?!

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

day 2

Midnight 19. Just got home from karaoke. I am tired. Feel compelled to write I so can look back years later and realize all the dumb stuff I've done. Pre-work routine went off without a hitch. A much better performance than yesterday's. Woke up later today. Finally got out of bed at 7:40 I think. I did skip breakfast as I haven't done groceries in a fortnight and have no food left. Knowing this the night before, I planned accordingly and slept an extra 20 minutes. The trade off between breakfast and sleep still remains one of my great conundrums. Anyway. 7:40 Dressed myself. Oral hygiene complete. Bag packed and ready to go. Quick e-mail check. Nothing new because nobody loves me and out the door at the stroke of 8:04. no problems encountered till the metro transfer. Encounter second cultural experience of an overpopulated Chinese city using public transit during rush hour. Ended up missing the first train again to which I now realize that it is pretty much near impossible to catch the first train out. Perhaps I will have to leave earlier to make it to work by 8:45. We'll see how today pans out first. Jump on the train now. Riding a long. Check time. 8:35 and I'm only 3 stops away. I guess I can still catch the second train and be early. Victory. the girl that announces the metro stop comes on, " blah blah blah something in mandarin blah blah We are now arriving at Shaanxi Nan Lu. Please get ready to alight from the left side." Sweet, just one more stop. Alls well and I've perked up as I'm sure that now I can be early for work. Great song comes on my Ipod. I begin to jam like a demon. Metro girl comes on again " blah blah blah something in mandarin blah blah We are now arriving at People's Square. Please get ready to alight from the left side." What the what? Somehow I overshot my stop and was at the next one. How does that even happen. I was minutes away from getting to my stop and now i'm at the wrong one. Its like I got slipped the date rape drug or something. At any rate, ended up having to jump on the train going the other way and wound up getting to work only a couple minutes early once again. sigh. Tomorrow is another day.

Another solid day at work. Somehow 9 hours of practicing a sales pitch flew by. Literally 9 hours of reading and spouting out the same thing over and over. Putting the pitch to use tomorrow for te very first time. VERY EXCITE. blah blah I'm tired. Why did I start a blog? I'm too lazy to write about anything interesting and come up with entertaining anecdotes. Wrapping this up. Had Lieke's going away dinner at Grandma's Kitchen which is the same place I went for the last 3 going away dinners. Hurray for diversification. Moved from dinner to KTV. Broke house key trying open a bottle of wine with it. Needed roommate to leave the house door ajar for me. Didn't have roommates number and couldn't remember her name. Had to text landlord for both. Felt the fool when I realized new roommate had the same name as old roommate. Bury my face in hands. Gave a stirring rendition of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up". Caught a taxi. Home. And now.....

"The sun...has gone...to bed and so must I...

So long...farewell...auf weidersehn goodbye..."

- Gretl von Trapp

First Day of Work

First day down in the pursuit of happiness. It went off without a hitch for the most part. There was a 10 minute span this morning that I thought for sure I was going to be late but as luck would have it, I made it with a few minutes to spare. Not a complete fail if the goal was to show up on time. Too bad showing up on time if for slackers and clowns dwelling in mediocrity. So with that thought in mind the night before, I set out to organize my plan of attack. 8:50 start time. Time travel back 60 minutes for transportation. Just to be on the safe side. Another 15 to for the 4 S’. Sh*t, Shower, Shave, and SUIT UP. Lucky for me I had my bowel cleansing the night before, I’m a night showerer (not a word), not morning, and I’ve been blessed/cursed with the inability to grow general body hair let alone facial hair, so morning shaving would be useless like a housewife’s college degree. Zing. Just jokes housewives, you know I love you…if that’s alright with your husbands. Back on topic, so lets see here. 4 s’ – 3 s’ leaves me with 1s. Check your math

4s – 3s = 1s

4s – 3s +3s = 1s + 3s

4s = 4s ü

I can attribute that to 13 years of mathematical academia, especially that special ‘advanced’ grade 2 math class that I was forced into. So, flawless arithmetic dictated that I had 15 minutes to BUSINESS SUIT UP. Go back another 15 to conjure breakfast and consume said breakfast and we have a time of 7:20. Foolish me, last night I felt pretty ambitious and thought a light run in the morning might do the body good. So 7 a.m. it is. Alarm set and ready to go….

7:00 a.m. Ipod alarm goes off. “Wow ..its 7 already,” I mull in a morning stupor. “Probably shouldn’t have watched that last episode of Entourage till 1:30. Whoops! Let’s just lay here for a bit.” Hit SNOOZE.

7:06 a.m. Alarm 2 of 4 goes off. Cell phone this time. Previous night paranoia of electronic malfunctions causing me to over sleep resulted in me setting 4 alarms. Continue laying there. I am mildly pleased with myself as this is way better than running. SNOOZE.

7:09 a.m. Ipod alarm again. Shut it off this time. Continue to mimic a corpse.

7:11 a.m. Phone alarm again. Phone time and Ipod time are not in sync resulting in alarms going off at strange times.

7:14 a.m . Another alarm. Erratic alarms are annoying. Shut off all alarms and past snooze’. GET MY ASS UP.

7:14 and 48 seconds a.m. Move to couch in living room. Sit down. Further evidence that I’m not a morning person.

7:26 a.m. Cook up some breakfast. Waiting for noodles to cook, I start skyping.

7:28 a.m. Eat quickly while typing poorly.

7:35 a.m. Just on schedule. Brush teeth. Make hair. Grab neatly pressed and layed out clothes from night before. Discover that one dress shoe is missing. Cursing flows through my mind while I search.

7:50 a.m. Find shoe, now behind schedule.

7:55 a.m. Leave apartment. Walk 100 ish meters. Don’t recall if stove was turned off. Decide a gas stove explosion would suck and that I would like to have an apartment to return to at the end of the day. Stop to ponder if I turned off stove.

7: 57 a.m. Back at apartment checking stove. Quel surprise. Its off. Back out. Walk 200 meters this time. “Mother f. Did I close my apartment door?” I wonder as I through my head back in annoyance and let out an aggravated groan.

8:05 a.m. Second surprise of the day. Door is closed..

8:06 a.m. Continue hating mornings as I engage in half speedwalk half gallop.

8:12 a.m. Make it to the metro. Control is out of my hands now. Lets hope the metro is running smoothly

8:22 a.m. Make it to transfer stop Get out and continue speedwalk-gallop. Make it to next train Have a laugh as train is literally busting at the seams and a gentleman is trying to squish into train using a technique reminiscent of a dry hump. He dry humps many people including another man who exhibits an unabashed stare. I stop laughing as I realize I have to wait for next train as I am unwilling to dry hump my way into a train car already filled to overcapacity. Encounter first cultural experience of an overpopulated Chinese city using public transit during rush hour.

8:27 a.m. Next train arrives. Also packed. Do my best rendition of human tetris as I contort my body in between the other human bodies.

8:40 a.m. Arrive at desired stop.10 minutes to do a 7 minute walk. 3 minutes early is lame. Employ speedwalk-gallop once more.

8:45 a.m. Hazaa. 5 minutes early. Celebrate moderate success. Tomorrow will be better.

First day at work was your typical recipe for any first day. 2 parts Orientation mixed in with 7 parts technical difficulties. A dash of complementary lunch. A pinch of confusion. Stir in 7 cups of green tea. Top that all off with a layer of training. Let sit for hours and there you have it, a moist, fluffy first day. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings…..

“The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest”

- Albert Einstein