N.A.G.

2146 5-31-10

Mostly relaxed today, did the usual Monday routine with laundry and all that, but spent a great deal of time exercising my brain with a puzzle game.  But there are a few noteworthy activities/events that happened today.  Before I get into that though I just wanted to say that my thumb is a little sensitive but seems to be fine just a nice white mark has formed, not sure whether it'll actually develop into a blister or not… stupid steam.  Did you know steam is one of the most dangerous things in a kitchen?

First and foremost I got the lunch lady to put garlic on my lunch, which basically made my day.

Then I went out in search of a hotel for my father and holy crap the prices high.  The lowest I found was 318RMB ($46) a night with the highest being 700RMB ($102).  There's one more I have to check out which is supposedly around 200RMB but man I'm seriously considering just buying a sleeping bag and roughing it on the floor.  Good news, receptionist speak English, though one needs serious help writing the number 5 (I thought it was a 1).

Talked with Dad and Dixie today, they seem to be doing well.  They even took David and Minnette to Sultan's Café (one of my favorite places in Dallas) which made me chuckle.

The next thing has been bumming me out actually.  Niko gave the presentation to the client today but he edited it this weekend.  And by edited I mean he basically completely transformed it.  The fact that he changed it isn't the problem, but the fact that it is so completely different leads me to think that we had some serious miscommunications as to what he was wanting.  Doing something wrong or making mistakes is something I've dealt with before and it's simply part of being an intern.  This is something different though, this is not being able to understand what the client is wanting and that deeply troubles me.  Figuring out what the client wants is one of the most important skills of consulting and I need to redouble my efforts in developing this.  We'll be discussing this tomorrow so hopefully we can have a "come to jesus" meeting.  I don't know why but I feel like I'm having a hard time being successful here.

Last but not least I've officially started my post-graduation job search which I'm calling the "Need A Gig" campaign or NAG for short.  First step of NAG is to begin making a list of possible employers.  Basically I'm looking for anything and everything to do with Business Strategy and/or Investments which is a freaking giant umbrella.  The basic industries I'm looking at are Consulting, Interactive Electronic Entertainment (Video Games), Financial Investments, and Electronics.  But I'm certainly open to any and all suggestions.  At this point I'm looking at some of the better known companies out there, mainly due to the fact that my college is relatively unknown I need a big name employer to put me on the map, and of course there are many other reasons as well including training and such.

Here's the current list that I've been playing with, certainly not all of them, I have a much larger list at home.  Any suggestions feel free to let me know.

Boston Consulting Group

Bain and Co

McKinsey

Deloitte

Blizzard Entertainment THQ

Forrester

Frost & Sullivan

Citigroup

Booz Allen Hamilton

Robot Entertainment

Robert W. Baird & Co.

Logitech

Intel

Dreamworks

 

IBE Class 5 and a Walk around the French Concession

2321 5-30-10

You ever have those split second decisions you make that you really wish you could do over again?  Well I had one of those about an hour ago.  Small little thing decision, just bought a new water bottle and was using it for the first time so one of the things I like to do is turn it upside down to see if it leaks, usually this is never really a problem because even if it does leak it usually only a little bit but this time POP!  The highly pressurized boiling water causes the lid to slightly uncover letting out a nice gush of steam and water, all of which leads me to having a nice 3^rd degree burn just right of the center of my right thumb.  Mega sad face ladies and gentlemen, I like my thumbs and I get rather cross when they get injured.

But besides that they day was pretty good.  For one thing I finished up my IBE class, well all except for the final paper but that shouldn't be TOO bad, though I would like it to be good, our professor could possibly be a rather good contact.  He'll actually be speaking in Little Rock, AR around mid-September and I invited him to dinner so it would be nice if he didn't think of me as the kid with the shitty essay.  Quick plug for him, his name is Allen Kupetz and he wrote the book The Future of Less.  He gave us a nice little video in class called The Social Media Revolution.  Hopefully that link is correct it's a little hard to make sure since youtube is blocked.  Watch it, it's good.

That reminds me I need to start making a list of every company I would like to have hire me, McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Robot Entertainment, Blizzard, etc.  I really just want to get into too corporate strategy and while I would prefer consulting or interactive entertainment industry, I'm certainly open to every opportunity.  Cause come September I'm going to start (more like re-start) pouring massive amounts of energy into getting interviews.  Feel free to let me know if you have any ideas or contacts, which would be super.

