Typical Saturday

I know what you’re all thinking. “Finally! An update on Calvin’s life. Its been so long, and I”ve felt so lost and lacking a good guffaw.” Well, ladies and gents. The wait is over. I am all about fulfilling your wishes of laughter. So whats been up lately you ask. Well buckle up kiddies. Prepare of the most mediocre tale of average-ness and run-of-the-mill you’ll ever experience.

Being the good friend that I am, I helped a friend move from the boonies to his new apartment. To celebrate such an auspicious day, we opted for a nice little marguerita all you can drink for lunch at good ol Cantina Agave. I allegedly have memorable hair as the waitress there remembered me from last time because of it. But I can read between the lines. She was digging my nice, sweet bu…..rrito eating skills. So after 3 solid hours of some bottomless marguerita consumption, we were feeling quite alright. And as we all know, the best decisions are made in a less inhibitive state. Today was no different. We…….

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bought a cat

Well kitten to be exact. 2 months old. We decided to name him 老外 (laowai), which means foreigner. This came about after we wandered the streets, found a pet store because there was this bear (chow chow) in the window. After perusing the store for a good half hour, we decide to get a pet. Dogs are a lot of work while cats are not but this pet store had no good felines. So we jumped in a taxi and asked him to take us to a place where we could buy cats. That was after we struggled for 5 minutes trying to get the tone right for 'mao' (Chinese for cat). Eventually I think we started barking and meowing and then he figured it out. Man I need to work on my Chinese. Anyway, he takes us to this pet market with mice and rats and squirrels and a cornucopia of other mammalia. But most importantly, kittens. I don't even like cats but come on, kittens are cute. After a solid 10 minutes of playing and making cuts, we decided on this little duder. Originally the guy gave him to us in a potato sack but that didn't make us too comfortable so we figured a cage would be a better idea.

One potato sack replacement cage... 50 RMB

One sack of cat food... 20 RMB

One bottle of flea drops...5 RMB

One kitten bought after happy hour... Priceless

There are some things money can't buy, for everything else go to China because you can probably find it pretty cheap there.

The going rate for priceless in China is 30 RMB or $4.47 CDN.

Stay tuned for a lot of stuff that I will back log because I have been way to lazy to post it earlier.

"A cat that catches mice does not meow"

- Chinese Proverb

Top 5

Well its been 2 weeks since last I writ. I waged war against lethargy and apathy for a fortnight and was bested by both. But the protagonist of this story does not have quit in his lexicon. Procrastinaion yes, but quit, no. And so, the conclusion of my hiatus begins now. Here are the Top 5 events of the past 2 weeks, in no particular order of importance.

5. Teppanyaki. At times, I'm just in amazement at how awesome China can be. Theres nothing like an all you can eat Japanese, all you can drink to round off a hard week at work. Having said that, I did encounter a slight speed bump on my road to fun. Whilst enjoying a lovely meal among good company, indulging in a fair amount of sake bombs, I spy with my little eye a foreigner (I know his nationality but to not offend an entire race, I'll keep it as just a foreigner) hovering rather near our table.I mean he was hovering extremely close but I didn’t pay much attention. 10 minutes laters he’s still satnding there and all of sudden theres noticeably more ppl hovering around us. He leans into our table now and asks when we plan on leaving. Say WHA?!? He continues to tell us that we were supposed to leave at 9 (it was 930) quite condescendingly and loudly. My friend calmly proceeds to tell him that he’s wrong and we reserved the table for the entire night. He keeps insisting that its his friends birthday, they booked it for 9, we shouldn’t be there blah blah blah, yakity yak. We held firm that we had the table all night, plus we hadn’t gotten all our food yet .Eventually I pipe in with a “Dude, you’re ruining our meal. Why don’t you go away?” He responds with “Excuse, don’t call me dude you rude American”. HAHAHAHA. First off, I’m obviously not American. Secondly, this clown is a giant ignoramus because he’s actively making a scene without regard for anyone else in the restaurant. From that point I continued to ask for the menu again and order even more food and libations. Take that

4. German party. So my flatmates decided to throw a going away/birthday party at our apartment. Cool. Of course I have zero communication with any of them because they are room dwelling

hermits but I was informed of said party and to bring over friends. Did I mention I have 3 roommates who are all German. Well after I brought over my 15 guests, the party still managed to be 90% German. And at about 1 a.m. my friends went to the bar down the road. I said I'd meet them later because I was having an engaging conversation. At any rate, half hour passed and I realized in a room of 40, not only was I the only Asian there, I was the only one not a descendant from Deutschland. Having never been to Germany I have no idea whats its like if the party was any indication, I assume it would be full of smokers and a lot people who sit on couches and listen to the 80s rock.

3. Coming in at number 4 and also the awkward moment of the week. Last Friday I get home at about 4 a.m. Get to my door just in time to here some yelling in German and my roommate leaving in a huff. I go inside and theres some strange guy who I've never seen before chilling there on my couch.

me: "Hey" I awkwardly say

him: "Hello" he says in drunken elation.

me: "Who exactly are you I ask?"

him: "I'm your roommates boyfriend from Germany. Well ex-boyfriend, we just broke up." Oddly enough with a terd-eating grin on his face.

Cue awkward momentary silence.

me: "So how long have you been in Shanghai?"

him: "I just arrived today"

More awkward silence.

me: "COOL. I'm going to pee."

Hows that for a smooth escape. Ha.

An hour later, I leave my apartment to go to Huangshan for the weekend. Then I get home late Monday late. Go to bed. Wake up early Tuesday. Go to dinner .Get home late. Go to bed. Wake up early Wednesday. Get home at a moderate time. Decide to iron my clothes. Walk into the master bedroom to get the ironing board and what the f do I see. The same guy from Friday is laying there chilling on the bed.

me: "Uhhh...hello...."

him: "Hey"

me: "Do you live here now?"

him: "No."

me: "Sooo.....?"

him: "Oh well i'm just staying here till tomorrow. Sorry about last Friday. i was really drunk and me your roommate broke up. So I've just been here"

me: "Yeah.....sorry bout that. Well I'm just getting the ironing board. I'm going to go iron my clothes now.

Another sweet escape by me.

So to recap. This guy flies to Shanghai on Friday. Gets broken up with the same night. And STILL crashes at her/my apartment. For 5 days. Man have you heard of a hostel. Its like 6 euros a night. Do you smell that. Its the stench of awkwardness.

2. Huangshan. Translated to Yellow Mountain. Pretty sweet. I'm not gonna post any pictures on

here. (okay just one. I don't even know what its really a pic of) Its hard to capture the actual grandeur of the mountains, not to mention the effort it actually took to get to the top. Plus they're all on facebook. We walked nothing but stairs for 12+ hours this past weekend. My legs have never been as sore as they were when I got up for work this morning. I could literally not walk without pain. I left for work at the regular time and showed up 15 minutes late because I was walking so slow. In short my best friend was the escalator today. My enemies included standing, sitting, stairs, and curbs. Inclines, declines. Sudden movements. Not sudden movements. General existence was quite painful.

1. The massage I got 10 minutes ago. 100 minutes. 70RMB (12 Canadian). Theres nothing like an after dinner full body rub down with some of your peeps. Had a nice little language exchange with our masseuses.Nothing useful and nothing that I remember but there was some language learning. Even got some German throw in there. Apparently I'm 可爱 (cute) when I speak English and my eyes are 好看 (good looking) and 性感 (sexy). Yeah tell me something I didn't already know. Oh and they thought I was Indonesian. There was also a mouse running around the room and hiding. He was terrorizing the ladies. In terms of massaging, she really did a number on my back and attempted to make my legs usable again. I think i also got 3rd degree burs from All in all. Awesome.

Thats it. I'm tired. I can't keep these stupid posts short. I hope you're not as bored reading this as I was writing it. Next one will be better. Time to sleep. I need my rest for this weekends debaucheries. Stay tuned.

"五岳归来不看山，黄山归来不看岳

- Chinese Proverb

?!

ü home at 4 a.m.

ü 5 hours ktv

sleep

"Fatigue is the best pillow"

- Benjamin Franklin

Highlight Reel

So I've been slacking quite a bit this week on this here blog. What can I say? I'm a busy man. As such, instead of going on in length about every little thing that happened this week, lets just do a nice quick recap on the highlights.

