Minutes, 11-12-04

Hello, I am Kei, the new secretary. I will provide you with the details of our last meeting and today's events.
Under wise advice from Mickey, I didn't write minutes last night but waited until after lunch on Saturday. For
those who don't understand, keep reading. 

First, at the meeting, we continued to discuss the Niigata disaster relief charity event. We still weren't
really sure which restaurant to order from, or exactly what to order. The restaurants came down to Nohana,
Kamehachi, and Ginza. The food we were thinking about came down to teriyaki, tonkatsu, sushi, and gyoza. To get
a more concrete plan, the people who were at the meeting decided on a trip to Ginza on Saturday afternoon for
lunch and for meeting with the owner. 

Now I will write about what happened today, Saturday, so that I don't have to write about the inconclusive
details of Friday's meeting, which were dependent on today. Ginza was closed for lunch, haha. We ended up going
to Kamehachi, and looked at the prices of the food, the amount you get, etc. After we left the restaurant, we
came to an initial decision: we would buy frozen gyoza in bulk at Mitsuwa, cook that (somehow), and sell it. This
seems to give us a better outlook on profit to send for relief than buying expensive food from a restaurant,
dividing portions, somehow adding plates and utensils, and selling that for very little (possibly no) profit. One
of the problems is that we never really calculated potential profit when thinking about food from restaurants. So
Mickey, Toshio, and Ishmael went to Mitsuwa to get some goyza and look for other frozen food in bulk, to add
variety. We also decided that we would sell on Tuesday as a pilot, giving us time to plan things out Monday, and
see what happens from there for other days. 

There was a sheet going around at lunch today for who can sell food when -- if anyone wasn't at this lunch and
would like to volunteer and you haven't already, please send us your available times, and we will get back to you. 

Back to Friday's meeting. The issue of funding the food was deemed deferred. Should we need to drive for any
reason, there seemed to be a few drivers availabe throughout the week - Kei, Mickey, and Aza. Also, Mari and Aza
have some fliers ready for this event. As for a banner, if necessary, it seems that Mitcho has some special key
that will get us into a place where we can make a banner. Sorry, I didn't quite catch the details.

Next, we talked about Iron Chef. Am I allowed to talk about ingredients? I can't remember. I wont for now. There
are currently three teams that want to compete, so we were thinking of a qualification 'cook-off' to bring the
teams down to two. Maybe the runner-up can make appetizers for the audience to taste before the actual event?
We'll wait until Januray for budgeting Iron Chef. As for judges, Shawn is going to talk to someone from BJ, Mitcho
is going to ask Ms. Lory of the EALC department, and the possibility of a recent Nobel Laureate was thrown in. If
anyone has any responses, suggestions or thinks of someone to ask, please forward them. For tablecloths, chef
suits, burners, and ovens, we will most likely turn to Hall's and Morgan Services. MCs and kaga were still
undecided. Anyone? Also, contracting Fire Escape to film the event might be tricky, because they need to be
compensated somehow for their work. Doushimashou. Free food, gift certificates are possibilities.

Finally, we dicussed more options for a panel/event for PanAsia. We discussed showing movies, and Mitcho mentioned
how he indirectly knows the dean of the college at Art Institute, who could possibly talk about films (even though
he supposedly falls asleep during movies, hehe). Other possible panels include: FTA among Asian countries with
Econ profs, the topic of Charles Jenkins (Jenkins-san!!), and baseball drain (everyone's leaving!!!) in Japan. Who
would talk for the last 2 topics, we do not exactly know. 

This is the first time I've ever typed up minutes, so forgive me if I've left out anything important. Also I have
a question - does anyone do jujitsu or aikido? Or know anything about jujitsu or aikido at U of C? I have a friend
who is interested. Thanks. =P This is all for now, stay tuned for more next week.

-Kei