Oh anyways back on China I also went exploring today and wound up in this area with a super high amount of white people, and by white people I mean white males with Asian wives or girlfriends.  Ended up stopping one chap and asking him what that was all about and he explained that I was actually in the French Concession.  Kind of surprised me because I never thought that part of town was so close to where I lived, I mean I've been here before but always by taxi so I never really knew where it was in relation to the rest of the city.  Anyways I walked for about 2 or 3 hours around the area and it's quite pretty.  Really sad I didn't have my camera with me because I stumbled across the wonderful sculpture garden with some really interesting pieces in it.  I guess that'll teach me.

Let's see what else went on today… wrapping up the HR essay I guess is the only other thing.  My part is mainly done just doing a bit of editing for Clement who's putting the finishing touches on it.

Nighty night.

IBE Presentations (Class 4)

2112 5-29-10

Well today was the day of class presentations, a full day of pppprrrrreeeessssseeeennnntttaaattttiiioooonnnsss.

I mean don't get me wrong one or two of them were interesting, but come on 6 hours of 30-45 min presentations?  And of course my group was last (I dislike being the last to present) so by the time we got up there I was already tired before I began.  Luckily the whole thing went fairly well, we had some minor problems but overall it didn't blow up and after this week that's a miracle in and of its self.

I will say for my part I made some mistakes which mainly manifested itself during the Q&A session.  I had little patience left after at this point (we learned about this in psychology about how your restraint/patience is like special thing in your brain that can actually get literally tired, wish I could remember the name) and so I simply didn't maintain full control of myself like I should have. 

First off I sat on the edge of the table which my teacher later explained was a sign of superiority in a Chinese setting.  As if I didn't have enough problems with that the questions were addressed to me which transformed into a conversation with me instead of me redirecting it back to the team.  I also got a bit defensive when one of the questioners told me I said something I didn't.  Things I simply need to work on.  I did think I handle some of the questions quite well, one of the students actually worked within the book selling realm and so he was grilling me pretty hard.

Overall I was rather pleased though by the Q&A sessions with each group, usually students hardly ever talk but for some reason today people were really engaging in the discussion.

Anywho that essentially consumed the entire day.  Have a good one.

Wrapped up the Company Intro and PPP for IBE Presentation

2031 5-28-10

I forgot my headphones today, never good start to the day.  Basically that means I got to listen to people talking, cell phones ringing, and mechanical beeping for the entire day.  Not really helpful when trying to working, but hey I guess overall it wasn't too bad.

Company Intro got "done" today.  More like I got it 95% of the way there and Niko wants to mull it over this weekend.  I am really glad I took the view Photoshop classes that I did, it's really helped when it comes to needing to create a quick graphic.  Nice to know that some classes I took in high school paid off.

I also spent a great deal of time coordinating with my presentation team, trying to get everyone to submit their parts in and all of that.  It would have been nice if people actually did it on time and if they turned in more than just strait copy and paste, but o well it came together.  Our PowerPoint  creator scared the crap out of me, right before I left work he e-mailed us the "finished" product and it was an absolute mess, on top of that what he did have for my strategic market entry was completely wrong.  So the whole way home I was fuming about this and wondering how best to handle the situation.  Should I just take it all on myself and completely redo it?  That sounded like a terrible suggestion merely for time restraint if nothing else, and it's not just be that will be presenting but four other additional people.  Or should I put pressure on him to correct it?  That seems kind of risky because he didn't do it right the first time, and I wanted to minimize group drama.  And remember we present this tomorrow morning.

Anyways so I sweated over this until I got my computer back online and found out he had sent us the wrong file that was a super early rough draft.  The finished product is actually quite good so my hopes for the presentation have been raised considerably.  Wish us luck.

It should be noted that you shouldn't put nutella in the fridge.  It hardens to the point of not being usable.  Oh well want heats back up it taste just fine again.  ^_^

I really like this article.  Though make sure you actually read the article, the title I think is a little bit misleading.  It's an important shift in US foreign policy and I think it's definitely heading in the right direction.

Nighty night.

Market Entry for Borders in India and IBE 3

2203 5-27-10

Well today I focused on continuing my work on the Blue Bamboo presentation.  I also worked on the Market Entry slides for my team's presentation on Borders entering into the Indian market. 

