eMarkLee

Shit is expensive in London. As such, I have set a personal high yesterday on the amount spent on a meal.

Dinner for two at Ume. Sushi. Sake. Waggyu Beef. 463 quid before tip. Good night and good luck.

Happy New Year to everybody. This year my resolutions will be:

1. Lose 1 stone and gain a stone of muscle.
2. Detox
3. Wellness
4. Launch multi-billion dollar company
5. Travel the world
6. Cure cancer

That should do it. Baby steps…like in 2005.

I had my team offsite today for the holidays and I gotta say it is one of the more memorable ones. Here’s what my day consisted of:

1. Business Strategy. Blah Blah
2. Karting: Now we’re talking. Lewis Hamilton style. After all those years of playing Grand Turismo and Grand Theft Auto, it is cool to actually put the pedal to the medal and…well…spin out. This is supposedly one of the biggest tracks in the world where you get go-karts that go ~30-40 mph. This ain’t bumper cars, folks. There is no contact and you actually have to pay serious attention to what you’re doing. We broke up into a warm up, qualifiers, and then two 20-minute heats. At the end we got printouts with lap times and everything.

After years of playing video games where I just keep the accelerator down the whole time, it became very evident that it would not work here. If you hit the turns too quickly and try to break while turning, you’ll be arsed out. Bloody hell. I’m sure you’ve heard that you are supposed to break on the straightaways before the turn and then accelerate through the turn. It all sounds good except when actually trying to do it. One hell of an adrenaline rush, though.

3. Secret Santa: I purchased a hand-powered LED flashlight as a gift (since I am green) and ended up with How to get an ASBO. It was going smoothly until I realised that someone had actually purchased a Long Island Iced Tea and put it under the tree as an item someone would get. WTF. Talk about completely changing the game.

The premise of white elephant is pretty simple:
1. Person A is up.
2. Person A can either choose a wrapped gift or steal a gift from another person.
3. If Person A steals Person B’s gift, Person B then go to #2.

Exceptions:
1. You cannot steal back a gift
2. A gift can only be stolen 3 times.

Pretty simple game, that is until someone puts a Long Island under the tree. Without the Long Island, the element of surprise is there for all items and therefore the last person up may unwrap the last gift, thus ending the game. With the Long Island Factor, the game does not end. This completely changes the strategy of the game.

Traditional White Elephant Strategy:
1. Steal for highest valued item that has been stolen twice.
2. If none, search for highest valued item above mean.
3. If not desireable, unwrap gift.
4. If gift is not desireable…hard sell it until someone takes pity or decides they want it due to persuation. I was selling nougat and truffle filling pretty hard today.

Long Island Factor
While the general strategy is still the same, it is much stronger on getting out of the game with anything but the Long Island even if it is not the most desireable. That is how I ended up with the ASBO book. Bollocks. The game ultimately ended when someone decided to take one for the team. Good man. Bloody ASBO.

4. Pub. Like any good British event, there is always a nice evening at the pub eating pate, pigs in sausage (is there a name for that?), sliders, and some kind of a tart.

All in all a good holiday offsite with some good twists and turns (yeah, I came up with that all by myself).

Since London has so much to offer and maybe some information useful to other ex-pats, I’ve decided to split out the London piece out onto its own blog so people can dig out the relevant London info without seeing any “Beer O Clock” blogs.

emarklee.com: This blog will remain as my personal blog to focus on tech, humor, and Beer O Clock.
londonninja.com: What it’s like to live in London.

Please go here for a couple of starter blogs and everything London has to offer…one step at a time….

I am currently living with friends on route to London. There are a few observations of NYC that I can make:

1. Every night of the week is a party night.
2. Brooklyn Heights feels like just another neighborhood in Manhattan….except with more black people (except for Harlem and above).
3. You can break the bank here if you’re not careful (see #1)
4. Happy hours with good alcohol prices DO EXIST here. Keep an eye out for these and #3 won’t occur.
5. I like staying with friends that already have wifi set up prior to my arrival. (Thanks, Agenda).
6. I should pack more than one pair of socks when living out of my suitcase. (Thanks for the holey socks, Workmonkey)

That’s it. Cheers (in preparation for my time in London)

It’s official. I will be staying in Notting Hill for two months starting in June. Why not pick a Hugh Grant movie to start off my London experience?

