Civil Buddy Event –ALL PASS BOBA

土木二  邱可力、彭永椿、邱勇翰、歐加文  土木三　曾郡于

(參與國際生 — 林文堅、陳志豪、詹佩妮和她材料系好友Kyla，文末還有中文版喔！)

邱可力 B07501060

Due to the spreading of covid-19, it’s always not recommended to hold any event recently. However, with proper epidemic prevention work, we have successfully held a hand-made boba tea learning event as scheduled. For example, we have reduced the number of participants to four, sanitized our hands with disinfectant spray at the entrance, provided masks and kept them worn through the event besides the sampling phase. We sure did our best we can to prevent any threat.

However, there is still room for improvement, especially in the site selection. The room used for this event is a self-cooking kitchen in Male Dorm 1, the only indoor place where students are allowed to cook in campus, but the problem is that the room is too small for us to reach the standard social distance of more than 1.5 meters indoors. With that in mind, we may want to reconsider whether to hold cooking activities in the near future.

On the other hand, regarding the result of the event, group cooking is perfect for bringing people together. According to a master’s thesis in Smith College, nearly half of the participants feel some level of connection to culture through cooking, and some note that they use food and cooking traditions to learn and connect to the culture of others, even if they do not strongly identify with their culture of origin. As far as the results are concerned, during the process of making boba tea together, I believe that everyone felt this connection with Taiwanese culture and had also experienced a variety of different culture. I consider this a very valuable experience in the university. I am very glad to participate in and organize this Service Education activity.

https://scholarworks.smith.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2154&context=theses

曾郡于 B06501098

It’s usual to have a Boba milk tea in Taiwan, but it must be the first time I make it myself. After had taken a look at the tutorial video, we thought it should not be too complicated and might not take a long time to finish it. Yet we failed in our first attempt, the texture of the dough was too far from the video. What can we do is just take another try, so it came to our second try. This time, we considered taking a closer look at the recipe and could not be reckless. We made spoon as a unit and put in the ingredients according to the recipe as we had very limited equipment. It’s worth mentioning that we were quite confident while kneading the second dough also we made it; however, we decided to buy some frozen Boba for plan B.

On that day, one group of participants succeed in their first attempt which is out of our expectation, undoubtedly cooking skill is the question. The whole event is entertaining with those skeptical expressions that came out with the color of the dough and expressionless faces while rolling countless balls. This event definitely is a good experience for all of us as it gives a sense of achievement after cooking. Few hours is far from enough but it is enough for a memory.

彭永椿 B07501106

We know that we are all in not so good situations where we cannot hold bigger activity since there is no place to do so and the school policy that asked us to minimalize physical contacts or physical distancing with each other. Fortunately, last Sunday, we had successfully held the Boba making activity and the event was participated by 4 international students, 3 are from Civil Engineering Department and the other one was from the Materials Science and Engineering Department. At first, we realized that the room/ kitchen was a little bit small so we planned to only have 2 members stay inside and then it turned out that the small room made us more comfortable sharing about each other’s school and personal life. During the making of the Boba, one group of participant failed to make the nice dough so we need to restart the process again and it took roughly 15-20 minutes so went home a little bit late that what planned but we all enjoyed the bubble tea finally and did some comparison between a self-cook bubble and the fast serving package that we also bought in the supermarket. Aesthetically, the fast serving one won since it provides very black and very round shapes like the ordinary bubble that we always see in the beverage stores but from the taste perspective, our participants all agreed that our self-cook bubble was way more delicious than the fast-serving one.

I believe that this Student Service Education (III) has taught me many lessons about organizing an event, trying to market our events, and finally made the event to become reality. These three steps will be some important experiences/ life skills that hopefully, I could practice in my future endeavors.

