So yesterday work really bothered me. Actually not work so much as Microsoft's productivity suite aka the cash cow aka office. i started using infopath (one of those new office apps that no one uses) and i found out why no one uses it. it is so unintuitive and difficult to work that after five hours of messing around with it i wanted to throw the PC throw the window.

this follows closely on the heels of a day spent screwing around with word. So word has been in development for what almost twenty years now? You think they would have added a button along the lines of "stop automatically changing my shit and leave it the fuck alone!". Every time i copied some text that was any color but black to a bullet point it changed the bullet point to the color of the text. i did not ask for that nor do i want it. All of you are aware of my ocd-ness. i group my shirts in my closet by color (and sleeve length and button number and ...), the fact that these bullet points did not match the rest of the document still drives me crazy.

i think the only thing that stopped me from going crazy was grabbing dinner with xu. We both had a lot of work so we were going back to work after dinner but neither of us could stand dinner in the cafeteria so we went next door to a real deal restaurant. We had some Beijing duck which was pretty good. To eat the duck you take it dip it in sauce and drop it on a spring roll wrapper, throw in some cucumbers and onions, roll it up and eat it. i am getting relatively proficient with chop sticks. i was able to eat the roll with my chop sticks but not actually roll it up with the chop sticks. Almost there though.

at the restaurant i saw first hand why neither of my parents will sit next to the wall in a restaurant. They both went to school in hot and humid new Orleans which had a junebug problem. They would crawl up the wall in the restaurants. it is neither hot nor humid here right now but i still saw a roach wandering around the wall. i was kind of surprised as i have been in much dirtier restaurants and not seen anything. Probably ate something but at least i did not see it.

after a hard day of struggling with things that are antithical to their name (productivity suite?) and eating some duck i wandered home.

i was surprised to see people still working outside. Remember the popsicle sticks in the surge protector outside the restaurant? Well this is a picture of it last night. Pretty much done, looks like they were talking to the wait staff.

they were also still working on the subway. Looks like people are taking this must be done by the end of 2006 thing more seriously than i thought they would.

all you can really see are some sparks though.

after getting home i was going to change and do things so exciting i cannot even mention them in a public forum. Instead i watched the Norway v Sweden women's curling match and feel asleep on the couch. i was woken up at some point late at night / early in the morning when someone called my phone. it was someone from the states so i will explain this again. Add 12 hours to the time it currently is where you are. That will at least give you an idea of what time it is here.

example, my phone rings at 5:14 am here, that is 1:14 pm pacific and 4:14 pm eastern. If you really want to talk to me don't call in the afternoon. Night time or morning is better. If you just want to walk me up then call in the afternoon.

here is the completed restaurant with people eating in it. i took this pic tonight. That took by my estimate under a week to renovate a restaurant with broken out windows and no door into a nice looking place. i will try it this weekend.

it is new so i am sure they will get business. Michael was telling me how Chinese people basically like shiny. this jives with yachi's opinions as well. There could be a restaurant where they love the food but they will stop going if they have being going there for longer than 6 months to a year. The restaurant has to remodel and make itself look different than it was.

to the left are pineapple slices careful cut to be like little popsicles of pineapply goodness.

another thing i have noticed, even here the TV on the scene reporters have the news reporter voice. You know which one i am talking about. Another one of those things that transcends culture.

music recommendation, merzbow - senmaida - blossoming noise. Any description i try to use to describe this album will be doing it a disservice. i have been looking for this album since sophomore year in college and did not realize that until i heard it. it forces you to reconsider what your notions of beauty are. it has some of the most startling combinations of noises and rhythms that bring out certain facets in sounds that would otherwise be abrasive or forgettable and makes you completely enraptured with that facet.