Tuesday

"Mmm whatcha sayyy...doo doo di di doo di doo" Thats supposed to be Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap. Thats what my one coworker sang for the first hour of the day every couple minutes. Only those 2 lines. Well really only the first line since he didn't know the words to the second so he just did the doo doo di doo di. It started with just him. Then one of the girls started doing it too. Then a third person chimed in. Soon everybody in the place was singing it. That song was more contagious than the Plague. It became a never ending chorus of Hide and Seek. And only those 2 facking lines. Over and over again. Even when people weren't singing it, the lyrics haunted my my brain. Hide and Seek for 9 hours. And I didn't even get the chance to use my tracking or concealing skills. HA. See what I did there. Anyway, typical work day. Another person quit bringing the grand total to 3 in 2 weeks. After work, I went for dinner with some peeps. Just a note. Chances are if a restaurant you want to go to is above a Porsche dealership, its probably not gonna be within your budget. 800RMB for abalone? I mean I'm sure abalone is amazing but thats 266.67 bottles of Tsingdao at the convenience store next to my flat. Which one do you think would bring me more happiness?Yeah. Exactly.

Wednesday

Nothing exciting going on at work. Pretty much just looking forward to the St. Patricks Day festivities. And festive it was. It had the elements of a typical St. Paddy's Day. Green clothes. Green beer. Sweet hats advertising for Irish brews. Drunks. It was awesome. Started off at the Bull Dog. A nice little English bar. They were supposed to have 80 RMB all you can drink which is why we went there in the first place. Turns out since it was St. Patrick's, they weren't doing

that today. LAME. So we put up a very mild stink to which the waitress would give us hats if we bought Guiness. Done deal. We get sweet hats AND beer. Thats awesome. After we drank our beers, we started to get a little hungry. So what did we order? Nachos and mashed potatoes. "Wha!?!? Mash potatoes" you may be thinking. Let me say this. Top 5 mashed potatoes I've ever had. No word of a lie. As a matter of fact, I'm chilling here now in my living room with some friends and we're actually talking about how good those mashed potatoes were. If anyone comes to Shanghai, I'll take you there and you'll see for yourself that I'm not crazy. Man I'm hungry right now. Oh and the nachos were okay. I guess. After that we polished off a bottle of Jameson Irish whiskey. That stuff will put hair on your ass. Even my smooth booty grew some fuzz after that stuff. Then we left the Bull Dog to O' Malley's. An actual Irish pub. The place was PACKED. I'm pretty sure every white person in Shanghai was there. Plus a lot of non-white people. Like these

two ladies hailing from the land of tacos and burritos. I don't know if thats racist or not. Would it balance out if I made fun of China. Rice, chopsticks, squatting. We met some interesting people that night. Like this 50+ year old white French dude who says to me "Would you believe me if I told you I was actually Shanghainese?" Yeah dude, I'm sure your parents flew here from France, popped you out and then turn around went back home....in 1950. Thats what I thought, but I just politely played along with his delusions. He was either drunk or insane or both. I think both and cracked out. Sometime after that ridiculous conversation, it was 3a.m. and I went home.

Thursday

OMG. I felt like a trash bin. Filled with vomit and used diapers. I was not in a good way. Partly due to the 4 hours of sleep and feeling of food poisoning that I had. But I had to go to work though. It was THE most useless morning possible. I stared at my computer screen until lunch. I also had a bit of head pain so I borrowed some drugs from my coworker. He didn't have any aspirin but he had some other stuff. Only after I took it did he inform me that he bought it from a random Indian guy on the street. Even though thats dodgy as f, it did work miracles. I felt pretty gold after an hour. I did manage to get some work done in the afternoon. Very little work but work none the less. The last hour of the day turned into comedy hour or something. All anyone did was sit around and tell jokes. Highlighted by this gem.

So there are two chocolate bunnies. One with his ears bitten off and one with his ass bitten off. The bunny with his ass bitten off turns to the bunny with his ears bitten off and says, "man, my ass really hurts." The other chocolate bunny, turns to him and says, "...What?". Thats one way to finish the day. Went home after that. Passed out by 9. Had a weird dream about assless rabbits. Jokes.

Friday

Afternoon a terrible performance Thursday, I was the bomb diggity Friday. For those who are unaware, my job requires me to book meetings. And book meetings I did. I managed to come within two of the one day record. And that was by 2p.m. So instead of setting the bar and expectations too high, I decided to just do nothing all afternoon. Ha. I'll break that record in a couple weeks. Stay tuned. After days end, I went with a coworker and others to Sichuan Citizen. Finally some people who can eat spicy with me. That place was amazing good. The bill somehow ended being over 1000 RMB. Well worth it if you ask me. From there, we ended up at a housewarming. I thought I was in France or something since EVERYBODY there was actually French. Even the Chinese people there were French. I did end up meeting a Chinese girl from Sweden though. That was a bit strange. I think I called her a liar. We had a nice little conversation none of which I actually remember. Shortly after that I woke up Saturday morning.