Basically the plan consists of Borders entering the market through a web based approach specifically geared toward English Indian reading groups (which may mostly be expats but it's a start), college students, and amateur writers.  We then being opening up franchise stores and begin to use our partnership with one of our publishers to start self publishing Indian books by amateur Indian writers that we can sell exclusively in our stores.  The reason for this approach is because I want Borders to ingrain itself into the Indian culture of reading, I do not want it to be this big American corporation charging in, but a company that becomes part of the way India expresses itself and distributes content to its people.

Let's see… class was fairly uneventful, our teacher is having just as hard of time getting class participation as all of our former teachers.  For some odd reason I find this as a constant source of amusement and am laughing quite a lot during class.  He also likes to use videos which I find a nice way to break up the monotony of most classes but I'm afraid sometimes the speakers speak a little too fast for this non-native audience.  I also wish we could have an American teacher that gives us examples of Chinese companies and Chinese situations.

I'm also currently waging on online… "debate," on Newsvine.  Feel free to judge for yourself. The news is now a little stale but the comments section is still being carried by me and one other.  It's a lot to read but if you wish my screen name is Skal.  The comment #38 section on page 2 is the one I'm currently in, though I've made other comments as well.  Agree, disagree feel free to let me know I'll carry the debate on here as well though the internet connection makes it a little harder for me to respond.

Anyways, good night.

Sarcasm

2004 5-26-10

Wow, what do you say about a day like today?  So much wonder and splendor!

First thing, get this, I rolled out of bed.  Well not really rolled, more like I kind of just sat up and swung my feet on to the ground but still.  I mean think of it, all that stuff happening, and then BAM I'm standing up, all squinty eyed, wondering why the cursed sun is so bright.

Then, oh man then, I turned on my computer!!  Well "turn on" might be a bit of a stretch, kind of jiggled the mouse a little bit to make it come out of hibernation mode.  But we're getting caught up into the details.  Suddenly I was on my computer doing things, and like lookin at stuff.  Well that happened for awhile, kind of got up moved around some, nibbled on some food and such.  Next thing you know and WOW I'm sitting right here just typing away.  Simply fascinating.

Are you keeping these?  You really should.  Print them out, laminate them, seal them into an air tight container.  These writings will be the stuff of legends!!!

P.S.  Booked my father and I's plane tickets, wohoo.

Another Busy Day, IBE Class 2

2219 5-25-10

Ever get that weird aching pain in your side?  For some reason that's what I got right now and it's really uncomfortable.

Today at work I was pretty busy the whole day working with this presentation and also had a great high level business strategy meeting with Niko, which I really enjoyed.  I take that as a pretty good sign that I'm heading in the right direction career wise.  Oh so I also talked with this woman at work called Le Le.  She's the one that does that underlining thing with the power point presentations that drives me crazy.  Well that aside this was the first time I had actually spoken with her.  Man she opened her mouth and it was cuteness just slapped me right across the face.  She's like an adorable bunny in a small Asian form.  Some people have forthright "auras" and she has it.

Don't read too much into that, merely making a note of it.

Then after work I went to class.  Stopped along the way and picked up three beef sticks and two green bean sticks, guess how much I paid… a $1.  That's right, a $1.  Sanitation aside that is awesome!

So I was talking about to my professor before class about networking and he just happened to make this comment.  "Ya one of the hardest things to get my younger students to do is to carry their business cards around."  BAM!!! In his hands magically appeared one of my business cards.  Ahh victory is sweet. 

During class he taught us about SWOT analysis of a company which stands for Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats.  We also looked at market entry such as mergers, turn-key, franchise, e-Commerce, etc.  He also showed us one of my favorite TED videos by Glidewell called Spaghetti Sauce.  He also showed us this video which I think was super cool I think it really sums up the importance of the internet fairly well:

The Machine is Using Us

Clement also picked me up some Nutella when he was at the store today.  This stuff is super addictive.  I'm going to need to find me a store that sells this back state side.

Night.

Productive at Last

2135 5-24-10

Whew today was a busy one.  Did all of my laundry, swept the floors, wrote the Mayo part of my essay, saved two virtual islands on Tropico 3, watched the finale of Doctor Who Season 3, and held a meeting for my International Business Relations team thingy, alright I forgot the name the class, sue me.  Anyways only four people in total showed up for it, that's only half the group, off to a GREAT start.  Anyways we decided that Borders should move into the Philippines next, or if not the Philippines then India.  Just our two cents but Borders if you read then and decide to do it feel free to send me a Consultant's check.

