Entries Tagged 'School' ↓

I read Laura Rowley’s Yahoo Finance column pretty regularly, and this week she wrote about college debt and how many young adults with large student loans and small wages are basically debt slaves doomed to pay for their education for decades. I have also written a little bit about college finance before. In “Not rich enough, not poor enough” I wrote about how many middle class families do not qualify for financial aid or even scholarships at expensive private colleges and that drew many different responses. Some say that kids should pay for their own college expenses and others say that the financial aid system needs to be reformed. Either way, most people agree that there is a problem with having to take out huge loans to fund college. Here are some things I think parents and college bound teens should consider before signing on to a generation of debt.

1. Consider attending a state public school with in state tuition- I went to the University of California at Berkeley and all four years of tuition plus room and board cost less than one year at any private university. My parents paid for it, but if I could have paid off the entire amount with less than a year of income after I graduated. Recently an article in Forbes ranked UC Berkeley as one of the top colleges for getting rich. The study was done by PayScale.com and the schools were ranked on the median salary of alumni with 10 to 20 years of experience. I think if they gathered data on the amount of student loans some of the private school alumni are still paying, then they will probably find that Berkeley grads keep more of what they earn and pay less to the loansharks. There are plenty of great state college in this country, and I think they are the best bang for the buck.

2. Consider graduating early - If you could shave one semester,term, or even year off your college education then you would save quite a bit of money. It involves a lot of hard work and creative class scheduling, but it is worth it. I took classes that could fulfill multiple graduation requirements and also took classes in the summer session and I finished about a year early. I used the year to work at a couple internships and took one class in my last semester of senior year.

3 . Try  going to a cheap school for the first couple years and then transfer – I know quite a few people that went to community colleges and then transferred to Berkeley or other schools during their junior year. Their final degree is still from the more expensive school and no one can tell that the first two years were spent in a cheaper school.

4. Work before college – I know some people who worked for a year or two before college to save money for college. Many colleges allow you to defer enrollment for a year so you can have the opportunity to do something. 

5. Start saving early in tax advantaged accounts  – Right now I do not have kids yet, but I am putting $100 a month into a 529 education savings plan under my name.  I don’t think parents and children could save too early for a college education.  A 529 allows you to withdraw the savings for education and any gains on the investments are tax free.

Finally, I totally agree with the advice given in the Yahoo Finance article that you shouldn’t borrow a lot more than what you would earn after college.  However,  it is hard to look at the financial impacts of college loans when you are a young idealistic teenager who wants to do the things you love regardless of money.  There needs to be a balance between idealism and practicality, and perhaps more high school counselors should teach students about the effect of massive student loans.

Share This

This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story originally written by my dad in Chinese. For more of my dad’s narrative see the category marked Fifteen Years in America. If you can read Chinese you can read the original at my dad’s Yahoo blog. He has just finished Chapter 8. Enjoy!

Continued from Part 4

In the previous chapter I mentioned that I really wanted to bring the authentic Yangzhou Fried Rice to the school cafeteria. The reason for this is that in America Yangzhou Fried Rice is a dish in almost every Chinese restaurant. I tasted a couple and it seems that none of them are authentic.

One day at work I told Morri that I am from Yangzhou and I knew how to make authentic “Yangzhou Fried Rice”.  I said to her, “If you try my Yangzhou Fried Rice, then you would know how good the real Yangzhou Fried Rice is.”

Morri listened to what I said and sounded a bit doubtful,   “Are you sure?” She said to me.  I confidently told her that there is no doubt that I could make it.  I asked her to agree to one term, which is that I get to pick the ingredients I want and she needs to get all the ingredients for me.  Morri couldn’t agree to that so she brought the proposal to the head chef Craig.  Craig is also a Hawaiian.  He is sturdily built, not very tall, and sported a thick mustache.  He spoke pidgin and was a graduate of a famous culinary academy in New York.  He chose Kapiolani Community College after he graduated because the college has a very strong culinary program.  Craig is not only the chef of the cafeteria but also did demonstrations for culinary students.  When I was working there I often saw Craig work with a gaggle of students wearing chef hats and aprons.  Craig and another professor named Kent often had a myriad of sauces and containers and did various lessons.  At that time, I admired those classes quite a bit.  I thought to myself, if I were 15 to 20 years younger, I should also major in cooking and maybe I could have gone back to China and opened a restaurant featuring western cuisine.  Perhaps my restaurant could have been quite popular.  Recently, I received an alumni magazine from the University of Hawaii and there was an article about the Chinese Ministry of Education visiting Kapiolani’s Culinary Arts department.  The goal was to speak about educating more Chinese people in western cuisine.

