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COOKIE MASTER.(The Talk of the Town; Donald Lau composes fortunes for Wonton Food, Inc. fortune cookies)
As a vice-president at Wonton Food, Inc., in Long Island City, Donald Lau manages the company's accounts payable and receivable, negotiates with insurers, and, somewhat incidentally, composes the fortunes that go inside the fortune cookies, of which Wonton is the world's largest manufacturer. Each day, Wonton's factory churns out four million Golden Bowl-brand cookies, which are sold to several hundred venders, who, in turn, sell them to most of the forty thousand Chinese restaurants across the country. Wonton's primacy in the industry and, for that matter, in the gambler's imagination is such that when, in March, five of six lucky numbers printed on a fortune happened to coincide with the winning picks for the Powerball lottery, a hundred and ten people, instead of the usual handful, came forward to claim prizes of around a hundred thousand dollars. Lottery officials suspected a scam until they traced the sequence to a fortune printed with the digits "22-28-32-33-39-40" and Donald Lau's prediction: "All the preparation you've done will finally be paying off."
"We've had winners before, but never this many," Lau said the other day, in his East Williamsburg office, which is furnished with stacks of financial reports and "A Dictionary of American Proverbs." "A computer picks the numbers, not me. If only a computer could also write the fortunes." Lau never expected to become a fortune-cookie writer. After graduating from Columbia with degrees in engineering and business, he joined Bank of America, then ran a company that exported logs from the Pacific Northwest to China. In the early eighties, he was hired by a Chinatown noodle manufacturer, which eventually expanded into fortune cookies. The firm bought the Long Island City plant, and it soon became apparent that its antiquated catalogue of fortunes would have to be updated. ("Find someone as gay as you are," one leftover from the nineteen-forties read.) "We knew we needed to add new sayings," Lau said. "I ...
- Lau Technologies chief turns it around.
- Newspaper article from: The Boston Herald Bunker, Peggy June 23, 1997 700+ words
Joanna Lau bought an electronics company, on the verge...in 1990. Since then, Littleton-based Lau Technologies has added 150 jobs and grown...rise to success. In 1972 at the age of 17, Lau came to America with her widowed mother and...
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- Press release article from: Business Wire October 19, 1995 700+ words
...BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 19, 1995--LAU Technologies announced today that it was...production. As the systems integrator, LAU Technologies will provide the "brains and...for the new production system, including LAU's patented Vision Inspection System...
- Lau
- Encyclopedia entry from: Encyclopedia of World Cultures January 1, 1996 700+ words
Lau ETHNONYMS: None Orientation Identification. Lau is a chain of about 100 small islands and reefs spread over...kilometers in the South Pacific. Geographically and culturally, Lau is intermediate between Melanesian Fiji and Polynesian Tonga...
- Lau Technologies Terminates Registered Plan to Sell Stock in Viisage Effective...
- Press release article from: Business Wire March 10, 2003 700+ words
...BUSINESS WIRE)--March 10, 2003 Lau Technologies, the Littleton-based defense...effective immediately. On January 2, 2003, Lau Technologies registered 400,000 of its...position in Viisage. As of March 10, 2003, Lau had sold approximately 75,000 shares...
- Cheryl Lau Has Visions Of A Bold, New Nevada
- Newspaper article from: AsianWeek Bobbie Lee September 2, 1994 700+ words
...Bobbie Lee AsianWeek 09-02-1994 Cheryl Lau Has Visions Of A Bold, New Nevada. CARSON...NV) -- Nevada Secretary of State Cheryl Lau, 49, commands attention. One of seven Republicans running for governor, Lau is the first Chinese American woman to seek...
- What did Valerie Lau know?(Commentary)(Editorials)
- Newspaper article from: The Washington Times November 10, 1997 700+ words
...example, the matter of contracts IG Valerie Lau insisted the office award without competitive...300,000; another went to Frank Sato, a Lau pal who is a former IG himself - and who...of support to the White House when Mrs. Lau was up for the IG job. Some coincidence...
- NOODLES; CHEF LAU'S MAGIC PULL
- Newspaper article from: The Washington Post Gail Forman January 11, 1995 700+ words
Every time Mike Lau made a mistake when he was learning the...cooking. Westerners who want proof can watch Lau, or go to Chinese, Korean or other noodle...opened grocery/carryout, called Chef Lau's, in the Seven Locks Plaza in Potomac...
- USE OF MEDICATION MAY HAVE CLOUDED LAU'S MIND.(News)
- Newspaper article from: Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Seattle, WA) Goldsmith, Steven June 19, 1997 700+ words
Friends of Sam Lau suspect prescription drugs may have clouded the...week. Dr. John Yam, a Bellevue physician and Lau's close friend, said he saw police carrying pill bottles from the Lau home after the four bodies were discovered Monday...
