Zhou Dynasty

Ridiculous It is snowing out there and hard. Hasn't stopped since last night. When I got my car this morning it was covered in 2 feet of snow, I knew it was going to be crap driving to work. After 1 hour and 30 mins I am finally at work. I couldn't even drive faster than 20mph the major highways!

Super Bowl Halftime Show "So who won the super bowl?" "I donno, but did you see Janet Jackson's boob!?" I am sure this dialog was happening everywhere across America this Monday. Well incase you missed the action, here's what happened. Oh yeah, here it is in action.

Mentoring I met with my mentor from M&G again last night. He is one great guy. We talked for an hour and a half just about what he and some of the lawyers do there. It is amazing how fast-paced and hard working IP lawyers are. Their organizational structure is not a functional one, it is more of a client focused organization. There are client mangers and below them they can allocate their attorneys in working on their cases. He also treated me to dinner, again. Since he goes back to China so much on business I invited him to visit me in Xiamen over the summer. His wife is Chinese. She's amazing. She's a tri-athlete, cross-country ski racer, marathon runner, lisenced pilot, wants to be the first woman to go around the world, and also an IP lawyer. Did I mention she is Chinese and is from Shanghai??? How many Chinese women do you know train for the triathalon while working full time as an IP attorney?! That is just insane.

My day This is what happens when everyone thinks you're an extremely motivated intern. How can you say no to a new project that your supervisor gives you? I spent a couple hours just trying to figure out why my stupid laptop and the new software wasn't communicating with this transmitter.

Mahjong The boys wanted to play last night but I didnt. We played anyways and I ended up +60 pts and Will had +1 pts. Danny lost the most, I think he lost all 60 pts to me. We were playing at $0.25 a point! I can't remember the last time Danny won a game of MJ at my place.

Owned by oatmeal What the hell?! How do you cook oatmeal in the microwave without making it blow up? This is my second attempt at cooking oatmeal in a microwave and it blew up on me again. This is sad, I'm supposed to be an engineer. At least I wasn't at the microwave where a lot of people use. Only 1 person saw my accident this time.

High school Last night I met up with some old high school friends at Sally's. My friend Brett is getting sent to Iraq for a year tomorrow so we decided to get together. I hung out with some people that I never hung out with in high school. There was a lot of balkanization in the high school culture. As a result, I didn't get to know other people very well. I knew a lot of people but nevr hung out with them. Last night was great because I finally got to hang out with these people. They weren't the popular kids but I didn't really talk to them because they weren't good students. Eventhough they weren't great students back then, they're a lot of fun to hang out with. I'm not quite sure what the point of this blog is. I think I just wanted to say that there were a lot of cool people I didn't get to know in high school because there was so much separation of groups.

Break Man I spent most of my time in this cubicle today. Sitting in here makes you feel like an animal in a cave hunched over a small laptop. I took a break and went to the cafeteria, it was nice. I could breathe better and woke up a bit. The strawberry popsicle was also a nice treat. ^_^

Crabs Wow I accidently stumbled onto this site while I was looking for information about biopharmaceuticals. This site tells you how to catch blue crabs, cook them and eat them. Who's wants to go catch blue crabs this summer??

Xanga got served! Runtime Error ... that's why I dont use Xanga, they suck! I've always been against Xanga, here are the reasons... 1. Xanga rhymes with Kanka, which is a medicine for kanker sores and hurts like hell when you apply it. 2. Xanga is for people who can't do simple multiplication in their head and also can't make a simple web blog by themselves. 3. They make you join them just to be able to comment on a friend's blog. 4. All Xanga pages look the same unless if you want to pay them. 5. They say that they let you customize your own Xanga, but yet you are not allowed to use the < iframe> tag! 6. If you're under 13, Xanga doesn't like you. "Children under 13 are not permitted to join Xanga or participate in the Xanga Community." Ohhh diss...

Anime stick figure clip This is awesome. It's actually an animated gif. WATCH!

