Meet… Barrett Olsen!
What’s your favorite indoor and outdoor activity? Why?
My favorite indoor activity is cooking. I like playing around with new recipes and flavors and then sharing with family, friends, and/or coworkers. Outdoors, I enjoy hiking with my wife and dogs, kayaking, and tending my vegetable garden.
What’s the best meal you’ve ever had?
The best meal I’ve ever had was at a Michelin 3-star Chinese restaurant in Tokyo back in 2018 called Sazenka. The restaurant has no menu. You are simply there for the ride, and the chef designs for your party. When making a reservation they ask several questions and each table gets its own service a la russe meal. The only choice you make is to pair your meal with the alcohol and tea option or just tea. Truly amazing courses that included what was described to me in broken English as crab brain soup, live shrimp dispatched table side, wonderfully spicy Berkshire pork belly, and several great fish, hairy crab, lobster, and roe preparations. Fortunately, my father-in-law picked up the tab.
What are you currently watching on Netflix/Some other streaming service?
I’m currently re-watching The Office and or Parks and Rec. It’s the television equivalent of comfort food. Usually put that on in the background as I’m making dinner or washing the dishes.
What is the first concert you attended?
Weird Al concert when I was 14. His album Bad Hair Day had just come out and Amish Paradise was hilarious.
What is your personal philosophy? How has this guided you?
My personal philosophy is much to complicated for me to have discovered all of it so far. Largely my thinking is governed by a Bayesian model in which I am constantly challenging what I think I know and always holding out the idea that I could be wrong.
What is the one thing, you can’t live without? Why?
I’m not really attached to any one thing that I couldn’t make do without.
What is your favorite part of working at Standard Electric? Why?
My favorite part of working at Standard Electric is the people. Everyone I have had the chance to work with have been amazing.
What’s something most people don’t know about you?
I’m a huge nerd. Still play Dungeons & Dragons.
If you won the lottery, what is the first thing you would do?
A vacation to Hawaii which would include retirement house hunting in Kailua.
If you could meet anyone, living or dead, who would you meet? Why?
French Absurdist Albert Camus, because life is an absurd, “confrontation between human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” French philosophy, particularly absurdism appeals to me.
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