So I was walking with Clement to lunch today and suddenly it occurred to me, next week is June.  I only got her last week and suddenly it's already June.  Two more months left.  I feel like as a kid we try so hard to make time go by faster and faster.  With good reason mind you, being a kid really sucks, but now I feel like I've built up so much momentum that I can't stop it.  This is the time I strived so hard to get to, your job is done Father Time, slow this puppy down.

So I was just surfing the internet and found this article from the AP, Britain bans doctor who linked autism to vaccine.  Listen Britain, we're buddies, we've had some laughs, had our fights, but in the end we're mates.  So if you wouldn't mind please take back this ass, Texas really does have enough problems understanding what is Science and what is Not-Science (ie Creationism) we don't need to start having to explain to people what Bad-Science is as well.  It's too much; we're not ready to tackle that yet.  So please, please just get him a job cleaning sewers or something.  Just get him out of here.

Mm on yeah, in other world news South Korea is not happy about North Korea sinking its battleship.  Believe me S.K. I've been there, sometime it's best to just slap that stupid game off the table and punch your opponent in the throat.  What complete trade sanctions against N.K., talks with China to also cut off trade arrangements, naval blockade preventing and starting a propaganda blitz across the DMZ.  Alright, you can try that first.  But trust me a good punch to throat and they'll never sink a battleship again.

…just killed my first mosquito, I had hoped that they wouldn't follow me here, seems like I was wrong.  What that?  Oh there's a giant lake/river right outside my building with large amount of standing water??  Ohhh… super.

I bid you adieu.

P.S.  Congrats father on your giant Catfish catch, that's quite a monster.

Start of International Business Environment

1954 5-23-10

So today was the start of International Business Environment, which is actually more interesting than it sounds.  Our teacher is Allen Kupetz, an MBA professor from Rollins College, and consultant.  What he does is help international companies decide what markets they should enter into next.  That also happens to be what the course is about.  Sound familiar?  That's exactly what I've been helping Blue Bamboo do. 

It should be noted that there is still relatively low participation amongst the class, it drives me insane.  My Public Finance class next year is supposedly highly participation based, but even still my experience thus far with this at Hendrix is not exactly a gleaming light at the end of the tunnel either.  There's got to be a way for a student to stimulate discussion, but I have yet to figure it out.

But as much as I like this course there is a done side.  He's paired us up into teams of 8-10 for a final project which we have to present at the end.  Now I'm not a huge fan of large academic groups in the first place because someone inevitably doesn't hold up their end, but having a large group of MBA students who all work, and whom English is not their first language; now that's just cruel.  Anyways we're going to meet via MSN Messenger and see if we can work it out.  Hopefully this won't turn into a disaster because I have plenty of other things on my plate besides this.

Oh but the teacher did show us a TED video (www.TED.com), which is one of the best websites on the internet in my humble opinion.  The speaker was a statition and showed off some really novel ways of presenting data.  You can check out his website and download the software at http://www.gapminder.org/  Really pretty cool stuff, nothing ground breaking but a much better way of presenting data.

Anywho that's about it.  Night.

The City Glows

1909 5-22-10

Lightly raining for most of Day.  Grounds teem in reflections.  Soaked in by deep roots.

Humanity creates flat lands and then builds Mountains.  Life is breathed into them when darkness falls. They are Twilight Mountains.

Click clack the key board rings.  A sax resonates from a glowing box.  Data hums throughout the world.

Time marched across the day.  Video games were played, Doctor Who went through Space.  Taylorism essays were created.

Glenn Beck attempted to be watched.  17min of Life wasted.  Conservative ideas corrupted, abused, and misused.

Food consumed but sparse in volume.  Merely fried noodles, Chinese crepe, Snickers bar.  Not much need for Energy, the Stomach is silent.

Coals alight.  Now embers dead.  Smoke their only child.

Trang graduates.  Booz buys a Present.  Friends move on.

As the Night descends the city is cast in sparse fog.  The lights flicker to existence.  Shanghai glows.

The Writer sits and watches.