邱勇翰 B07501095

Pearl milk tea is one of the must-try beverages when coming to Taiwan, there are plenty of stalls that sell it. A lot of people like drinking it myself included, but also not many people know how to make one. so, we decided to hold an event where we will be teaching how to make your bubble tea and because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we minimize the number of people for safety precautions. After researching on how to make the boba, it seemed easy but after our first try, it did not as easy as it looks. We have to put the exact amount of the tapioca starch and the brown sugar. the process of kneading the dough and forming them into boba takes a long of time and patience. Even after some testing before the event, we still failed on the day of the event. But we have prepared excess ingredients and after several trials, we finally succeeded. we prepared an instant bubble just in case we failed too many times and thankfully we did not. we served them both their handmade boba and the instant one and shockingly the handmade one taste better. They prefer the handmade one because of the chewier texture and sweetness. the event turns out to be successful and the participants gave positive responses, even one of them ask me to send her the receipt so that she can make it at home. Overall, this is a very fun and interesting event, the participants really enjoy it and I obviously like it very much.

歐加文 B07501100

I have been a student at NTU for almost 2 years now, but never have I ever thought about the process of making boba milk tea. To be honest, I have no experience whatsoever in terms of cooking and holding an event. We started this whole activity by inviting some international students to come to our boba-making tutorial, preparing all the ingredients, cooking utensils, and also backup ingredient(which in our case are two packs of instant boba), required for the cooking process, and on last Sunday, we managed to teach our friends to make some boba.

I would consider this event to be a success (some said that the boba that we made from scratch are better than those from the frozen instant boba packet), even though there are still some aspects that we can improve. First and foremost, the room that we use for the event, the NTU Dorm Communal Kitchen, is too small to fit all of us. Corey from our group has tried to find every possible location for us to borrow, but none were available on account of the COVID-19 virus that is spreading everywhere all over the world. Aside from the place, I think we are quite OK in preparing all the event.

I am also very thankful to all of my group members since each one of them has done amazingly great from the preparation to the execution of the day of the event.

Chinese Version

國際學伴期中活動—歐趴BOBA

邱可力 B07501060

因為這covid-19的擴散，一直都是不太被建議辦什麼活動的。但在適當的防疫工作下，我們還是圓滿地如期舉辦手作珍珠奶茶的教學活動了，例如在參加人數上我們儘量的降低到四人、在入口處用消毒噴霧清潔雙手、提供口罩並在試吃階段外全程配戴⋯可謂是在能力所及之內盡力防疫了。

然而，依然是有可以改進的空間，尤其是在場地選擇的部分上。本次活動使用場地是男一自煮廚房，唯一可以在校園內提供學生炊煮的室內場地，但問題是場地過小，無法達到室內1.5公尺以上的社交距離。以後可能要再考慮是否舉辦炊煮的活動。

不過，就以活動目的來說，一起煮飯可說是再適合不過，根據一個史密斯學院碩士論文顯示有接近一半的人因為炊煮感到與文化上某種程度的連結，而且在實驗裡的參加者提到他們會因為炊煮非原生文化的食物來學習和感受與之的連結。

就結果來說，在一起製作珍珠奶茶的過程中，我相信大家都有感受到這個與台灣文化的連結，也體驗到了各種不同多元文化的交流。這是我認為在我大學中相當難能可貴的經歷，實在很高興能參與並舉辦這次的服務學習活動。

https://scholarworks.smith.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2154&context=theses

曾郡于 B06501098

平時珍奶喝得多，親手製作還真的是人生第一次。在觀看製作影片時，覺得難度值沒有太高，試做應該不需要花太長的時間。試做的第一次不負眾望的完敗，麵團質感跟影片的也差太多。然而，除了再做一次，我們也好像沒有其他退路，便硬著頭皮再進行第二次的試做。這一次我們決定還是好好的看一看食譜的食材份量，不要再魯莽行事了。在沒有磅秤的情況下，我們只好以匙為單位依照食譜的大概比例下料，在揉麵團的過程一邊自我感覺良好地想著情況好像有比第一次好，這次應該能行了，結果也真的行了。但是在種種考量下，我們還是決定要先買些冷凍珍珠作備案。

活動當天，其中一組參與同學製作的珍珠一次就成功，當下難免開始懷疑廚藝這件事。過程中看著參與同學一開始對麵團顏色的質疑，到後來要將麵團搓成小球搓到麻木的表情，以及最後試吃時不禁佩服起自己來的神情，相信這次的活動，大家都有很棒的體驗。短短的幾小時，雖沒有到深入了解，但相信會是一份值得留下的回憶。