Zhou Dynasty

Who's reading? It has been brought to my attention lately that the audience of my blog is more diverse than I had imagined. When I first started my blog I wanted to keep an online journal about random things that I happen to be thinking about and stuff that happened to me. I wanted to have my blog so I can look back at it 10 or 20 years from now and say "haha billy you dumbass" or "yeah those were the good days." And now there are people who actually know me and read my blog, such as friends in Minnesota, friends from different parts of the country/world, my relatives, my parents, my relatives' friends, my parents' friends, and other random people who are doing research on the Zhou Dynasty. While it is good to know that your friends and family care about you and want to read up, this has lead to a change in my style of blogging. I can no longer name names, talk about the "really interesting" things or be mean. So basically it is not as fun as before. What should I do? The other day my aunt called me and told me not to write about my so-called "work ethics" because it could potentially jeopardize my job. Hmmm... that's a good point. But DAMN do I hate changing my style or attitude, I just don't like that. I'd rather face the wrath from my boss than to change my blog entries. Actually I think my boss would find it amusing the way I write about my days at work. I'm sure many of you who have your own blogs or the inferior xanga have had some kind of exposure to blog censorship. Should I write like the way I want and keep on posting pictures that may not show me in the best of light? Or should I "tone" it down and become a role model to online blogger-wannabes? Any comments?

Long lost pics Actually I've always had them, I think there were too many things going around at the time and I never got a chance to put these up, or more likely I was lazy. These are pics from my trip to China in the winter of 2003. Check'em out yo. You people should start commenting on crap. I'm sick of people telling me about my site when I see them or talk to them on the phone. Are you too shy to comment because then other people will know you have nothing better to do than to read peoples blogs? Well guess what, those people are reading the blog too, therefore they're in the same boat as you!

406 Boyz By Peter Wagner.

Packing God it sucks! One thing I hate about going to China is that everytime I go, my mom always makes me bring a bunch of crap back to my relatives. I always have to buy gifts, not just ordinary gifts, but gifts that are made in USA. There's so much crap to bring back that my luggage is already 90% full and I haven't put a single personal item in it yet! Damn if it were up to me, I'd travel with just a carry-on luggage. Oh yeah, I got an email account at GMail! If you haven't heard, GMail is Google's new offering of email. They give you 1 gig of free space. I got the account as a tester. So far GMail has been awesome! It's really fast and has very useful features.

Blog from abroad 5:15PM - Zhuhai, China I looked out the window of my crazy taxi driver and took a deep breath to smell the polution and yummy street food, that's how I know I am in China. I've been here for a few days now and am having a great time. I've been doing a lot of eating and sight-seeing. Finally got my ass into a Wong Ba (internet cafe) today and check my email and stocks. While my mailbox took on more mail, my portfolio took on some more losses, damn. I hope every in the US of A is having a great time and enjoying the great weather and appreciating the air conditioning that they're blessed with. I, unlike any of you am not living with AC right now. And you all know how much I need my AC. Zhuhai is damn humid, so humid that I felt like fainting the first day I got here. My skin is litterally damp all the time. From the minute I wake up till the minute I wake up again, my skin is damp and I am breathing humid air. But I am a trooper. I can survive this because I've been through the boundary waters, or at least thats what I continue to tell myself. I miss you guys. And I miss that thing between my legs. Oh I will make it up by riding a lot this summer, and also hanging out with all of you a lot. Well I'm gonna cut this short because the smoke and the humid air of this wong ba is making me sick. Hopefully I'll have some pictures for my next post.

Lovely Xiamen Xiamen, 3:45PM Ahh....I arrived in Xiamen last night around 10PM. I can't describe the feeling of coming to Xiamen, I feel like the entire city is welcoming me. When I was on the plane to Xiamen (XIAMEN AIRLINES) they had personal TVs and served snacks eventhough the flight was less than 2 hours long. Hearing my local dialect (Fujianese) over the intercom was also pleasant. Another thing I noticed this time was that there was classical music playing on the airplane when we were landing. It just added to the effect of coming home. The weather here in Xiamen is really nice, about 80 degrees and not much humidity. When I got home last night we went out to get dirty street food as soon as the luggage was put away. We went to some dark alley where they had Satay Noodle Soup. This is one of the things that Xiamen is famous for. The food was awesome but they were out of duck blood jelly, but it was only $.50 USD, what a deal! Today my aunt and her friend brought us to the outskirts of Xiamen to eat Seaworm Jelly. These little jellies with seaworms in them is also another local favorite. I got some pictures of it too. Then after that we went to one of those restaurants where the seafood is laid out in front of you to pick from...good eats. I love those places where there is no menu, only what's swimming and squirming around. As I am typing this, I can hear the sound of mah-jong tiles crashing and family yelling at each other for winning, I think they're calling me. Oh yeah, post in the comments on what you would like me to capture with my camera, and I will try my best.

