It was a wacky and crazy day yesterday in the halls of Campus Progress and throughout the nation’s capital as four wily competitors rose early to not only beat the heat but also each other to be crowned the 2008 Free Food-A-Thon champion.
Yet all Avarice Ashley’s 6:30AM wake-up call did was make her stomach rumble louder than an Orange Line train. She delighted in consuming the delectable nourishment of an English muffin with peanut butter and graciously bowed out of the final as her competitors came roaring through the starting gate.
Nick “Pastry” Pastan ran into some unexpected company, his opponent Chewing Chenwei, at the Federal Facilities Council’s conference: High-Performance Federal Buildings: Meeting EISA requirements through 2030 (no, I did not make that title up). Yet the Pastry’s patented ID problems didn’t stop him from weaseling in to mount the buffet and fill up on blueberry cake and bagels. And Pastry Pastan didn’t stop there: he swung by the Mariott to sneak some more juice and croissants before clocking into work at 9:04AM.
Chewing Chenwei remained composed the whole way. With her equanimity she had no problems strutting into the high-powered buildings breakfast. She was more concerned about the tone and appropriateness of flossing the city for free food than bellying up to one more breakfast buffet. The contest was getting heated, interns were taking sides, staff was being accused of favoritism, and it was still before noon!
My free "dinner" consisted of crudités, cheese cubes, crackers, Fresca, and ice cream. Yes, so I didn't find the best dinner. Which is why I made oriental Ramen with kim chi and Asian greens for dinner, when I got home. It's the best that I can do, when I'm away from home and missing my parents' home-cooked meals and the Whasian culinary adventures that I have with my (caucasian) boyfriend at school. Nonetheless, I'm glad that Free-Food-a-Thon is over with. I still have the support of the majority of the other interns, which is good. And quite frankly, I'm relieved that no one got a black eye today. So read on about my final venture and final reflections.
I had a tasty lunch and a very active grassroots campaign today; just check out all the signs that my supporters made, copied, and plastered around the office for me! Nick's cockiness with me, in the form of taunting me and making smartass comments to me all day, was finally starting to show signs of cracking. He went from, "Yeah, we're gonna go to Italy and then take a shuttle into space for dinner; it's gonna be out of this world," and "So... still looking for lunch, huh? Are you actually getting any work done today?" to this:
Artair: I want to put this Chenwei sign on Tommaso's desk. Nick: If you do that, I'm gonna lose it.
What makes this even worse is that we share a cubicle space and sit literally 3 inches from each other at work. Did I mention that he ripped one of my signs in half as well? He did it very slowly, being sure to make his animosity known. I hope he at least recycled.
And the divisiveness and tension of the Campus Progress office was only exacerbated. Some new alliances were formed, others were broken. No wonder the campaign trail can be so exhausting sometimes. /sigh
Things are getting really nasty in the office. Excerpts from the blogs of my competitors today:
Ashley: I heard Chenwei mutter this motto, once spoken by a true champion, under her breath this morning: ‘It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.’ (I may look like a tough little Asian-girl ninja, but rest assured, my penchant for beating people up is strictly metaphorical.)
Aditi: The interns have fallen prey to the sadistic social experiment concocted by and for the pleasure of our scheming superiors. Once a united group in which CP interns could feel safe and comfortable with whom they are is now plagued by factions, backstabbing and debauchery.
Nick: I would like to relay a short message to all of the interns in the office hating on myself, Ashley, and Aditi, and who are rooting for Chenwei as though she is a savior. “Change we can believe in,” Artair proudly repeats 27 times an hour. “She’s going to do it.” Well, not so fast kids. This party is just getting started.
And because he is so negative and mean-spirited, here is some more from Nick: And, immediately, I saw my sworn enemy: ‘Chenwei or the highway’ as she ought to be referred based on all of this false hope our naïve class of interns has invested in her (and I will be more than happy to escort them all to the beltway tomorrow).