—

Part 6

Morri told Craig that I wanted to bring Yangzhou Fried Rice to the students and staff of Kapiolani.  Craig is a person who is very open to new ideas and suggestions.  He loves to cook food from different countries such as France, Italy, and Korea.  One particular dish I thought was quite interesting was a Hawaiian dish called Laulau.  Craig would take some  ti leaf and wrap pork in it, and then the package is roasted until the pork is so cooked that it falls apart.  After it is cooked the leaves would be removed and its aroma would flood the room.  Honestly, I thought that it tasted pretty good, but the presentation was quite ghastly.

Craig heard that I want to make some Yangzhou fried rice and he agreed heartily.  He told me to make a list of the ingredients and I thought about the things my neighbor taught me about Yangzhou Fried Rice.

Yangzhou Fried Rice is also called Yangzhou Egg Fried Rice, and legend has it that it is the favorite dish of  Yang Su of the Sui Dynasty.  It was called “Broken Gold Rice”.  When the emperor of Sui was touring Yangzhou, he brought the dish to the city, and it was further enhanced by chefs of many generations.  The Huaiyang cooking school has an emphasis on “seriousness in choosing ingredients, expertise and care in preparation, exactness in portion and color, and preservation of original taste and juices”.  Eventually, Yangzhou fried rice became one of the most famous dishes of  Huaiyang cuisine.

Authentic Yangzhou fried rice has the following main ingredients: Chinese rice and eggs from grass fed hens.  Side ingredients include sea cucumber, grass fed chicken meat, Chinese sausage, scallop, fresh water shrimp, mushrooms, fresh cooked bamboo shoots, and snow peas.  Additionally you would add diced green onions, salt, cooking wine, chicken broth, and vegetable oil.

At that time in Hawaii we didn’t have so many Chinese ingredients.So we used Thai jasmine rice and cooked it with a bit less water than usual.  That makes the rice stiff and better for frying.  We also didn’t have eggs from grass fed hens because all eggs in America were produced in large scale chicken farms and shipped in cartons.  This worked just fine and I also added chicken meat, lean pork, shrimp, and snow peas.

To be continued!

Share This

This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story originally written by my dad in Chinese. For more of my dad’s narrative see the category marked Fifteen Years in America. If you can read Chinese you can read the original at my dad’s Yahoo blog. He has just finished Chapter 8. Enjoy!

Continued from Part 2

I told Jane that I was familiar with work in the kitchen.  She asked me if I had guaranteed hours for working and I told her that I was a student at the college and I can guarantee that I would work 2 hours a day and 10 hours a week.  Later I found out that the cafeteria is extremely busy during the lunch hours and they must have people that get there on time and guarantee the smooth operation of the cafeteria.

After listening to me Jane handed me an application, and told me to fill it out and bring it back.  Additionally, she asked for a copy of my last health checkup.  I think that is because I would be handling food and they need to guarantee that I am not diseased.

The next day I brought the finished application form and a copy of my health check to Jane.  She brought me to the kitchen’s grill.  There I saw a very muscular and tanned woman grilling many pieces of hamburger meat.  As she flipped the meat the oils that seeped out sizzled on the grill.

Jane said to that woman, “Morri, I found you a student helper!  His name is Jian, and now he is yours.”  Morri is one of the cafeteria’s chefs, and she was my supervisor.  Her supervisor is named Craig, and they’re both native Hawaiians and are both tall and large.  They’re both very nice and humble people.  Later I heard that Morri is actually 1/8th Chinese.  I guess  most people in Hawaii are very mixed and a couple of her great grandparents were Chinese.  However, she didn’t look Chinese at all.

Since I kept my promise and always came to work on time no matter how busy I was, Morri liked me and treated me very well.  Even though I told Jane that I know how to cook, but I never worked in a kitchen that served hundreds to thousands of people before.

