Irina's birthday celebration didn't go exactly as planned, but what else is new in China? Busted by the campus pigs. Oops, sorry,that was a 70's flashback, the campus security police. It seems that the use of a barbecue on the grounds of HIT is verboten. We played the dumb foreigner card and managed to quickly cook most of the Shashliks before he returned to check on us.
Shashlik is the Russian version of Chuanr (Pronounced chwar not shwar) with some delicious twists. First, the chunks of meat are much bigger and much leaner than Chuanr. (Pronounced chwar not shwar) It is then marinated for 24 hours in a lovely garlicy sauce and eaten hot off the grill. Thanks to Irina, who hosted her own party and spent hours preparing the shashlik and assorted salads.
It didn't go eggactly as planned. There were some eggstenuating circumstances that made it eggstremely difficult to eggsplain but the 1st annual Egg Drop contest went off with a very small group of participants. It is eggspected that someone will hatch another contest next year. The participants were challenged to create an egg transportation device that would survive an eggstreme 5 story relocation leaving the egg available for sunny side up and not scrambled.
Five participants entered the contest, some spending minutes preparing their egg relocation devices. Our own Nonie, spending about 15 minutes in total, creating her eggstravigant egg mover was the only participant who's egg survived the five storey relocation. Sadly, she did not read the fine print on the entry form which prohibits family and employees of the contest organizer from winning the contest.
With the most time put in, almost five hours to create and 1 second to relocate, the Eggscaliber while clearly the most intricate of the transportation pods was unable to safely transport it's egg. Three crush zones, handmade confetti and an egg cushion module failed to protect the egg when the pod landed on it's side and not on the end as planned. The yolk was on me.
Our overall winner was Doctor J thanks to her simple yet eqqsquisite design of plastic bags which she used to gently float her egg to the ground. Only a slight yaw at the end saw her egg break. The egg stuffed inside a roll of toiletpaper with wings took Irina to the best design prize with her egg breaking when it squirted out of it protective cocoon on landing. Even the Chairman was happy with the results. A lunch of various egg dishes saw us close out this year's competition. Congratulations to all the participants.
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