Zhou Dynasty

I think most people know I don't like Shanghai, today I was reminded of how much I dislike the feeling that this city gives me. When I come to Shanghai, I feel like I'm in neither China or America. I'm in some place where East meets West and mixes with the worst of characteristics. How bad can it be you say? Well other than the fact that everyone here goes straight to the front of the line instead of queuing and westerners are put on top a pedestal, there are some more things today that just made me want to leave. Amanda and I arrived to Shanghai from Xiamen today and we went to a sushi restaurant for lunch. After eating our salmon sashimi and various sushi items, we noticed that there was some action at the table next to us. I couldn't believe what I saw, a mother and grandmother were changing their baby's diaper. The scent of a baby's damp butt with the smell of the baby wipes mixed together with the flavor of wasabi completely killed my appetite. But it was too late because we put in another order for more food. After the diaper changing couple left and the table was briefly wiped by one of the servers, a group of teenagers sat down. I saw 3 guys and a girl, but I heard voices from 4 guys. Yes the girl was a guy, first time I saw a Chinese cross-dresser. Needless to say Amanda and I felt pretty full by the time our second round of sushi came. We strolled around the mall still in disbelief of what we just witnessed in one sitting. Finally Amanda and I decided to go for coffee because we were both getting sleepy. Everywhere was packed and we had no other place to go but Gino Cafe, a fancy little Italian cafe serving cappuccinos and tiramisu. Not long after placing our order, two young women decked out designer accessories sat down next to us, with only a low divider-wall separating our two tables. The first thing these women do is to light their cigarettes and since we were so close to them, it was basically us breathing in all their second-hand smoke. Not only was that unbearable, but they started speaking in English. One of the women is Asian American but the other one, who was basically talking right into my ear is Shanghainese. The only subjects these women talked about for the next 20 minutes are money, wealthy men, and bitches who hate because they're jealous. I couldn't stand the Shanghai girl's bitchy tone with a Chinese accent, it was horrible. Since she was so close to me, I couldn't even concentrate on my coffee, all I heard was how she looks down on all those people who are not as rich as she is. I never drank my coffee so damn fast. I'm going to say it plainly, I hate Shanghai, I hate how people here are so damn materialistic, I hate how people here have no sense of common courtesy, I can't wait to go bad to Minnesota nice.

Tonight I'm going to my great aunt's Chinese New Year party, and I'm bringing David and Andrea. One little catch, we're pre-partying by drinking sherry and port. I don't think I like either of these dessert wines but whatever, it'll make new years more exciting.

I usually don't get jet lag and I didn't when I got back to MN this time. However I just can't sleep tonight, I think jet lag has finally hit me. I was watching the Superbowl tonight and fell asleep, I actually fell asleep during a football game. Now I'm wide awake and just hoping that the sun will rise soon so I'll have something to do. Hmm... maybe I'll try hooking up my Pump It Up pad.

Today is my first day at work, FINALLY. It's weird, even though I've been looking forward to starting work, I never really thought that this is the life that I will have for years to come until my boss told me to make an appointment with the ergonomics specialist because I will be sitting in this chair for "many years". Then he went on talking about the new badge color he will get soon, reminding himself of just how long he has been here (there was a voice inside my head saying "omg 15 years"). I can honestly say I love my job and have been enjoying it ever since I've been working with this marketing group. There's probably no where else I'd rather be in the company than where I am right now. It's like that same feeling I experienced when I finally met a group of engineering students at the U who like to "hang out". I've found people who share my interests and are like me, I am lucky.

Man it seems like the only people that look forward to cafeteria food at their workplace are those people at Google. I've had too many bad experiences with overpriced nasty tasting food at our cafeteria that I now try to avoid it at all costs. Actually it's not THAT bad, their breakfast is actually pretty good, but then again it's hard to screw up breakfast. Well I guess my coworkers will soon figure out my particular preference, but I still feel bad for declining to join them for lunch at the cafeteria.

I got a citation today, here's the story... Michelle left for work and asked me to put the dogs in their cage if I was to leave the house. I took note of her careful instructions and proceeded to work on my websites. A couple hours later the Edina Police called me and told me that our dog attacked another dog and is now growling at the paramedics. At this point I was like "what the shit?"... So I called Sugar in and caged her, no blood stains or anything. A while later the police came by to talk to me. Apparently the neighbor was walking her dog and Sugar charged through the invisible fence and attacked the smaller dog. And apparently this happened before about a year and half ago . Well the woman who was walking her dog got all worked up and had trouble breathing, and her dog was sent to the vet. That's how I got a citation. What the shit.

I just woke up from quite an incredible dream. I dreampt that I was back in China and was an army commander during one of the dynasties. I led an army to defend our castle and township from a massive invasion by the enemies to the north. My dad and I fought along side each other slicing off our enemies' heads and limbs and I even used one of those spiky balls a couples of times. It was intense and very graphic as you can imagine. A lot of my family and friends were in the dream too, many helped to fight the war and some were just completely useless ( I won't say whom). After we won the battle, we went to a lot of funerals and I was bored as hell, I couldn't believe so many people would be attending funerals when our enemies to the north could come back at any time. Just as I was about getting sick of the funerals I suddenly found myself at an airport. The airport security wouldn't let me on a flight and I was quite disappointed but then some friends showed up with a whole bucket of raw oysters sitting in ice. It was awesome, we started eating the oyesters at the airport, it made my day. But what happened to the invading hordes?

Finally, after being back from China for so long (almost 3 weeks) I get to eat some real steak! My quest for real juicy medium rare thick cuts in China have always ended in vain. I've been to many restaurants that claim to serve western meals with certified Angus beef and I've even tried ordering the most expensive steak ($24) I could get at those restaurants but in the end I am always always dissapointed. For some reason the cuts of beef in China just aren't the same as the ones we get in the United States. They seem to be thinner and a lot more tender, but tender in a bad way. When you bite into a Chinese steak you can't experience the joy of the bloody juices squirting out of the muscle fibers coming from a ribeye. I couldn't even find anything thicker than half an inch, now that is a shame. I'm grilling ribeye tonight and we're going to have a little celebration, just family. Drool...

Alan and I have given birth to a beast of a computer. Over the past couple of weeks we've been working tirelessly to create a top-of-the-line gaming machine that will put others to shame. After overclocking and stress-testing this beast, it is finally ready to be brought to my room where I can spend countless hours playing Counter-Strike Source.

• CPU: 2.88 Ghz Athlon 64 evga 133 K8 NF1
• Memory: 2x1GB Mushkin XP PC4000
• Storage: 2x 80GB Hitachi Deskstar RAID 0
• Graphics Card: eVGA GeForce 7800 GT

The past two days I've been in a negotiation training course called Art of Negotiation. Man I gotta admit, Benedict Negotiating Seminars does a very good job teaching you how to negotiate. I feel like I can handle those used car salesmen now. For the first time I walked away from a class and felt that I actually learned something very useful and applicable. All those years in college I never experienced such an intense course that made you feel so good in the end. The training course was two days long, 8 hours a day. We went over everything from reading a person's negotiation style, to ways on how to get leverage on the opponent. In the end we actually had to practice everything we learned in a case study while being filmed. Afterwards we all critiqued our negotiation sessions, it was nerve-wrecking. I think the fact that I was the youngest person in the class and most people had been in the field for at least a couple years just made me more nervous. I also felt a lot of pressure to do well because I was representing our marketing group. In the end it was a great experience, I learned so much and I'm so grateful that my boss had me take the course.