–

Part 4

After I was hired by the student cafeteria, I would work there two hours a day, and I usually served lunch so I got there at 11am.  After I finished class, I would go straight to the cafeteria.  My main job was to help Morri make hamburgers.  Even though making hamburgers looks easy, it took a bit of practice for me to make them efficiently.

For example, the tomato slices in each hamburger must be even.  It is not good to have some thick pieces and some thin pieces.  At first, I was not good at balancing the tomatoes and my hamburgers looked lopsided.  Additionally, it is important for a hamburger to be cooked to the right temperature.  At that time the cafeteria made three types of hamburgers: beef, fish, and vegetarian.  Each type required a different cooking temperature and time.  The beef needed to be cooked the longest and at the highest temperature to kill the germs in the meat.  However, you couldn’t cook for too long because if all the juices are evaporated then it would be dry and tasteless.  If it was cooked for too short a time the meat would be raw and the consumers could be seriously sick.

The fish and vegetarian burgers were different.  First, these two types didn’t ooze oil like the beef so they didn’t create big oil  flames on the grill.   They were quite easy to cook.  Finally, there was quite a bit of skill involved in wrapping these burgers after they were cooked.  At first, I wrapped them extremely slowly and my products were quite ugly and the wrappings fell off easily.  After quite a bit of practice, the hamburgers I wrapped finally had the right shape.

Each day when I went to work, I would cut up the tomatoes first, and then prepare the lettuce.  Then, while I cooked the patties, I would lay out pieces of the wrapping paper and split the buns.  On each sheet of paper I would prepare the buns and place the tomatoes and cheese.  At the same time I would flip the patties.  After the patties were done I would put them on each of the buns and start wrapping.  When the students start to come in it gets extremely busy and my hands and feet were constantly moving.

Besides making hamburgers, I would sometimes help with frying the French fries and onion rings.  The hot oil often splashed onto my hands and body and it hurt like needles.   However, this bit of oil is really small potatoes compared to the heat I experienced in the steel factory I worked for during the Cultural Revolution.  At that time, I was only 15 and I lifted molten steel measuring thousands of degrees and passed many months chanting the mantra of “defeating heat and compete for the highest production”.  In that seven years of physical labor and training, I lost a lot of time for education, but in that environment of  “thousands of hammers and hundreds of purifications” I acquired an extremely strong will.  Another slogan that the Communists often taught was that “people need a bit of spirit”.  This will or spirit is what gave me the power to conquer the trials of starting over again.

After one month, I became a hamburger making expert.   However, I really wanted to bring the real “Yangzhou Fried Rice” to the cafeteria.

To be continued! 

Share This

This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story originally written by my dad in Chinese. For more of my dad’s narrative see the category marked Fifteen Years in America. If you can read Chinese you can read the original at my dad’s Yahoo blog. He has just finished Chapter 8. Enjoy!

Continued from Part 1 

On this day I finished my classes at noon and ran to the student cafeteria as quickly as I could.  When I stepped into the office, I looked for a director named Jane per the instructions of the advertisement.  When I walked in, I saw a white woman a bit over 40 sitting behind a desk and staring at a computer screen.

I asked her, “Who is Jane?”

She looked up and checked me out from head to toe and said, “I am, do you have a question?”

I said, “I saw your advertisement for a student worker at the cafeteria.  I am here for that job.”

She asked me, “Do you have any kitchen experience?”

At that time, I thought to myself,  America really requires experience for everything.  My readers might remember that when I went to Duke’s Lane   to find a sales job my boss Peter’s first question to me was a “do you have sales experience?”.   They don’t seem to realize that if everyone needs experience, then someone without experience must be given the chance to learn and gain experience.  If no one without experience is given an opportunity, then everyone without experience will never gain experience.

However, America is just a society that forces you to gain work and social experience from contact with the world starting at a young age.  It is commonly said that, “what you learn in school on books is rarely applied”.  In America, we need to add a line and say, “you can never have too much experience when you try to find a job.”

