Zhoudynasty

I am a homeowner now.  For the past 4 months, Amanda and I have been looking at townhouses all over the twin cities.  After looking at almost 30 different properties, we finally found the one that we would call home.  The townhouse is in Chanhassen, about 30 minutes from downtown Minneapolis.  It has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a car garage and a lower level.  There’s still a lot of work to be done before we can move in.  We’re painting the walls, replacing the old carpet and buying some new furniture.  I hope to move in and have a house warming party before the end of June.

I know I know, I’ve been back for over a week now and haven’t provided much of a summary on my trip to Thailand. First off, Thailand was great, Chiang Mai was beautiful and Bangkok helped me to understand what CTS (crazy thai shit) really means.

Day 1
Welcome to Chiang Mai, get to work!
After traveling for over 36 hours, we finally arrived at the Holiday Inn in Chiang Mai. Without wasting much time, I checked in and went to set up my booth for the trade show. It was a long day, I ended up working on my booth from 10am to 10pm because of some technical issues with the laptops and software. By the time I was done, I was starving for some local Thai food and was very interested in finding out what the dirty street food is like. So my boss and I hopped into a tuk-tuk and headed down to the Night Bazaar. I found the dirtiest little street food stall… their floor was just dirt, there were little rackety tables with tiny stools, there was a dog sleeping in the corner, no ceiling, no walls, just perfect. So being the traditional cheese-burger-loving American that is my boss, I basically had to force him to eat with him and promised that he could fire me if he got sick. (Come to think of it, that was a pretty risky bet.) In the end, the food turned out to be awesome, especially when you eat it with crappy bent forks sitting on stools that are about to snap. After the dirty dinner, we walked across the street and got a nice oil massage, no not *that* kind of a massage! The massage was nice, just what we needed after a long day of work. Pretty much everything was the same as the massages you can get in China except they make you wear this tiny stretchy black cotton thong. It was a weird little thong, if you looked at it, you would wonder why they ever bother because the thing is basically see-through.

Day 2
Chillin’ at the Chiang Mai Holiday Inn
I slept until the sunlight woke me up. Went down for some breakfast and then got in a quick workout. This was my free half-day because the trade show doesn’t start until 6pm when 300 sales people from all across Asia would invade our booths. Other than walking down to the local market and buying a crappy “leather” belt for $3 because I forgot to bring my own, I spent most of the time lying by the pool drinking Singha and getting sun-burned.

6pm rolls around and the sales people are all coming in for the cocktail hour and evening trade show. Someone who took part in organizing the trade show had the great idea of making list of questions related to each booth and allowing the sales person to turn in the questions for a grand prize drawing once it’s complete. That just resulted in a lot of red-faced sales people coming up to my booth to get their sheet stamped after copying off of each other. Just to get an idea of how bad the copying was… one of the answers was “SPM”, I accidentally stamped a guy who put down “SPAM”, the rest of the night people coming to me with the answer SPAM. The big trade show was so packed that I couldn’t breath, I had to escape and drink some more Singha.

Day 3
Meeting kick off

This was the opening day, the day that we officially kick off the Asia-Pacific sales meeting. I was impressed by the amount of work our Asian marketing counterpart put into the opening kickoff. It was like a Vegas show combined with a Mission Impossible theme based on our wonderful and exciting products. After the kickoff, I spent the next 2 days training and trade showing.

Day 4
Khantoke and getting lost
After a full day of showing off exciting new products, we had a traditional Chiang Mai dinner (Khantoke) and show at one of the local resorts. The dinner show was pretty interesting but the food wasn’t so great and we ate in a canteen without air conditioning. The last of AC and the heat turned the night into constant beer drinking rather than eating spicy Thai food. Guess which table of Asians was the most drunk, that’s right, the Chinese table! Yes, the Chinese and their gan-bei always seem to have the funnest and drunkest table. Some of those guys I drank with didn’t even remember me the next day.

So at the end of the night, the Singaporeans whom I ate with wanted to go sing some karaoke, the Chinese wanted to go get even more trashed, and the Thais wanted to show me around town. Well I missed out on every opportunity. I got separated from the group when I ran off the bus to take a much needed pee, only to come back and find no one. I spent the night wandering around downtown Chiang Mai and finally ran into a Vietnamese sales guy. For some reason he was alone too, so we decided to stick together. Despite the fact that the Vietnamese guy had a poor command of the English language we got along really well and had really good conversations. I think the beer helped to understand each other.

