Zhou Dynasty

Internet Wow I finally made it to an internet cafe because I desperately need to pay my bills. Low and behold, usbank.com and americanexpress.com are blocked by the Chinese government! What the hell?!?! At least blogger.com isn't blocked so I can come here and express my anger because of the damn interest and late fees I will be hit with. Q&A time... How's Shanghai? It's like packed as hell. There are millions of people here. The weather is pretty cold, lately it's gotten to be like Minnesota cold, and that's bad because I'm trying to get away from coldass Minnesota. The food here is amazing, especially the pastries you can find. Shopping is incredible as well, you can buy almost everything, they seriously have almost everything now. However they don't have those ear muffs that are the 180 degree-behind-your-head type. What do you feel like when you step outside? Cold outdoors. Cattle in the subway. It is crazy packed during their rush hour. If you think rush hour is bad, just come to Shanghai. Taking the subway during the rush hour will make you feel like a piece of human meat. There is not such thing as forming a line or waiting for people to get off the cart before getting on. When the subway stops, people are scrunched up inches away from the door. As soon as the door opens there is a mad push and shove from everyone who is trying to get off the subway and everyone trying to get on the subway. If you get caught by the door because you can't squeeze in, a subway worker will actually come around and shove you in there as hard as he can. When you think you're not gonna fit, he WILL MAKE YOU FIT. Once in you just feel like human cattle. You can't move a single muscle and you pray that no one tries to make use of the situation to grab your ass or steal your wallet. Those are the questions I will answer for now, if you have anymore just email them to me. And what the hell is up with that tsunami thing?! I heard on the news that more thatn 125,000 people have died?! Unbelievable. At first I wasn't sure if I could trust the CCTV news because it just seems unreal. Now that I've checked my trusty news.google.com I still don't believe it! Anyway time to go do some shopping, I need a hat and some gloves to handle this weather. You all need to email me because I only received 31 emails and like 30 of them were either spam or automated!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2005.... aren't we supposed to have flying cars and teleporting stations now??? Well at least we have Bush for 4 more years, right? -_-

Another Update It's been a few days since I touched a computer that's able to go online. I'm having a bit of trouble accessing my gmail account from China now. I don't know why but I can sign in and view my inbox but as soon as I click on one of my mails, it disconnects me from gmail. I think the government here is blocking gmail now, boo-urns. Since my parents arrived in China, we've been having a lot of fun. We're in Xiamen now. Dinner and sauna in Shanghai I went out to dinner one night with my parents and some of their old friends from the teenage years. We went to a restaurant owned by one of their friends, called Xing Gang or Star Harbor. I thought the restaurant would be pretty fancy because we usually go to fancy ones with their friends. But this one was beyond fancy. It was like, super fancy. It had a luxurious European style setting and every private dinning room had different styles of furniture. The food was good too, ranging from raw crab in wine sauce to this weird stuff that birds puke up. Yeah, apparently there's this stuff that birds puke up, it looks like clear colored beef jerky but they cook it in a soup and it dissociates into little threads. It doesn't taste like anything but the soup is good. This part might be rated NC17, if you're sensitive to material relating to naked men, don't read this part. Another one of my dad's friends owns a sauna place in Shanghai so we went there afterwards. They call these things "saunas" but its the equivalent of a "spa". The service was really good, TOO good. There are always at least 2 people serving you. Even when I was taking off my clothes there was a guy taking it from me and folding it neatly. Its really weird to have 2 Chinese guys standing next to you to service you while you're completely naked. I just wished they would leave and let me do my own thing but it was their job to provide their service to naked clients. The place also had a big Swedish spa and a cold spa. The cold spa is the weirdest thing. I could only last in that icy water for 15 seconds max, felt like I was going to turn into an ice cube if I stayed any longer. Anyway the weirdest thing that I did was had a sea salt scrub. They just call it a "back scrub". My dad's friend told me to try to "back scrub", I don't know if I would recommend it to any of you guys. But basically you're naked on a bed and a guy scrubs your ENTIRE body clean and rubs some kind of herbal salt on you. When I mean ENTIRE body, I mean the entire thing, genitals and all! If I were to say that it was a bit uncomfortable it might be an understatement. But to get a taste of what I mean by uncomfortable, have a guy lift up your scrotum to scrub you clean and you'll know what I mean. It was an interesting night. I got home at about 1:30AM smelling real clean and walking a bit funny. Hongqiao Airport: Leaving for Xiamen My family and I left for Xiamen and we checked almost everything except for a small bag containing a sweater and a bottle of sake. We were thankful that the check-in lady was nice enough to let us check all that crap in because I think everything was over the weight limit. When we got to the security check, they had me open up the small bag. The security lady takes out the bottle of sake to examine it and tells us that we can't bring it as a carry-on. My dad and I jokingly said "Why don't we just drink it here, we'll share it with you." Surprisingly, after examining the sake, she motioned that we can drink it if we want. We were just joking of course but we felt like throwing the bottle away would be a such a waste a dishonorable to my dad's friend. So we opened the bottle and started drinking the sake at the security check. Our family sat down on the stairs and drank the whole damn bottle while everyone watched. They must've thought we were alcholics. After drinking the entire thing we proceeded to the waiting area, by this point my mom's face was completely red, my dad and I were starting to feel the buzz. When we got to the waiting area I had to get rid of some of the sake taste by eating some peanuts. Peanuts made me thirsty and lead me to buy a couple cans of Tsingdao for me and my dad. When we were boarding, our entire family was buzzing and by the time we sat down in our seats, we started making fun of stewartess who told us to fasten our seatbelts. I think the people around us thought we were either crazy or drunk, but somehow they knew we were Americans.

