Pearson Convention Centre located at 2638 Steeles Ave E in Brampton

Banquet food!  I haven’t had this in a while.  The last time was probably at either a wedding or at the last formal in the last year of university.  What can I say about banquet food is that it is usually your standard salad, bread, pasta, dry meat and vegetables, and finishing off with a semi-redeeming dessert.  This was exactly the kind of food that I had this weekend at a company party at the Pearson Convention Centre.  

The salad turned out to be pretty good; the dressing was great.  The bread went really well with the butter.  There was no pasta at all — sad face.  The chicken was a lot better tasting than the slab of beef which was super overcooked.  The vegetables were flavourless.  The dessert was some kind of chocolate/vanilla cream on a chocolate cake with fruits all around it.  It was actually really, really good.  Some people were complaining that it was a bit too sweet, but the tarty fruits on the side balanced it out.  

Food at the event

I’ve never been to this location before and it was quite the trek to drive out to Brampton.  It’s a gorgeous hall and decked out with a big Christmas tree in the lobby for the season.  

I was impressed with how many singers they hired that night for live entertainment.  There were at least 5 different ladies belting out show tunes and musical numbers throughout the entire night.  It was very entertaining although I found that it dragged on a bit after the first hour.  

The most memorable performer was a 14-year-old girl who sang “Stand By Me” and “Skyfall” from Adele in the most beautiful and soulful way.  She was very talented.  Another young singer sang one of the songs from the Les Mis musical.  

It was nice to eat and have some nice live entertainment.  I also liked how they served a bunch of hors d’oeuvres to everybody at the tables when they noticed that the food was taking a little too long to start.  There were shrimps with cocktail sauce, crab cakes, and fried mushroom balls.  I love hors d’oeuvres. 😀

Christmas tree

Another highlight of the night was when there was a Japanese interpreter up on the stage next to one of the company executives who doesn’t know how to speak in English.  It was interesting to see the interpreter translating everything that the man said in Japanese into English in real time.  #interpreting is a little like steno sometimes; it’s not something everyone can do since you need to have a comprehensive knowledge of both languages that you’re interpreting between and you need to be able to do it at realtime speeds.  Just like how for steno, you need to have a comprehensive knowledge of the steno theory and the English language and be able to stenotype everything that a person says at realtime speeds.

The microphone at the event also wasn’t good and not everyone heard what the interpreter said; it would have been nice if they hired someone to have a projected screen of what was being said so that everybody in the room could follow along with the speech.  Hi!  *waves hand*.  I can do that!  ;D  Hire me for your next in-house event!  Sincerely, a stenographer who can’t stop thinking about steno even at a dinner party.