Saturday

So very tired today and did not want to leave my flat but I did make an appointment with my friend to go to Qipu lu market. So of course, being a man of my word I dragged myself out of bed and made the trip. I was really not in the right state of mind to be searching for stuff at the market. That and it seems that wherever we looked, it was only womens clothing and I just could not muster up the courage to search for mens clothes. 2 hours later we started to head home. I dragged myself out of bed, traveled 40 plus minutes, walked around for an hour just to buy milk tea and watch my friend buy socks. Wow. So on my walk home from the metro station to my flat, I decided that since I was already out and it was a nice 21 degree day that I should do something. I figured I should probably finally check out the art district behind my apartment building that I pass everyday on my way to work. And man was it cool.

Who knew there was a whole new world of stuff going on behind my apartment. Its like I found a portal to Narnia. These are only a few pics. I couldn't really put every pic on here since that would be a bit obscene. We have giant Einstein head. It was the first thing I saw. Wish I knew about this Sunday. Would have been quite apropos for Einstein's birthday. Then there was the Mercedes made completely out of bricks, steel and concrete. The interior was even detailed , gear shift, radio and all. Sick. And then there was this little girl. I she was standing there pondering the yellow horse but I caught it just she turned around so consider that picture op missed. Ha. After she turned around though, she walked up to me and stopped 3 feet away. then we had a stare down...for 5 minutes. Literally 5 minutes. I checked the time

stamps on my pictures. She literally just stood there and stared at me. Kind of inquisitively mixed with a sort of "you have something on face" look. I looked over at her mom and she was just sitting, I mean squatting there laughing. As were a group of on lookers. Eventually, she lost interest and walked away. She did stop and take a look back at me. But i guess she was reaffirmed that she was indeed bored with me so she continued on waddling away. This park was pretty huge and surrounding the park were a ton of art galleries, bars, cafes and restaurants. Its a pretty cool place to go for a nice stroll, take in some culture, or on a date. :|. I should probably get on the whole finding a girlfriend thing unless i want to be married when I need false teeth and lose bladder control. Imagine me doing my first dance (of which it will be "Crank Dat" by Soulja Boy) with a pee bag attached to my leg. Ha. Now thats comedy. I think it would actually take that long to find a girl that would actually let me use that song as our wedding song. If I find her tomorrow though, you best believe I'm latching on like a leach and as Third Eye Blind most appropriately sang, "I'll never let you go, I'll never let you go".

There you have it ladies and gents. A not-so quick recap on the past week of my life. It was really not that interesting, and I'm sorry if you read this entire thing for I have most surely robbed you of 10 minutes of your life. And you will never get it back. As they are now mine. Boom. Tune in next time to see how this CBC continues to fare in Democratic China.

"Mmm whatcha say,

Mmm that you only meant well?"

- Imogen Heap

A case of the Mondays.

I didn't really want to write today but it was so perverse that I felt the urge. Monday's generally suck but today I really wasn't feeling it. I mean first I woke up later than anticipated. Probably due to the combined 10 hours of sleep i got all weekend. Plus I went to the Sharks game last night of course so I couldn't go to bed early. Whatever the reason, end result was me with minus 20 extra minutes in the morning. So I was left with a solid 20 to do my biz in order for me to make it to work just on time. Yet another day without being early. Tomorrow's another day. Anyway, I planned it so by the time I was dressed and groomed semi-quickly, I could leave and still manage to be a bit early but man was I starving. I had to eat or it was going to be a really uncomfortable morning. As a result, I had to add on some extra time to eat. So I boil the water for my noodles while I dress and clean myself. Dressing done. Put noodles in. Groom myself. Noodles done. Perfect. I sit down, and my good fortune ran out. I take a bit. One single solitary bite. Shift my body ever so slightly and....

KERRRRRSPLATTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

KERRRRRRPLUNKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BLAMMMOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I took a good 3o seconds after this and just stared. Stared blankly in shock and awe at this wonderful display of luck. I know I only had one bite but by this time I wasn't hungry anymore. I was now full on rage. I took another 30 seconds to collect myself before I began the task of cleaning this crap up. The thought did cross my mind to just leave it there but I'm sure i'd come home and find it feeding a cockroach family of 4 plus extended relatives so i decided to clean it up. Mopped and all. Well kinda. I think i did one sweep over the spot. But not before I captured the moment in a picture. After that mess was cleaned up I had to leave for work. Now I was just going to make it to work right on time and my rage was gone so now I was hungry again. The metro ran smoothly today, although it smelt especially foul today. A mixture of urine, smoke and grease. Suffered through 25 minutes of that sweet sweet stench. Got off at my stop and did my ever famous speed walk-gallop.

Got to work at the stroke of 9. Then began the most useless day in the history of work days. I was so freaking tired that I don't think I did anything productive till I ordered food for lunch. I had the energy level of an overworked Chinese child labourer...after making his 10 thousandth soccer ball...that day...after a morning of harvesting...all the rice in China...on Ambien. I was moving as fast a stampeding bale of turtles (thats what a group of turtles is called btw) through molasses. I think the general ambiance of the work place was pretty similar though. We WERE Zombieland. There was a point when I literally sat there and shuffled papers back and forth to make it seem like I was doing something. Not even in manner that resembled work. Envision me sitting there with both my hands on two separate piles of papers...and shaking them back and forth just to make the sound of rustling paper. Yeah, how sad is that. I also checked my e-mail 30+ times today. Half of which was within the last hour when I alternated between refreshing my inbox and checking the clock. Eventually 6 rolled around and I finally got-the-f-out.com. Tomorrow's another day. Lets hope I don't come down with a case of the Tuesdays.

"Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7th of your life"

- Unknown

Happy Birthday Einstein. Have a slice of π.

Its an important day today. It was the birth of one Albert Einstein and also the happiest day of the year, Pi Day. As such, its definitely a cause for celebration. So I celebrated by going to watch some sports. I just got back from the Shanghai Sharks game. Gotta say, it was pretty awesome. For those of you that are unaware, the Shanghai Sharks are the ‘professional’ basketball team in the CBA (Chinese Basketball Association). Note that ‘professional’ was put in parentheses. Reason being that quality and level of play were….well lets just say that if that was professional basketball then I played pro ball in high school. Obviously the CBA is no NBA but it was still quite entertaining. It had all the elements of a standard game; cheerleaders, dodgy looking hot dogs, artificial noise makers, and of course, a delinquent fan who gets escorted out by police. All in all, a fantastic experience. Next year, consider me a Shanghai Sharks season ticket holder.

Who knew St. Patty's Day was a week long event in Shanghai. There was even a parade yesterday. And Friday there was a live music concert going on. I guess there must be a huge Irish contingent here or something. And apparently there was a carnival going on last night in FuxingPark. Figured that would be worth a check so I gathered the troops last evening and went to see whats what. By the time we got to there though, it was non-existent. So rather than do nothing, we embraced our right to wander the streets with open beer and drink at our leisure without fear of police persecution. The only thing better than a good stroll around town with a nice beer in hand is a good stroll around town with 2 beers in hand. After getting a few couple brews under our belts, we decided to move on over to Windows Too for some cheap libations and enjoy some light hearted banter. That place is alright. Tons of foreigners roaming around if you like that type of thing. Chandeliers made from empty alcohol bottles. Sports playing on multiple TVs. The excessive drinkers passed out outside on the ground. Ultimately, cheap drinks so it was pretty alright.