The Free-Food-a-Thon finals are on today, and I am workin’ hard to keep my head above water. Read More »
Chenwei’s keen skills for finding the tastiest treats and most esoteric events, as well as her insightful documentations on Social Capital, made her victory a no-brainer.
Chewing Chenwei Zhang joins Hardeehar Aditi Hardikar, Nick “Pastry” Pastan, and Avarice Ashley Wiers in tomorrow’s free food-a-thon final battle royale. If you thought the qualifying rounds were intriguing, awkward, and delicious, then just wait until tomorrow. In the words of the Pastry Pastan, it’s on.
My breakfast of chocolate croissants, fruity danishes, fruit salad, and all the juice I could drink wore off pretty quickly. I had only been in the journalism conference debriefing meeting for 15-20 minutes until I left again for my lunch venture. This time, it was at the Hudson Institute to hear a lecture on the Coptic Christians in Egypt, and how they are being marginalized due to increasing "Islamization." Being from South Carolina, I’m sort of used to be surrounded by lots of conservatives. I’ve learned that they can sometimes be pretty cool people too, and I have a quite a bit of pride in going to school at USC—excuse me—University of South Carolina. (I forget that I can’t say “USC” outside of South Carolina, as everyone mistakes it to be Southern California. Whatevs, our Cocks can tear up their Trojans any day.) But I digress.
Yet, HardeeHarHar Aditi Hardikar was also ready for battle and not far behind. She showed up at the Press Club on time, stayed for some of the enthralling discussion of Islam in Turkey, and her lucid prose of the breakfast buffet made our stomachs rumble.
Zachaphone, on the other hand, just didn’t answer the call. After nabbing some free coffee from his building he succumbed to purchasing day-old, half-priced bagels. Half-price isn’t free and day-old is the quality of food we’re looking for either. Zachaphone quietly bowed out after his morning mishap, though we still salute his courage to participate.
With two contestants left on day one, lunch saw a surge of activity as each tried to take the lead. After taunting Saxon The Saxon for his early lunch return with nothing to show for it, he showed us all up by slithering his way into the national conference of the nation’s first black sorority that can now count Michelle Obama as one of its honorary members and feasting on a delicious spread of gastronomical gluttony.
There were some haters. A certain, fair-haired CP staffer called me a failure. Another CP’er who really needs a shave said he was disappointed. It’s because they didn’t believe. They didn’t believe in the skinny kid from the west coast. They were wrong.
That's right. Every year Campus Progress interns spend a week scouring DC for every last pig-in-blanket, mini-muffin, and embassy cocktail.
Each intern will compete to see who can unearth and consume the most delectable free cuisine from Hill receptions, think tank talks, embassy parties, and other events to which they were not invited. The aim is to shine a spotlight not only on the ruthlessness of starving interns but also on the opulence and abundance of food served across the political spectrum by and for Washington power players.
Beginning tomorrow, three interns a day will compete in qualifying rounds, documenting their trials and tribulations on Social Capital. All of their meals, snacks, and crumbs from the floor must be free (not previously bought by the eater or purchased immediately before by another party specifically for the eater).
My life just hasn’t been the same since the Campus Progress Free-Food-A-Thon this summer. Something’s been missing. Not the sirloin steak, per se, but rather the fact that the sirloin steak was free. There’s an indescribable feeling I get eating a meal I didn’t pay a dime for. Apparently I’m not the only one. An article about freegans, “a growing subculture of people who have reduced their spending habits and live off consumer waste” is creeping its way to the top of the Los Angeles Times most-emailed list. You don’t have to read far to get graphic. Here’s the lede:
For lunch in her modest apartment, Madeline Nelson tossed a salad made with shaved carrots and lettuce she dug out of a Whole Foods dumpster. She flavored the dressing with miso powder she found in a trash bag on a curb in Chinatown. She baked bread made with yeast plucked from the garbage of a Middle Eastern grocery store.
The passage about freegans carefully sifting through garbage outside D'Agostino's supermarket in Midtown Manhattan really transported me to another place. My happy place.
"Whoa, someone found the soy milk!" said Cindy Rosin, 31, a freelance graphics designer. "Good find."
