At a press conference held in Kaohsiung on Thursday, Kung Hui-chun (
To celebrate her success, the country's hospitality industry has renamed her award-winning cocktail from "Cool Stweetheart" to "Taiwan Sweetheart."
Kung is the first Asian to win the competition, held on Oct. 6, which is organized annually by the International Bartenders Association (IBA).
PHOTO: HUANG CHIH-YUAN, TAIPEI TIMES
This year's competition took place in Thessaloniki, Greece.
The IBA, made up of the bartender associations from 52 countries, has been organizing the annual competition for 32 years in conjunction with the IBA Annual Congress. It also organizes the World Flairtending Competition.
Taiwanese contestants have previously done well in the flairtending competition, and this year, Taiwan's Yu Kang-hsien (
Taiwanese contestants have taken fifth or sixth place in the flairtending competition every year since it was established in 2000. However, no Taiwanese has ever made it to the finals in the cocktail competition before.
This year, the cocktail competion was fought out with "long drink" cocktails -- defined as a long refreshing drink in a 30cl glass. A maximum of five ingredients not exceeding 7cl of alcohol were allowed together with only one edible garnish. A total of 48 participants from as many countries went head to head in a three-round competition, which Kung won ahead of Stefan Stevancsecz from Austria and Tormanen Harri from Finland.
In a news clip broadcast by TVBS on Friday, the audience was seen rooting for Kung while competing with other contestants on the stage. Many non-Taiwanese in the audience were seen shouting "Taiwan! Taiwan!"
The ingredients for Kung's winning cocktail included: 3cl Bacardi Carta Blanca, 3cl Amade Choc-Orange, 3cl Monin Mojito mint syrup, 7.5cl fresh orange juice and 1.5cl fresh lemon juice. The garnish was a slice of lemon, a cocktail cherry or mint leaves.
The combination method used by Kung in the competion final, to paraphrase James Bond, was "shaken, not stirred."
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS