Anyway, a lot has happened in the past few weeks, but I’ll get to all of it soon enough. For today, I said I’d post about Kendra’s birthday party, so here it is. I was in charge of decorations, so I popped by Party City, which (as my luck would have it) was in the process of closing. Are you kidding me? No. No, I am not.

But in the spirit of looking at things in a positive light, at least this meant that while the pickings were slim, they were also 50% off — w00t. I ended up spending less than 5 dollars and (an hour later) wound up with a canopy design for our dining area.

We had dinner at a 50′s-styled restaurant called Agnes and Muriel’s, which has southern fifties/sixties coooking. It sounds random, but the restaurant is great. (I went back later and stole some of Dave’s Sweet Potato Fries, and now I’m determined to learn how to make some myself — but, I’ll let you know how that goes.)

Finally, we went back to the apartment for dessert, which Rita baked for us, and games. Justin brought Balderdash, which I won. Dan brough DDR, which is too addicting to even talk about.

The best part, however, was when Rita played a slideshow with a bunch of pictures of Kendra’s baby pictures that she’d compiled. Basically, Kendra thought that she’d lost all her baby pictures in a fire at her house a long time ago, but Rita contacted her parents and asked them to find what was left, and etc. It was sweet.

The whole Wheel situation has left me with a lot of mixed feelings about friendship and relationships in general. I’ve been mentally going down a list of things that happened with a new perspective, sometimes more cynical than I’d like. But in times like this, it’s nice to be reminded that there are some things that are untouched by ulterior motives and other other uglier forms of motivation. They’re just solid and good, and I think that’s important to remember.

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That phrase is kind of what I feel like right now. After deciding to ditch j-school, as corny as it sounds, it feels like a world of possibility is open to me again. For starters, I finally had time to finish part one of the WordPress Plugin Tutorial that I started working on over winter break. I plan to have two more parts to it, but hopefully someone will find what’s there useful.

I’ve been having lunch – and we have, like, hour-long lunches – at least twice a week with my roommates. And I’ve checked out a bunch of restaurants as of late, which is great. I discovered that I rather like Indian food. We’ve ordered from Udipi (South Indian food) a couple times, but one of the sales reps told me I should check out Mirch Masala (North Indian food). Apparently, North Indian food has more meat and South Indian food is largely vegetarian, so if you like meat then North Indian is the cuisine for you. (The reason for this is because South India has more vegetation due to its proximity to water, whereas North India relies more on livestock.) Anyway, he was right and it was delicious, though the service was mediocre.

The do, however, give little keychains with to every customer, which I thought was kind of cute.

But anyway, we also had the Top Reps dinner on Wednesday, where we take the three reps who have made the highest amount of sales out with all the business managers to a fancy dinner. We went to a restaurant that we have trade with called Sala. I ordered crab enchiladas and duck tapas, both of which were pretty good, but not great. The restaurant definitely chose style over substance. However, I had a lot of fun and it was a great night. I also think it really “recharged” the reps to get back in the office and sell some more. Pictures of the my food and the restaurant below.

Meanwhile, I have rediscovered Tetrinet, which is, I suppose, a kickback to my high school days. We spent an excessive amount of time playing Tetrinet in class after exams were over during senior year. It’s not the healthiest of habits to restart, especially now that the Wheel Online Redesign team is fully underway, as is my role in heading the PR department for my marketing class. But everyone has their vices, right?

We have, for example, a bust of Mao’s head, a propaganda poster, a Mao alarm clock, some Chinese currency, and a little red book. We also have a t-shirt – my contribution, thank you very much – from threadless, haha, that’s called the Communist Party. Get it? It’s a party and they’re all — okay, fine, whatever.


Basically, what we do with our anti-Shrine is that we write Notes to Mao (as you can see from the many post-it notes). I’ve photographed a sampling of these here.



Anyhow, I only mention this because we had a Mao/guerrilla warfare/Dave’s 21st birthday party last night and it was fun. I’m trying to refrain from posting pictures of people on here (I don’t suppose people would like finding out there’s photos of them splashed across my blog) so instead you get pictures of our Mao anti-shrine. For the party, we all dressed up as communist guerrilla soldiers, red armbands and all.

I worked especially hard on my outfit because I knew I couldn’t let a bunch of newsroom dorks out-Chinese me. Meg was our gracious host and we decorated her place with Chinese and Soviet flags and red balloons. Dave’s shirt read: “It’s MAO Birthday.” Yeah, I know that’s pretty terrible, haha. It’s too bad none of us are going to be able to find employment after the pictures from the party surface, but I suppose you can’t win them all.

I, of course, am keeping my priorities straight and am updating this blog. This weekend was pretty hectic with Wheel stuff. I trained some new reps this morning and am really happy with how it went. Wrote a paper, blah blah blah.

Beyond that, I also got a chance to have some fun. Tracy’s 22nd was on Friday and I got breakfast the next day with a friend at the Flying Biscuit, which is a wonderful restaurant. It’s a pretty idiosyncratic place with lots of character, as you can see from the pictures. The food’s solid as well. I got a smoked salmon omelet and he got the Meggican Omelet (like Mexican, but with EGG inserted – get it? get it!?). EDIT Those two people in the picture aren’t us, by the way. I’m Chinese and uh…not forty.

Anyway, book reviews will be keeping me busy in the next two weeks. I’m reviewing Anatomy of a Boyfriend by Daria Snadowsky, an Emory alumni, for the Arts & Living section of the Wheel. Furthermore, I promised I’d finished my review of You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore for Emory’s Hub magazine in the next two weeks.

Anyway, I think the piercing looks nice. It’s true though, that piercings can be addictive, but I feel like if I had any more I’d have more difficultly looking professional. Effing b-school.

Iris is going back to school tomorrow so we did a sushi dinner last night, complete with our home-made sushi rice and Japanese ginger dressing for our salad. I’d give the recipes except it didn’t really turn out that great, haha. Chalk one up for learning experiences, right?

Wheel e-mails about work have already begun to pile up and I have two book reviews to write. So, that’s what I’ll be working on until school starts (theoretically) until the Wheel eats me alive completely.