Day 5
Awards Dinner

It was another day of trade shows and training. We had our awards dinner tonight. I found out that the awards dinner is where we get everyone together and celebrate all the sales successes, get real drunk and motivate everyone for another year. I knew the food was most likely going to be bad so I ordered room service before going, and I’m really glad I did. I had a sampling of Thai soup, smoked salmon, and sushi.

The main course at the awards dinner was indeed terrible, even I couldn’t eat any of it. It’s just what you would expect if you tried to order salads and steaks in a small city in Thailand. But they did have a variety of local snacks, including crickets! I had a few crickets and they weren’t bad, sort of salty and buttery, except once in a while a cricket leg would get stuck between my teeth.

After getting back from the awards dinner, a bunch of us US folks and a couple Aussies went to sing some karaoke. Aussies get wild when they get a little drunk. At one point, one of the Aussies was singing with his pants down, proudly displaying his leopard print underwear to everyone including the Thai customers that walked in.

Day 6
Elephants

This was basically our free day since we were done with the training and trade shows. A few of us got together and went up to the mountains to ride elephants. The van drove an hour to take us to the elephant training camp, but once there, we were on top of a real live Asian elephant within 10 minutes. There was no messing around and no one trying to sell you a bunch of crappy souvenirs, it was just straight ridin’. The feeling of riding on one of these gentle giants is indescribable. It was truly out of this world, I had to pinch myself a few times when my elephant started going up the mountain and crossing the river bed, it was truly magical.

Day 7
CTS
Bangkok is one crazy city. We planned a whole day to go sightseeing and experience the capital of Thailand. And given that our group of guys wasn’t interested in really seeing all of Bangkok because it was 108F out, our tour guide and driver simply drove us all around the touristy parts of town for quick sight-seeing and photo sessions. We saw a 5 ton Buddha statue made of pure golf, walked around the Reclining Buddha and temple, saw some expensive gems that we would never buy, and got some tailored dress shirts made. The whole day was pretty nice and tame.

We went out again at night and with the advice of one of the local sales guys, we had to check out some of the girlie bars. The bar we stumbled into had a girlie show, and the girls were really talented. Basically we saw ping-pong balls being shot out of bodily orifices, people holding up balloons and the girl popping them with darts flying from you know where, and a bunch of birthday candles being blown out. It was another out-of-body experience, a whole different kind.

Another interesting thing that happened at the bar was my encounter with a ladyboy. It all started out when I took notice of the girl sitting next to me and how she was incredibly hotter than all the other girls in the bar. That should’ve been a dead giveaway that she was actually a he. Anyways, I continued to observe this hot girl and even started talking to her. I noticed that she didn’t have an Adam’s apple, her hands weren’t big like a guy’s, and she had some boobs. The only weird thing I observed was that her voice was a little weird, it didn’t quite match her hotness. Either way, she looked hot, I was drunk and I was very intrigued. After a little chit-chat with this “girl” I was finally drunk enough to just ask her straight out “Are you a lady boy?” She replied seductively, “Do you have a problem?” Wow, I mean what I am supposed to say? “I think I’m going to sit over there now?” All I could say was “Wow, I can’t tell”.

Similar to the elephant riding experience, my encounter with this ladyboy was also out of this world. Imagine what it’s like when your eyes catch an attractive female and your visual senses are sending the “Damn she’s hot!” signals to your brain but your brain is trying its best to fight it and replying with “Quit saying that! She’s a he!” Yep, that’s some crazy thai shit.

Photos

I went to Baltimore and New York last week, it was awesome.  Stayed at the Hyatt on the Inner Harbor but didn’t get much of a chance to party or stuff my face with seafood.  One thing that surprised me about Baltimore was that everything pretty much closes at 11:30pm.  Even the ESPN Zone kicked me out of their lazy-boy in front of the big screen at 11:30!  Anyways, we made it up in NY.  When my boss and I got to NY, we made it a point to not let work keep us in our hotel.  We were able to check out some big sites like Madison Square, Times Square, and Empire State at night.  We had some awesome seafood at the Blue Fin and made a final stop by Little Italy on our last day, where we had the best Italian food, ever.  One thing I learned, never rent a mini-van and drive it around Manhattan.