MAP

In preparation for my London trip, I am replacing my sock collection. My sock drawer is a stew of various types of socks including holey ones, different colored ones, mysteriously appeared ones, etc. So I go to Walmart and go straight to the socks section to find the best socks foreign sweat shops can make. Lo and behold I see the Hanes sock:

There’s a problem here, however. When you look closely you see that the size is 6-13. I’m not sure how someone decided that one sock will fit both my 8 year old Taiwanese cousin Harrison as well as my 6′3 281 lb friend Workmonkey. This may work for long tube socks, but for low cut socks, you take the larger number. When I tried these socks on they felt like I was putting on booties…wtf. (not that I have ever compained about booties) I am a size 9.5-10…so the size 13 doesn’t quite fly.

Of course there is a natural solution….albeit with a certain amount of humility. I go to the Boys section, walking past all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle backpacks and underwear. There I find exactly what I have been looking for for the past 5 years. A pair of low cut socks that fit my feet.

Yes, folks. Size 3-9. So I am in essence wearing socks that is labeled be able to fit my 2 year old Taiwanese cousin Ian. Maybe I’ll buy him a pack too, as long as he doesn’t mind wearing booties.

As per my earlier post about my history of pets, I have owned a few cockatiels. In case you were curious what these look or acted like here’s one of them:

I received an email today and am thrilled to announce that I have been found as a relative to the late Mark W Lee, and am heir to a 7.2 million dollar trust fund. This is so exciting. What will I do with all that money?

People always ask and dream about having a shitload of money and what one would do with it.

First there are people that hit the lottery and blow it on gambling, relatives, divorces, and crack cocaine. Then there are people that spend it in a boring way ($85 million jackpot):

$45 million: Safe, low-risk investments such as municipal bonds
$35 million: Aggressive investments like oil and gas and real estate
$1.3 million: A family foundation
$63,000: A trip to Tahiti with 17 friends
$125,000: Mortgage retired on his 1,400-square-foot house
$18,000: Student-loan repayment
$65,000: New bicycles, including a $12,000 BMC road bike
$14,500: A used black VW Jetta
$12,000: Annual gift to each family member

But WTF, where is the monthly crates of Cris to wash your armpits and dollar coins to throw out the window of your limo at inner city children yelling “Who loves yo baby’s mama??!!?”

You want to know what I am really going to do with my money?
Two Chicks at the same time, man.

Here’s proof of my trust fund in the email I received today. This is going to be sweet. BTW, I’m done with blogging and you as my friend or reader. Please don’t come knocking for a payday.

Mutual Chambers
Solicitors & Advocates
Plot 118 Rue De Liberation,
PB 946,
Lome-Togo

Attn: Mark Lee,

I am Barrister Marcel Onu, a legal practitioner, I am the personal attorney to Mr.Mark W. LEE, a national Of your country, who used to work with Shell Development Company in Lome, Togo. He used to be my client .

On the 7th June, 2004, my client, his wife and their only daughter were involved in a car accident along Nouvissi express Road. All occupants of the vehicle unfortunately lost their lives. Since then I have made several enquiries to your embassy here to locate any of my clients extended relatives, this has also proved unsuccessful.

After these several unsuccessful attempts, I decided to track his last name over the Internet, to locate any member of his family hence I contacted you.I have contacted you to assist in repartrating the fund valued at US$7.2 million left behind by my client before it gets confisicated or declared unserviceable by the Security Finance Firm where this huge amount were deposited.

The said Security Finance Company has issued me a notice to provide the next of kin or have his account confisicated within the next twenty one official working days.

Since I have been unsuccesfull in locating the relatives for over 2years now, I seek the consent to present you as the next of kin to the deceased since you have the same last names, so that the proceeds of this account can be paid to you.

Therefore, on receipt of your positive response, we shall then discuss the sharing ratio and modalities for transfer.I have all necessary information and legal documents needed to back you up for claim.

All I require from you is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through. I guarantee that this will be executed under legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law.

Best Regards,

Marcel Onu Esq.

Lome Togo.

Hmm, not sure if my lawyer is a graduate from Harvard Law, but I can’t wait to get paid out. Where do I wire my money again?

I have taken a personal ban of owning any pets for life. To give you history and why I am doing it I will take you back through my history with animals in order:

1. Happy (a dog given to me on my 4th birthday that was kept at my grandpa and grandma’s place in the farmlands of Taiwan). It was a white dog that used to be real mean when you tried to touch him during mealtime. Eventually Happy became quite a nice dog and was able to join me in eating frogs. Shortly after I came to the United States, my grandpa ate the dog.
2. Cockatiel #1 – No, not a molotov cocktail. A cockatiel is a small bird that actually has quite a bit of personality and intelligence. I think this was my best pet ever. Our friend gave it to us after it had been trained. It could sing songs and even say a couple of words. All from a brain the size of a booger. It flew away when my Dad tried to destroy it with a garden hose. Cockatiel #1 did not like that idea. It fled. I was sad.
3. Cockatiel #2 – This bird was the replacement for Cockatiel #1 and looked exactly like it. It would cry away when we were out of its sights. We got it at the swap meet when it was quite young…where we had to get special seeds to feed it because it couldnt consume the regular seeds. Ultimately it disappeared. Not sure what happened…grandpa was living with us at that time.
4. Horny Toad – This reptile beast was just plain awesome. Looked like a prehistoric dinosaur. I took it home from my 6th grade science class for the summer but my parents made me give it back after the summer was up. It would fall asleep when you pet it on the head, at which point you could flip it on its back and rub its belly. They apparently have the ability to spit blood from their eyes if you piss it off enough.

Don’t piss me off

5. Red Eared Slider - My aunt gave this turtle to us when it was the size of a half dollar. We had it for a long time to the point where it was the size of a six dollar hamburger. Turtles are cool…but aquariums tend to become a pain in the ass because you have to clean it. All in all I like turtles more than turtleheads but they belong in a pond in Mozambique, not in my living room.
6. The black cat – Ugh. This feline monster had fleas and wanted to eat my hand. It was cute when it was small but then just became a big pain in the ass. This cat would want to play. I would play with it and it would try to eat my hand. WTF. My mom eventually had enough and ditched it somewhere….literally in a ditch I think.
7. Lizard #1 – I had this cool looking lizard that would bury itself in the sand…so I literally had to dig it out to play with it. Lizards are a pain in the ass because you have to go to the pet store all the time to get crickets and worms. Eventually it got paralyzed in its lower body for some reason and crickets ate its lower feet. Irony in nature at its best here…almost poetic. I had to put it in the freezer to put it to rest.
8. Lizard #2 – This lizard was pretty mean but cool looking. It was mean looking enough where I didn’t want to hold it. Also, its poo was highly odorous. I know poo generally does not smell like sundaes but this poo was seriously stinkly. They didn’t tell me that at the pet store. Workmonkey had enough at a certain point and killed it. Workmonkey and I had to toss it over our balcony in San Francisco with our ceremonial pour fo mah homeyz. I will never forgive you, Workmonkey.
9. Various creatures of the sea – I ran a reef tank for a year. I got into it because I had a hook up at the local fish store, where everything I got was at a deep deep discount. This was such a huge undertaking in both time, effort, and money but it was all worth it when you see a fully functional ecosystem in your living room. It was a pain in the ass, though, because it was a reef tank…so adding salt, Ph levels, algae, ick, etc etc. Eventually, ick killed my favorite porcupine puffer when I introduced a cowfish with ick into the tank. Everything got tossed over the balcony along with some Old English after that. I tore the tank down after that and sold everything. It was fun, but I wouldn’t go through all that again.

My aquarium

Wha choo lookin at?

After the aquarium, I made the decision to never own another pet. I still like some dogs and puffer fishes, but as you can see..pet keeping generally doesn’t end in a good way and have always been a pain in the ass. So why succumb to that urge you get sometimes to own something cute instead of just looking at it or playing with it and letting it be? Come join me in banning all pets for life!