, but don't!
- we made mini mochi with extra powder from mochi!
- Sellout: NEVER
- Mochi
- DON'T MAKE SO MUCH MOCHI. IT WAS TOO MUCH FOR US. We ended up selling at 5 for $1 or something ridiculous when everything else sold out.
- Halve the amounts that we used last year
- We have a shit ton of the glutinous rice powder left over from this year and last year
- Sellout: 2:24pm
- Drinks
- Sellout: 2:45pm
Non-food
- Calligraphy -- seemed popular enough
- Pachinko -- originally not enough volunteers so left unmanned on the side
- Later brought back next to calligraphy and it was slightly more popular
- Very few people officially (pay ticket) played pachinko; consider making it free?
- Lion Dance -- they accidentally gave us one less booth so lion dance got kinda shafted (sorry keving and david ._.), reach out to them earlier
Decorations
- DUCT TAPE -- MAKE SURE YOU HAVE IT
- used the stands and the easels because of lack of tape
Other
- Squeeze bottles for oil! You can buy them at Shaws!
- Cups should be smaller, probs like 12 oz, def not 14, 16, don't buy foam ones! :(
- Unpredictables happen! This year we had struggles loading at next because the f***ing police were trying to prevent us from stopping there for a bit to load and unload. Also construction. Make sure not to send too many people to Stata so there are enough people to help load food into the UHaul. Other than that, seemed pretty not bad.