We celebrated Amanda’s birthday over the weekend and went to Visage.  It’s been like almost a year since I’ve been to the club, and I gotta say, I don’t really want to go back.  I couldn’t believe how it’s the same crowd still, the same people I saw the *last* time I went into a club.   Besides my friends, I recognized a lot of faces, the same ones I saw at Escape 4 years ago, the same ones I saw at Perry’s 3 years ago, the same ones I saw at Escape 2 years ago, the same ones I saw at Myth last year, and the same ones I saw at dim sum a couple months ago.  What gives?!  Is the Minneapolis Asian community really that small?  Yeah it is, but I still love it here!  Can’t wait for summer, grass is turning green.

Finally got the chance to upload our photos from the Chicago trip last weekend. Chicago is a lot of fun but without their downtown, it’s just as inspiring as Minneapolis. Thanks to D&K for being such a great host and putting up with all the PDA from Amanda and I ( aka the best couple).

Last night we got over a foot of snow, that was on top of the foot we got last weekend.  Everything is white, roads are slippery and people are driving real slow.  The good news is that Amanda and I took the opportunity to go sledding a few nights ago behind the old Edina High School.  I forgot how fun and exciting it was to fly down a hill only to hit a bump, go flying and face plant into the snow.  We’re gonna go again tonight.

I’m also staying home today.  Originally I was heading to the U of MN to interview candidates for some new grad positions but thanks to the snow, that got canceled.  That’s good because I was not looking forward to the drive at 6:30am.

Let’s see, what else is new?  We’re going to Chicago next weekend to visit Kyongdo and Diana.  Should be lots of fun going to museums and playing games on K’s tv.

I’m pretty excited about April though.  I’ll be going to Chiang Mai and Bangkok for a week for work.  Looking forward to riding elephants, watching some muay thai boxing, eating some weird foods like the balut, keeping my distance from ladyboys, and working.

The world in which we live in is unfair, and I’ve believed in that for a while now. Seldom do events occur that reminds me of this and I hate it when these events pop-up like the mandatory meeting reminders from MS Outlook.

Today I found out my long time friend Ben Lau lost his right thumb on Saturday due to an accident at work. I’ve known Ben since I was in the 7th grade, he was the after-school activity bus driver who would drop me off at home after basketball practice. Ben and I had a special bond ever since I first stepped onto his bus and he showed me a print of his artwork. We quickly became good friends and he introduced me to the world of true art and his family. As I grew up and went through my teenage years, we lost contact of each other until we accidentally reunited again almost 8 years later.

Why do unfortunate events happen to humble, loving and compassionate people? The odds have always been stacked against Ben. Being an artist since he was a young man, Ben never could afford a lavish lifestyle but has always been happier and had more friends than most people I know. Ben has always struggled to find a teaching job and sell his paintings, but he’s always had the ability to create true art, that is, until now. Lately Ben has been investing a lot of time and energy into starting up a tattoo shop. He started doing free tattoos to gain experience and build a portfolio. Now without his thumb, he won’t even be able to pursue his tattoo business nor will he be able to continue doing what he loves, creating true art.

I hope Ben remains optimistic and receives the amount of love and support that he has always given to others.

Even though the world is still blind to true art, your ability to create it will surely be missed.

I was about to go to bed but being the email addict that I am, I just had to check my email. I got an email notification that someone posted a comment on the blog, I thought it was just going to be someone reminding me that I haven’t posted in a while. To my surprise, I got a  notification that Jeremy Goins left a comment in my blog!  Yes, it’s the same Jeremy that I’ve been trying to get back in touch with since I moved away from Arizona.

Work has been crazy for the past few weeks.  I’ve reached a new level of feeling overwhelmed.  Thoughts are hard to organize as there are many things flying around in my head, things that I need to get done.  In approximately one minute I will have to train a group of sales people on subjects that I’m vaguely familiar with, using 70 slides that I just finished creating this morning.

I’ll write another update when all the dust settles.

Yes, I bought a used car last week.  Pictures to come, meanwhile you can take a guess at kind of car it is.

It’s been years since our family was able to have a normal Christmas celebration where we’re all together in the same room the whole evening eating a great home-cooked meal.  And this year is special as we have added Amanda as a new member.

It took a lot of discipline to pose and take pictures when all that good food is just sitting there waiting to be eaten.

‘Tis the season of giving LCD displays.

‘Tis the season for many hugs as well.

Oh the night was filled with many surprises as someone tried to surprise me by denying that they didn’t get me a gift.

Lots of wonderful gifts make this family wonderful consumers.