Steak Last night after my night class I went to the Steak Knife with my old friend Kenneth. This place is not bad. The prices for the steaks were decent (college budget) and the ambience was also quite nice. We had a few beers and watched a live band play. I didn't know the name of the band but they were cool too, even got one of those guys who rap freestyle. The night before last night I went to Ichiban's with Danny and John. John is going to Mexico to be immersed in Spanish for the next 5 months. We had tons of great sushi and sake. Afterwards we went to Sally's to have a few drinks and then came back to Dinnaken to play Texas Hold 'em where David lost like $20.

Good beer There is this new beer I discovered that I really like; Blue Moon. It's a Belgium beer and I think it tastes quite different from the MGDs and the Buds.
Andrea and I went out Saturday night to get some Sezchuan food and beer. We check out Brit's and The Local. Both very nice bars but Brits was a lot classier than the Local. The night was full of conversation with the type of nostalgia that only college seniors would understand. We also took note of our own elite asian status and decided that we are so elite that we are worthy to chill with west coast asians. I noticed that we seemed to agree on topics of discussion a lot more now. During the freshmen year when we first met, the only thing we could basically agree on is that NSYNC is the shit. Of course we don't think that anymore! But we agree that Justin Timberlake is the shit.

Asian parents I'm glad I'm not in her shoes... TrevelyanV: my mom tells me that i'm ready to know what happens on the wedding night DragonZ32: LOL!!!! TrevelyanV: that she'll tell me when the time gets closer DragonZ32: omg that is so funny DragonZ32: LOL DragonZ32: your mom is so cute TrevelyanV: I look at her and i roll my eyes TrevelyanV: whatever DragonZ32: LOL! TrevelyanV: it's annoying TrevelyanV: and so one of these days she'll give me the sex talk

Intern life Wow I am a somebody at this company now. They just gave me my name plate to place by my cube. It says "Bill Zhou" and they made it just for me. Yay! Before I had a piece of paper taped on the wall with my name and then my supervisor's name on it. I felt like I was somebody's slave. I think I still am. Within my half-sized cube I have everything I need; a phone, stabler, tape, pens, cleanex, a laptop, and my nalgene bottle. Sometimes when I sit in here for too long I feel like I have been in a jail cell or something. I guess this is the life of an intern.

Left out And I thought I was somebody here. I was wondering why it was so quite then I got up and everyone in my group was gone. I checked the Outlook and it turns out that they're all at a meeting trying to figure out strategies on how to oust their number one competitor. And they left me out! WTH?!?! I guess I am just an intern. -_-

Crap software Omg I've spent the past 4 hours trying to make a stupid document with pictures and boxes. It is ridiculous how unflexible Microsoft Word is. I made an object box go behind the text and then I couldn't select that object box anymore! wtf! After several tries and looking through their stupid help files I couldn't find anyway to select that object again. It just sits there, can't do anything with it now. And I couldn't undo because Word crashed and auto saved right when I made the object go in the background. So I said screw that there must be a better program out there. So I go and download Adobe PageMaker. What a joke of a program. The format and efficiency of this program reminds me of Windows 3.1! There is an undo button this time, but 75% of the time you can't use it!!!! And if you could use it, you can only undo once. I accidently deleted a large part of my text that took me 20 mins to resize and place around the pictures, and guess what, I can't f*#king undo it!!! Work is stressing me out now. I think I will go work on my pen spinning techniques.

!Productive What's the opposite of "pro-ductive"? Is is "con-ductive"?

Forgetful You know I always think of something to blog about when I go to the bathroom. But the problem is after I urinate I forget...oh wait I remember what I was going to say now! So yesterday morning I went to the Park Nicollet Clinic for my pre-employment physical. Ever done the drug test where you have to pee into a cup? Well when you do that test they always tell you that they need this much urine from you and there's a line in the cup. For some reason, I always give them only up to the line. I gave them all I got an it was perfectly at the required line. This happened at the last physical a couple months ago too. I don't know if it's a mental thing or what. But it was kind of embarassing cuz afterwards I noticed I got some on my pants. x_x

WH Phenomenon
What is with this?? There's a huge cult following of this guy who was on American Idol. William Hung is an engineering student from UC Berkley and he sang "She Bangs" by Ricky Martin. But what makes this man so immensely popular? Listen436kb
Watch4.9mb Is it his positive spirit and the adorable looks? I bet this guy could get more chicks just by saying "beebo beebo beebo beebo" than me, David and Will combined. Well actually that wouldn't be very hard considering that we are all still single. Just imagine what would happen if William Hung was on the show Average Joe, he would blow the competition away. I think it is time that the boys of Dinnaken 406 perform on American Idol.