Presentation Review and Dinner with Leo and Co

2240 5-21-10

First off let me just say that I've uploaded some photos of my Trip to Southern China, though only some of the highlights, here: http://s64.photobucket.com/albums/h175/skal42/China/Trip%20to%20Southern%20China/

I was replaced at work today.  My spot had been taken by a prettier female version of… well not quite me, but human none the less, named Betty.  Anyways it actually worked in my favor because now I get to sit in a quieter part of the office with a view of the river.  I think I'm going to consider this a promotion.

At work it was mainly about this Presentation I've been working on.  We looked at it, reviewed it, set new goals ect.  Basically I'm heading in the right direction but they want some other things added to it.  Oh and as I was walking out Niko suddenly popped his head up and asked if I could have it finished by the 31^st because they have a client coming in and they want to use it on them… super.

For dinner I met up with Leo and a colleague of his (yes I forgot her name, sue me, I remember her surname was Wang though) and we went to a restaurant at Raffles City.  We were then joined by his older sister (never found out her name I swear).  They were a lot of fun to hang out with and we talked a lot about American culture, apparently Elvis is known as the Cat King.  They also explained that the literal translation for my name.

王凯文 = Wang Kaiwen = King Victory Culture (though the last one can mean other various things as well, culture is the most common reference)

I like it well enough, though I wish my last name "Wang" was not so common.  Oh well.

 

Starting Our HR Essay

2008 5-20-10

Man, right as I'm about to write this post my black bracelet I bought in Guilin just broke.   Really bums me out.

So today was mainly spent watching Doctor Who, working on the Company Introduction, and beginning to work on Clement and I's HR essay.  Our essay will take a more detailed look at the presentation we gave in class over the start of Human Resource Management, which was essentially Taylorism and later on the works of Mayo.  After my 85 in Marketing (I was not happy about that) I really want us to knock this essay out of the park.  Our presentation was really strong so hopefully we won't botch it when we turn in this essay.

Oh I also decided to drop the course Philosophy for the Mind and instead add a graduate level Econ course called Managerial Economics.  Honestly both courses are bad decisions because more than likely I won't make an A in either course, the philosophy course was a senior level course and I've only taken one philosophy course and the graduate level econ course is math heavy.  It would probably be better for me to take an easy course instead, one that'll allow me to focus on my other courses and get an easy A.  But honestly what's the point of going to college if you're just going to play it safe.  Ya I want a good job when I get out, but I would rather have a better education.  I may change my tune when graduation roles around and I'm jobless but I'm going to stick to my guns for as long as I can.

I ate a lot of bananas today, like three and a bag of dehydrated banana chips as well.

…

That's it.  Good night.

 

Working on Presentation and Yiyi Actually Understands Me

2254 5-19-10

For the most part I worked on the Company Introduction Presentation for the whole day.  So far it's going pretty well, though it's kind of hard for a one man shop to come up with this great professional presentation, when comparing it to other larger company presentations.  Doing the best I can though. 

I also didn't have anything for breakfast or lunch except for some bread, peanut butter, and bananas.  It was delicious.

I met Yiyi for dinner, after fighting through one hell of a backed subway system.  This Expo has really brought some extra traffic to the area, and I had to meet Yiyi at the peak of traffic.  Needless to say I was packed in like sardines for most of my trip.

Spent some time explaining to Yiyi why I decided to try and date Han Lin.  She actually understood why Jing might have been angry but thought her response to my apology was rude and that her anger was misdirected, she was not happy that Han Lin lied.  Yiyi also understood why I would not want to deal with this crap when I only have a few months to be here.

She corrected a misconception I had about Chinese universities.  I had assumed that they super specialize within their majors but as it turns out they actual run a pretty wide gambit of classes outside of their major, much like we would in high school.  Though she did say that the role of clubs within the universities were really lacking, they exist but not nearly in the same form as they do in the US.  According to her they do much less and students there for don't really care about them very much. 

It makes me wonder if I knew Chinese if I could set up a club here.  Either it would immediately die because of the established status quo of club's role within the University, or it could possibly flourish with great success due to lack of competition.  In the US the HCC (Hendrix Culinary Club, an organization I founded) has to compete with about 20-30 other clubs for the students attention and time.  With the right message and direction a club could completely dominate a campus.

Anyways there's some shit going on in the world right now that I want to reference for personal historical reference:

1. Thailand is in a semi-state of rebellion between the Thai Government and the Red Shirt protestors.  Currently Bangkok is burning and any company that can pull out of Thailand have.  Some companies with major billion dollar investments in heavy industry are forced to stay in, woe to be them.