Livin' it up I'm writing from an internet cafe in Xiamen geared for CS. I couldn't log into my email account because they turned off ACTIVEX. However CS runs ultra smooth and I played for a bit. I suck, but there were a few moments when I felt like the shit. Too bad I can't talk smack to them because they won't understand my english. The past few days in Xiamen I've really been living it up. Doing whatever I feel like any given moment is pretty fun. Couple days ago I met up with another friend of mine and we went on a speed boat around Gu Lang Yu island because she wanted to do something exciting. Then we went onto the island and ate their specialty snacks, yum. Later that night I invited my relatives out for dirty street food. We actually had a dining room. But it was so small that if I stand up straight my head would touch the ceiling. After that my feet felt kind of tired from all the walking so we went to get a foot massage. They give you a massage for like an hour and you can order food for free, how ever much you want to eat. All for under $10 a person. Where do you find that? An hour massage and a free buffet?! Last night Li Ying and I went to the beach because we heard that they have a BBQ buffet but we couldn't find it. We end up sitting on the beach with a couple of beers and snacks, I felt like I was in one of those Corona commercials. When we got back around 1:30AM we went to eat some noodles in an alley, and yes that was good food too. I think I've spent quite a bit of money. At first I didn't think I could spend this much money but I can in only a few days. I've bought a lot of clothes. I think David is going to be excited to try them on when I get back. Summer is going good so far, how is it for all of you?

Settling in I'm beginning to feel like I belong in Xiamen. Yesterday when I was looking back at my pictures I felt like that was a different me, a USA version of me. I feel like I'm Chinese now. How I can tell is the other day when I was at the beach and a wave came which caught me off guard and I yelled "wei!" instead of the usually "woah!" My Chinese and Taiwanese have also gotten better. But today I was reminded of how crappy my Chinese is. We stopped a bookstore and it sucked. The air conditioning was low and there were no escalators and on top of that I couldn't understand a single thing on the shelves, I didn't even know which subjects I was browsing. I played CS again, I think it's growing on me. Nooooo! I actually did much better than yesterday, I owned. No body would care except for Steve and David but my score during the last game in dust2 was 43-7. Before I left for China I didn't even remember what dust2 looked like. Tomorrow I will go to Quanzhou to pick up my little cousin. Well actually I shouldn't say little anymore because she's 20 and has a bf now. But I always think of her as little because I always picked on her when we were kids and she would cry easily. Oh yeah I'm also proud that most of the time I am walking around Xiamen and not taking a cab. I've become familiar with the streets without knowing any street names or where the street names can be found. I guess after a lot of shopping and eating out you really get to know your way around.

Everyday Buffet I'm starting to feel like every meal is a buffet. Especially when my relatives take me out to eat. We always order tons of seafood and somehow manage to eat it all. And I seem to be going through money a lot faster too. Eventhough things are much cheaper here I still manage to easily spend $50 in a day. I think I'm getting fat too. I would be really fat if it wasn't for some of the diarrhea I've been having. Why isn't anyone on MSN? It's 1PM people, you should all be online! Anyways I'm done with CS, for tonight. I think I'm gonna get some satay noodle soup. Wow that's good shit. I went there last night around midnight and they were pretty busy still. They were out of the duck blood jelly though.

5 Stars I am blogging from the VIP internet cafe of the Xiamen Mandarin Hotel. This hotel is awesome. My uncle hooked me up with a one night stay in they Club Room. The room is very nice and of course the most impressive thing is the bathroom shower. It's a Swiss style shower head with side nozzles that can penetrate your love handles. This afternoon we went swimming in their indoor pool and tried out the massage spa. I'm not sure what its called but its not Chinese. It is basically a big hot tub with all different kinds of jets to pound you. There are ones that shoot down at you with two sharp streams of high pressured water. And then there's one that comes down on you like a fricken fire-hose. My favorite jet is the one that hits your lower back while one shoots at your butt and lifts you up so you're sort of floating all by yourself. In addition to this big office style internet cafe, the VIP portion of the building also offers a cocktail lounge with unlimited free beverages and snacks and little desserts cakes. Too bad I'm not a big fan of sweets or I'd eat some of those fancy little cakes. I did eat their fried seafood roll, it was quite good. For dinner we ate at their buffet. They had a lot of seafood including sashimi, crab and all these other things you wouldn't think that would appear at a buffet because someone like me would eat them poor. There's also a pretty cute girl playing the piano while you're eating. There were a couple of drooling asian business guys standing behind her and just watching her play. I'm gonna go check out what else they have for their VIP's nephew...

Almost home I am at the Tokyo Intl Airport right now waiting for my connection flight to Minneapolis. It was quite hard to leave China, I didnt even miss home yet. I didnt want to leave behind everything so precious to me, and that includes loved ones too. Now I'm wearing my glasses and a hat and sitting at a free Intel Centrino station blogging. I wanted to go and sit on the toilet and reminisce about the past 3 weeks... But what the hell, they have squatters!!! I hate freakin' squatters, I thought I was done with them ever since the dirty street food restaurants in China. Who would've thought that this brand new international airport in Tokyo has squatting shitters instead of a real crapper. So yes I was forced to only concentrate on my duties and wasnt able to reminisce one bit because by the time I started thinking, my legs were already wobbling from squatting to shit.

Lost and Found ...I was on the crapper two days ago when my dad called from the states. He asked me what I was doing and I told him. Then he told me to hold on because what he's going to tell me might make me fall off the toilet. He told me that he received a call from the Bloomington police who were looking for me. He thought that I had done something illegal and the cops wanted me. But they called because they found my motorcycle. Wow I nearly fell of the crapper, I stopped my business right there. Could you continue to take a dump if you found out that your stolen motorcycle from 9 months ago was found again?!?!?! I can't believe it. They said that its in good condition and can still be ridden. I'm gonna go and check it out as soon as I get back. Hopefully this summer I will have 2 bikes!! ^_^