Some things left out I just thought of a couple things I forgot to mention before. 1) I finally got to try some dog meat. It was pretty good, the texture was like really soft beef with a thin chewy piece of skin. It tasted like beef with a small hint of lamb almost. It was cooked in some kind of hot spicy Hunan dish. My face felt a little hot after eating it, people said it was normal. 2) Damn, I forgot what I was going to write. Anyways, on my whole trip I had not used a squatting toilet once! Until just now... I'm at my uncle's logistics company in Xiamen and I had to take a dump. I went in and to my surprise, it was a squatter. Damn I hate squatters. For those who've never tried one, it is basically a procelan hole in the ground, its uncomfortable and you have to squat or else you'll fall right in. But when you think about it, a squatter does make sense in terms of effenciency. Those western toilets are so comfortable that you can bring in the newspaper and sit on there for half an hour, I know because I've done it at work before. Installing a squatter would be perfect for the workplace, employees can't slack off on the toilet.

Back home I am back home now. =) I can't believe how damn cold it is. My lungs hurt from breathing in the cold air... I hate Minnesota winters.

White crap It snowed all day yesterday. Starting from when I drove to work till this morning. Someone decided that we didn't officially have a winter yet so they pushed the snow button. As a result I got to shovel 3 freakin driveways, shit my back hurts. Work was interesting yesterday. They had me go to the roof and install a wireless temperature transmitter. It was cold as hell but well worth it cuz now we can tell what the temperature is to the 3rd decimal and be able to monitor it on a website. Another duty I must perform as the intern is to pick up two dozen donuts from Krispy Kremes every Thursday. I hope I get some real things to do next week other than cleaning cabinets.

Hatred? Ignorance? WTF?! I still don't understand it. After many years of contemplating I still don't understand why there are people who think that it is ok to mock others why are of different ethnicity. Sure we all have our own thoughts about different races of people but when was the last time we humiliated them in public? A radio station in New York, HOT97, aired a parody song about the tsunami last month which took more than 226,000 lives. The lyrics disgust me... Here are some: ..All at once you could hear the screaming chinks and no one was safe from the wave there were africans drowning, little chinamen swept away you could hear god laughing, "swim you bitches swim" So now you're screwed, it's the Tsunami you better run or kiss your ass away, go find your mommy I just saw her float by, a tree went through her head and now the children will be sold to child slavery... Wow huh? Doesn't that just make you laugh your ass off? Omfg that was so funny, play it again dj play it! Wow its so much better than the parody song about 9-11 (no such thing)! From the latest that I've heard, the people running that show are forced to contribute a week's worth of their salary to help tsunami victims. LOL... a week's worth. I think they should be removed from that show permanently and relocated to Indonesia where their new job to identify bodies of tsunami victims and search for those who are still missing. People in America are so damn separated from reality. Here's an article about it. They have contact information if you feel that you should write to the radio station and their sponsors about their creative juices. EDIT: Jin has a freestyle in response to this tsunami song. Listen to the MP3 here. Today 150 to 200 people came together to protest against HOT97 and hate-radio at their studios. Here are some pictures I found online...

http://i.xanga.com/cherryxq/P1180182.JPG http://i.xanga.com/cherryxq/P1180190.JPG http://i.xanga.com/cherryxq/P1180202.JPG http://i.xanga.com/cherryxq/P1180208.JPG http://i.xanga.com/cherryxq/P1180178.JPG http://i.xanga.com/cherryxq/P1180177.JPG http://i.xanga.com/cherryxq/P1180206.JPG

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