A brush with fame

My cousin Jessica is visiting! Thanks to her visit, I've taken tomorrow and Tuesday off, therefore leaving me with just about half a day of work on Wednesday as our company usually lets us out early in the day.

This morning, we met some of our other relatives for dim sum before church. At first, I was amazed that everyone was there on time at 9:30. If you aren't Asian, you probably aren't familiar with the concept of "Asian time," where your elders tell you that you need to be somewhere at a certain time, and you make the effort to be there on time, but everyone else is at least half an hour late. The best example of this is a wedding banquet. The invitation says you have to be there at 6, but dinner doesn't actually get served until 8. It's wise to eat beforehand.

The second thing that amazed me? Well, the guy pictured to the left. Yup, none other than Mario Batali, owner of Babbo and one of the Iron Chefs. I was sitting there with my selection of dim sum and turned around to look at the next group being seated. I looked up and found myself staring right in Batali's face. I gasped and turned back to my plate quickly. I think my face turned red, because this was a very cool celebrity sighting for me. I actually think he's awesome! I sat there trying not to make a big deal, so I turned to Jessica to tell her about the utter coolness of the situation.

ME
Oh my God! It's Mario Batali!

JESSICA
Mary who?

ME
Mario Batali! From Iron Chef America!

JESSICA
What?

ME
Argh!

My other cousin knew who it was, but nobody else at the table knew about Mario Batali. However, right after we got out of the restaurant, I whipped out my cell phone and called Josh, who declined on attending 9:30 dim sum on Sunday, holy day for football fans.

ME
Oh my God! Mario Batali was at dim sum!

JOSH
Huh?

ME
He was at the next table! It was so cool!

JOSH
I don't want to talk about this. I'm mad.

ME
Why?

JOSH
Because I wasn't there.

I thought one of the best parts was when the waiter was asking Batali what he wanted and he said, "Weird stuff! We love the weird stuff!" He really seems as nice as he is when he's cooking on Iron Chef America. Yay! My first genuine celebrity sighting!