When it comes to the kitchen, I actually have many years of experience.  When the Cultural Revolution began, I was just eleven years old.  My dad was jailed in a cow pen since he  was accused as being a descendant of a landlord and later sent to the countryside to be “reeducated” and “recreated”.  He was sent to the cafeteria as an accountant.  I often went to that cafeteria and watched Chef Zhang cook.  At that time there wasn’t that much great food to eat.  However, my dad always tried to ask the chef to do the best he could.  Chef Zhang supposedly was the stable boy for General He Long during World War II, and did not have a lot of education, and so he received a job in the reeducation camp as a chef.  Later on, I don’t remember for what reason, he almost committed suicide and died, but my dad somehow saved him.  This happened a very very long time ago.

After I finish writing about these fifteen years, I may write about the previous forty years and slowly tell these tales.

Anyway, I was familiar with a kitchen in a cafeteria because I encountered it at a young age.  Truthfully, I really love the art of Chinese cuisine.

The reasons I love Chinese cuisine include the following:

First, “the people worship food as they worship the sky”.  I really love to eat.  When I was young, everything was rationed.  We could only cook food differently to satisfy the four values of Chinese food: “color, scent, taste, and shape”.

Second, I had two neighbors who were experts in Chinese cooking.  One was my dad’s old friend.  After the Cultural Revolution, he researched the history of Chinese cooking and published many books.  When I was teaching in the university he would always give me a free copy of his book whenever he publishes one.  I would follow the ancient recipes he collected and cook the Weiyang style of Chinese cuisine.  Another one of my cooking teachers is an experience chef.  He grew up with me and went to a famous cooking school at the age of fourteen, and later served as a chef at the banquet halls of the Central  government.  Later on he went to Japan as a chef in a great restaurant.  Every year he would come home for the Spring Festival and teach me a few techniques.  Some of the famous Weiyang dishes I have learned are “Yangzhou Lion’s Head“, “Great Boiled Tofu Strings”, “Yangzhou Fried Rice”, and “General Crossing the Bridge”.  Could you say that I have no cooking experience?

To be continued!

Share This

This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story originally written by my dad in Chinese. For more of my dad’s narrative see the category marked Fifteen Years in America. If you can read Chinese you can read the original at my dad’s Yahoo blog. He has just finished Chapter 8. Enjoy!

When I meet students from China these days, most of them are financed by their families, and almost none of them work in restaurants now. Near my house there is a Chinese restaurant that I visit quite often. In the end of the last century I could still meet a few students from China working there, but lately there are no longer any Chinese students. Instead, all the workers are either Mexican or Chinese immigrants not here for school. When I think about this I think Chinese parents should learn from the Americans and let their children work in addition to going to school. My daughter started a blog a month after reading my blog. Her main goal is to educate her generation and popularize the idea of living beneath one’s means. In about two months she wrote about sixty blog posts and one particular post is titled, How I Saved Over $30,000 While in College and What I Did With the Money. Those of you young people who can read English might as well head over and read her post.

She wrote about how she used different methods such as working at school, contracting, selling books, and entering sweepstakes to earn money. I am very glad that she inherited the Chinese traditions of diligence and frugality. At the same time she learned a lot from the Americans. For example, she donates a good amount of her income and volunteers. I thought to myself, when we were in Hawaii we experienced quite a bit from working in America, and the hardships of that time is quite worthwhile.

In January of 1993, I became a full time student at Kapiolani, so I no longer had time to work at Duke’s Lane. On my first day at school, I went to the library to borrow books and I passed by the student cafeteria. At the door of the cafeteria I saw a wanted ad that read, “The cafeteria needs three student workers to help the chefs prepare lunch. The pay is $6.75 per hour and lunch is free.”

When I saw this ad I was quite happy, because I figured that I can solve my problem of losing my job and spending money for tuition. This job has fairly flexible hours and I can work there for two hours after my morning classes and also get a free meal. I no longer needed to pack lunch, and this was awesome. Packing lunch may seem like a joke to modern day international students, but at that time I remember we would always spend three dollars to buy a 10 pound pack of chicken drumsticks. After we cook it with soy sauce, we would make chicken sandwiches with some bread and tomatoes. We ate like this for several years. After that, I didn’t want to touch chicken drumsticks anymore because I have eaten way too many of them.

If you don’t want to miss a thing, feel free to subscribe!

Share This