2. Arizona has passed an extremely controversial law that allows police to check your immigration papers at any time at the risk of being deported.  As a current "immigrant" of sorts I have to say if I was living here for a long time, having to carry around my passport everywhere would really suck, along with being rather risky incase it got stolen.  Obama is currently meeting with the Mexican President in order to discuss the issue.  Personally I feel this law is the wrong direction to go in and gives police the excuse to start racially profiling people, a step backwards in my book.  Obviously this whole thing has been a major complicated problem for a long time but the attitude of "just round them up and send them back" is an ignorant one and a stance that lacks any sort of longevity as the problem would not actually be solved but only increases the hatred and resentment towards the US government.  I get the fact that they're breaking our countries laws, but at the same time all laws are made by man, and man should always take his own creations with a grain of salt.  These are human beings and should be treated as such, not as cattle that have merely wondered onto the wrong ranch.  I hope if I ever had to flee a country because my family's living conditions were so terrible I literally couldn't leave them there any longer that the country I'm fleeing to would have a little mercy.  Not saying every situation is like that but I hope you get the point. (currently waging an online debate about this which is why I have so much to say)

3. Giant ash clouds have been hanging over Europe for the better part of a month now, due to a giant volcano in Iceland.  Flights have been canceled off and on, and are really causing some problems.

4. Greece just got their desperately needed bail out after nearly going bankrupt.  It has really dragged down the Euro.  Unless countries start jumping ship, I think this'll actually end up strengthening the power of the EU so that they have the power to prevent this from happening again.

Anyways kids, I'm out.  Going to try and watch an episode of Doctor Who before I go to bed though.

Looks Like I Might Need to Buy a Sleeping Bag

2215 5-18-10

Was suppose to rain today, but all we got was a light misting and some really sad clouds.  I was pretty glad cause I'm never a big fan of carrying my backpack with my laptop in the rain.

At work I mostly spent the day working on the company presentation.  Basically I've trashed the old one and only us it now as a reference and a source for specific wording.  Hopefully this is going to turn out well, though I have to simplify and explain things that even Niko admits he wouldn't be able to do due to his lack of technical background.  Finally my Java classes are actually paying off because that's the main thing that I'm going to have to explain in the presentation that's not in the old one.  In short that means that I have to explain why our company has created a Java based operating system for our products instead of creating our own proprietary software (which is the industry standard way of doing things).

So I've also started booking hotels and planes and such for dear old dad.  He's coming to town around mid-July so I've got a little time to prepare but I want to make sure everything is nice and set before he arrives.  Sadly my school has now decided to not allow people to stay in our dorms, which means I need to find a place for him to stay in Shanghai.  This also means I have to find a place for Booz to stay as well, which sucks cause I told him he could stay with me for cheap.  Maybe I can get him a sleeping bag or something, who knows.

Let's see what else…

OO so I've uploaded a ton of pictures for My Trip To South China as well as the for the post on the Dragon Boat race.  Hope you enjoy.  I have 100s of photos though that never got posted.  Maybe when I get back state side I'll try and upload them all, but more than likely they'll be like my Japanese photos, just collecting "dust" until I want to reminisce.

Nighty night.

Normal Day

2037 5-17-10

Nothing much to report today, so I'll try and keep this rather short.

Basically spent the entire day in my room doing laundry, watching Dr. Who (Nathan's suggestion), and generally just keeping to myself.  I did go and see Tokkie so she can put another 1000RMB on my student card.  I actually have only used a 1/3 of my allotted amount so I'm going to step up my spending; oh my, whatever shall I do?

I did find out that I can fill up my empty jugs with water for only 1RMB for a galleon.  I would actually do this, but since I can't use my student card to pay for it, it's actually cheaper to continue to buy my new jugs of water from the store.  Strange logic I know, but hey that's Social Security for you.  =P

Tokkie brought some guy by my room today, kind of wish she would have called ahead of time; I had my underwear and laundry up everywhere, but o well.  The guy was from Mexico and was considering coming to our University.  He seemed cool enough.

And that's about it.  You still have more to read if you want.  I just finished posting the last two parts of my journey; take a gander if you wish.

Take care.