Zeal. From there we moved on to Zeal. My coworker was promoting the place since his roommate was DJ'ing last night so I figure it would be worth the visit. Rather than taxi the 1.3 km away, we decided to just walk there. And of course, what walk would be complete without a refreshing beer. 15 minutes later, we make it to Zeal. Hip hop mixes fill the place. Mostly Asians compared to the previous venue. In fact the only non Asians there were either with me or were my coworkers. It was a typical club vibe. Music going, people dancing, libations flowing. The usual. That was until I went to the bathroom. This place had bathroom attendants hanging which I hadn't seen a ton of inShanghai. Bathroom attendants at bars are possibly the most useless thing ever. I mean really, I can't turn on my own tap or grab my own paper towels? Anyway, that doesn't matter. So I head inside, choose my urinal and start doing my biz. A few seconds pass by and I hear someone come up behind me. Whatever, no big deal, it’s a bathroom, it’s a busy place. Continue doing my thing. Then all of a sudden, I start getting a massage. What the h? I turn my head a bit and out of the corner of my eye, I see who's giving me this sensual rub down. After a brief glimpse, I thought it was one of my friends. No biggie, I figured it was one of those instances when a friend walks up behind you, gives you couple kneads to the shoulders, which lasts maybe 1 second, and then says 'Wassup'. So I turned my head back around and concentrated on peeing. The 'Wassup' never came. All of a sudden, the massage turned from being just a quick couple shoulder rubs to a freaking massage therapy clinic. I'm getting my neck massaged, upper back, shoulders, getting my spine worked, lower back, the works. WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON!? So I turn my head around completely this time to get a real look and it was the bathroom attendant. I was getting a therapeutic massage while urinating! Wtf?!. And I had barely done up my zipper when he reaches around me and does the crack the spine maneuver. After he put me back down, he starts working the shoulders again. So I'm done peeing but this guy is still going to town on my back so I just kinda stand there in front of the urinal wondering what the protocol was here. Do I stay? Do I go? I think I stand there for a good 30 seconds after I finish draining my bladder before I decide that this guy would probably go all night if I kept standing there so I slowly pull away. He gets the hint and runs ahead of me to get the door for me. I go to wash my hands and the other attendant turns the water on for me while the bathroom guys starts going at the massage thing again. Now at this point I couldn't decide if it was cool or if I was getting violated. I was on the cusp of yelling STRANGER DANGER. Anyway, after he tried to crack my back AGAIN, I gave the two attendants a tip and got the f out of there. From then on, every time I had to pee, I pretty much ran in, peed as fast as humanly possible and ran out before they got the chance to give me another succulent rubdown.

In conclusion. Pretty standard weekend of debauchery and negligible sleep. Its gonna make for a hard week of work. So begins week 2 in my pursuit of happyness. Happy Pi Day.

"3.141592653589793"

- Calvin Duong

Popped the Cherry

Whooooop. After a long and tumultuous week of hitting up potential clients to which the only response I got I was ACCESS DENIED. That was until the bell rang 5 on Friday. I was fighting a losing battle with this guy. He was a stubborn one. Wouldn't budge in spite of anything that I could say, I was spouting gold. But then through adversity and despair, I dug down deep, DEEP into the trenches and pulled it back from the depths of failure and raised it onto the wings of success and BOOM goes the dynamite. *loud applause and cheers*. Just in time for beer o'clock (5:30 Fridays). Half an hour until the day was done and the conclusion of my first and rather weak week but I managed to sneak that one in there. Cherry popped. To which I celebrated by eating copious amounts of Indian and drinking lost of beer. (that would have been done anyway but at least now i was doing it in celebration instead of depression and failure). Pursuit of happyness on track.

And just like that, week one at the new job was complete. What a whirlwind of activity. I still haven't managed to make it to work more than 5 minutes early yet. Its seemingly an almost insurmountable task at this point in time. While busy and hectic, moments of laughter and joviality were interspersed amongst the work. I also learned quite a bit this week. Lets recap. By the numbers, 6 new people started Monday, 2 of which quit (1 after day 1, the other after day 3), 1 old employee quit and 1 got canned. Nothing like turnover to make you feel motivated. Drank. 20 plus cups of tea plus 1 delicious Corona. What did I learn? The economy that exists for the game World of Warcraft is actually larger than that of Bulgaria. No not the virtual economy that works in virtual buy/sell with virtual gold. I mean a real life tangible dollars economy. The sale of WoW gold and items with real money is a multi billion dollar a year economy. The value of WoW gold also trades at a higher rate than many of the worlds currencies (1USD = 7.5 WoW gold). HA. What a gong show. What made me laugh? See previous story. All in all, twas a good week.

Wow (the exclamation of wonder, surprise, pleasure, not the massively multiplayer online role playing game) I have no energy to come up with organized sentences to form a story. KTV till 4 a.m. will do that to you I suppose. Twice in a week. Man. At any rate. its time for some good ol St. Patty's day celebrations in good ol Shanghai. Apparently there was a parade that I missed. Who knew the Chinese even knew about St. Patricks Day. But it doesn't matter. Any excuse to party and run rampant is alright with me. Time to paint the town........green.

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now"

- Chinese Proverb