Mystic Feast Last night I met up with Danny, Will and David at Mystic Lake for their seafood buffet. Ahh yes, the seafood buffet, I hadn't been there in about 3 months. But it hasn't changed much. The lines are still packed with the HSEA (Hungry South East Asians) crowd waiting to ravage their crab legs, mussels, and raw oyesters. And once again, I saw people there that I knew, my old cook and Becky. The line wasn't bad because when I got there, my boys didn't wait for me and had already gotten in line so I just acted like a bastard and cut infront of those other people. (Geez, don't you hate it when people do that to you? I know I do.) This is a longer blog, so you have the option to jump to: HSEAs vs. FBWC (battle of the mean and hungry) The food review (winners and losers, okay mostly losers) Our short wait in line was also contributed to the drama that occurred between some members of the HSEA and the FBWC (Fat Black Women Coalition). We were reminded of the bitter rivalry when one of the HSEAs (notorious for their skills in cutting infront of 90% of all people) tried to cut infront of a gang of the FBWC. She made the mistake of brushing aside a decendent of the FBWC without saying the words that the American society lives by, "excuse me".

All hell broke loose.
One of the stronger members of the FBWC morphed into her super-hungry-"oh no you didnt"-Gorilla form. And then just as the line-cutter realized what she had provoked and was in the process of retreating, another member of the HSEA stepped in to try and stand up for his gang member. The quiet but brave (and much smaller) asian man could be seen (but not heard) telling the gorilla to back off and kept pointing fingers at the beast. This provoked the hungry beast even more and she could be heard throughout the entire casino and probably all across the Mdewakanton Indian reservation as she yelled at the little asian man for alegedly touching her. Fuelled by the rage from the hunger pangs, both representatives from each gang would not back down. Until finally, the line security personel came by and threatened to throw both the HSEA group and the FBWC out. So the food was just "okay" again. I didn't pig out and try to eat them out of business like I used to. I don't know what's wrong with me but I just get full too fast, maybe I'm losing some of my asian eating powers. But anyways heres my food review. Snow Crab legs: 5/10 The crab legs were okay but the consistency was again lacking. I only gave it 5 out of 10 because I only got crab legs that could crack correctly half the time. And most of the time I stole the crab from David, maybe he was living up to his asian eating gods by taking all the good crabs right when they came out. Mussels: 6/10 These little babies weren't as little as last time. However I think I've been spoiled by the mussels at McCormick and Smick's. They weren't very juicy or succulent, they were just bigger and older. Not to mention the amount of sand that was in them. In fact, while waiting to get some, the amigo infront of me who was adopting the asian seafood buffet strategy showed me a rock that he picked up. A rock, the side of a mussel was scooped up, talk about not cleaning your seafood! Raw Oyester bar: 2/10 Ok, I admit I've been spoiled by the fresh raw oyesters I had in Baltimore but these just don't cut it anymore. I litterally ate 2 oyesters. The first one tasted like oyester shit, and the second one I ate to double-check. Yep, they suck. Sushi bar: 1/10 Ok do I even have to talk about this? I mean c'mon, seriously, you still think you're making sushi??? Mystic Lake should go look up the definition of sushi. Until then, if you want a sushi buffet, go to Ichiban. Thai Fish Cakes: 9/10 These little hidden gems were tucked away in the far corner of the buffet. Boy I'm glad when I discovered these babies. They were bite size (perfect for asians) salmon fish cakes topped with some sweet Thai sauce. They actually had taste and the texture was nice and soft. Highly recommended! Yeah well that's all there is to mention about the $21.25 Mystic Lake Wednesday night seafood buffet. Sad isn't it?

La-la friday T i m e i s g o i n g b y r e a l s l o w t o d a y . Must be Friday. I am trying to kill time so I made this for you Blue Moon lovers out there.