Dragon Boat Race and Last Night's Fight with Jing

2136 5-16-10

Alright let me get the unpleasantness out of the way.  So remember that semi-date I went on like on Thursday?  As I said that was kind of set up by the girl name Jing who I've talked on and off with for awhile.  Anyways apparently when I asked Han Lin and Yin Ting (the two girls I went to dinner with) to ask if Jing wanted to come along, they didn't actually do so.  So Jing got pissed at me that I didn't invite her to come, and did not care that I didn't have her number, by her logic I should have asked for it before hand.  I had of course assumed since Han Lin would be there that any contact I wanted to make with Jing I could do through her.

Anyways long story short I try tried to make amends by saying sorry and that we should hang out next time and go on a walk.  The reason why I chose the word walk is because that's what she mentioned she liked to do.  She then get's pissed that I would take the other two girls out to dinner, but not her.  At that point I simply told her to go fuck herself (maybe slightly nicer than that, but no less direct).  One thing I hate is drama, and it has become apparent that Jing likes to create that.  I think this friendship, or whatever you want to call it, is probably over.  Anyways sorry for that, it really all sounds childish, but I wanted to just get it down on the blog so I could remember it later.

 NOW FOR TODAY'S STORY

So today is the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival, which is celebrated by having races in, that's right, Dragon Boats.  These things are basically really long rowing boats with dragon heads at the end.  But in order to find a place to do this we had to load up on buses and travel over too ECUST's 2^nd campus in Fengxian.

Teams had already been selected before hand and it looked like it would be 5 Chinese teams and then us, the foreign kids.  Tokkie named us "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" and the team consisted of 12 guys and 6 girls.  Some of the foreigners on the team I hadn't met before because they were part of a much longer study program then us and had already been through the courses that we were currently taking.  They seemed to be mostly from Germany, Greece, and Sicily.

So the morning mostly consisted of just practicing our rowing, and getting use to synchronizing our paddles.  We also explored this campus a bit.  The campus was really new (like 2-3 years) and was built mainly to serve and house the undergraduate students.  Being outside of actual Shanghai it was much more spacious then our campus, and kind of had a nice modern vibe to it.  Not saying I would want to study there, being that far out of Shanghai for an exchange student would really suck.  Once lunch was consumed we headed back to the lake for the real competition.

Now you might think of this as just a friendly race amongst students, and that it was all just fun and games, but we all knew better.  Freedom and Liberty were at stake here.  If we lost Today, Democracy would lose Tomorrow.  The world order was in the balance and defeat would bring it crashing down around our ears.  The stakes were high and we had five other teams to beat, most of which had probably at least seen or even a part of this festival before.  The odds were truly stacked against us.

The competition was set like this, first there would be three rounds of two team races, based off of your time the top three would then compete against each other, and the bottom three would then compete against each other.  Our first battle went well with a nice victory, but then we found out we had just squeaked by into third place based off our time.  After some drifting around in the boat (actually a lot of drifting but I won't get into that) it was time for our final race.

It was game time, we sang out our cries of battle to the other team and they… they did something not quite as loud in return, not really sure what because I was crying out our battle chant at the time and didn't really pay attention.  We lined up the boat at the starting line and putting our paddles in the "Attention" position.  With Antoine at the drums we waited like hunting dogs, just itching for the gun blast that would set us free.

BANG!!!

The shot was heard echoing across the water and it was the only thing we needed to unleash our might fury.  We could not loose, we could not fail our countries, we could not bear the burden of defeat.  Our paddles rang out these Truths, slicing deep into the water we heaved with all our might to the sound of the battle drum in order to launch our boat cutting across the water.

We were all neck in neck, but in utter terror it looked like the Chinese teams had gotten the best of us.  Their harmonious indoctrination was paying off as they were immediately in synch with each other.  Our chances of seeing our children grow up in a world of McDonalds, Guns, and Pailin were quickly being dashed against the Blood Red Great Wall.

But Today was not our Day to die.  With our mighty strength we persevered, putting our backs into it, we fell into a firm rhythm like the gears on a well oiled train hurtling towards the vast West of opportunity.  We soon overtook the other teams, hurtling past them with such might that I'm sure our oars were actually pushing their boats BACK.  Across the finish line and the sweet light of Freedom could be felt on all of our faces.  We had won, we had WON!

We even got prizes afterwards, Winnie-the-Pooh prizes in fact!  With my big pink Piglet in hand I walked back to the bus, and rode back to campus.  Ahhh Victory.

I don't know whether to write something to downplay that bullshit, or just leave it as it is.  Regardless, it was fun to write…