Even after a few bowls of gazpacho and a plate of shrimp, I still had room for more. The white chocolate ganache almost put me over the edge, but I talked myself out of slowing down. “This is the Free Food-A-Thon finals,” the voice inside my head kept saying. “This is what separates the interns from the eaters. The one-luncheon losers from the hotel-hopping heroes.”
But I didn’t want to settle for hero. As any kid who grew up watching The Sandlotwill tell you, “Heroes get remembered. But legends never die.”
From the University Club, I walked a block and a half east on M Street to the Westin City Center, where the Center for U.S. Global Engagement was kicking off IMPACT ’08: Building a Better, Safer World, an “initiative to elevate development and diplomacy as priorities in American foreign policy.” The conference might have been about foreign policy priorities, but my priority was finding some free lunch.
*I would like to dedicate this post to Thomas for being the best supervisor ever. In the history of the world.*
Today has been rather hectic for me. Not only did I arrive two hours late for work, having slept through my alarm, but I had absolutely no plans for the final day of the illustrious Free Food-A-Thon. My competitors confidently sauntered around the office as I spent an hour searching the internet in a minor state of crisis, looking for any event that I could attend. By midday, I had given up looking and decided to head to Capitol Hill without any plans whatsoever.
I wandered aimlessly around the area until I spotted the Heritage Foundation. I knew that no public events had been scheduled for today, but with all that money, they must have had some food somewhere.
I thought the lesson of this free-food-a-thon would be that there is indeed such a thing as a free lunch if you're an intern in D.C. and that if you were into saving money, you could eat a free lunch every day. The real lesson is that regardless of your budget, you should eat a free lunch every day.
Though Sonal gained points with her generosity to those less fortunate and her colorful descriptions of hot dogs and donuts, the clear winner in this round was the contestant who worked round the clock to schmooze, slink, and smoke his way into countless random events. We would have given money to see the look on those Zeta Phi Betas' faces.
Zach, you've definitely earned your seat in the finals and reassured the judges that finding free sirloin and snapper in DC is a breeze if you know where to look.
Coverage of the Free Food-a-thon will be suspended until the Finals on Tuesday. Check back then to see what Carnivorous Cara, Kate Monster, Ben "The Quiet Storm", Zack Attack, and "Judges' Choice" Tricky Tony, come up with!
From the zoo, I headed to a happy hour for interns from several progressive organizations at the obligatory home of happy hours for interns from progressive organizations, the Hawk and Dove. Talk about progressive. A dashing young man from the Roosevelt Institution made sure I was provided the nourishment of nachos and a charming lady in town from Michigan bought me a beer or two. When other interns’ attention turned from munching to mingling, I went to work on their leftovers, tackling half a turkey burger and wolfing down some wings.
But I won’t dwell on the obligatory intern happy hour.
After a few hours rest, I’m back up in it, ready to write the next chapter in my Free Food-A-Thon diary.
Before I dove in to dinner, though, there was something missing. Just like a steak deserves a hearty red by its side, a day of free food calls for an evening of free music.
So I put off my scheduled intern happy hour to head to the National Zoo, which hosts free concerts every Thursday at 6:30 pm. I arrived just in time to jam to the classic rock cuts of Relic Effect, a local band which played a mix of songs I had heard before and songs I hadn’t.
Luke Swarthout of the U.S. PIRGs thanks the senators behind him (from left: Sherrod Brown looking a bit distracted; Jeff Bingaman; Bernie Sanders feeling the heat; Gabe Pendas, not a senator; and Ted Kennedy looking like a proud grandpappy. Patty Murray didn’t make it into this picture, but she was there and gave my favorite speech of the day.) for their hard work to make college more affordable. Young activists like Luke, Gabe and Pedro de la Torre deserve just as much thanks.
After having a tray of heavenly honeyed bak lava snatched away just feet from my lips, I wandered through the lobby of the Hyatt Regency in despair. My eyes drooped as I headed for the exit. Then another sign came from above….from above the escalator.
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