white person discount

i think most people have wondered in their lifetimes whether chinese restaurants give discounts to chinese people. or if there is a special menu for chinese people and if they have special discounts or lower prices. today, i was fortunate enough to be able to observe the results of of two roommates 'D' and 'N', purchasing the same dish from the same restaurant for dinner. the main difference between the two was that roommate 'D' is of chinese decent while roommate 'N' is a normal white american.

roommate 'D' ordered the dish in typical chinese fashion, ordering the dish singly (as would be the case in family style dining). his cost was $10.50 for an amount of food that he considered to be two servings or meals. however, after bringing the food home, he did have to make his own rice to go along with the dish.

roommate 'N' ordered the dish in typical american fashion, getting the combo for the dish. this included rice, soup, an eggroll, and of course, a fortune cookie. his price was a mere $5.50 for a meal that he admitted was too much to finish in one sitting.

contrary to what one might expect, the white person received the better deal! now what i'm trying to figure out is why. has affirmative action permeated to the very places we go to eat?

i love (lifetime) learning

today i did my taxes. normally i do them during spring break, but i have been busy. courtesy of the livetime learning credit, i don't owe any taxes at all. kinda sounds backwards, being happy about paying tens of thousands of dollars to save less than two thousand in taxes, but i'm satisfied nonetheless . and, because intel payed for the taxes for relocation due to a change in policy, i have quite a bit more than expected in terms of overpaid taxes. i think a trip to the other side of the world is in order.

as usual, federal taxes were rather dense, but straightforward. i like the 1040. on the other hand, california's tax forms were a huge pain. what form do i fill out? okay, 540NR. but wait, half way through filling out that form, i find out that i have to fill out the CA schedule 540NR first. and filling out this form includes a massive matrix that i can fill out only if i know all the differences between how california and the feds do taxes. great. no wonder why all the UC's are so good. you need a graduate degree just to figure out how to file their taxes.

an addiction

hi, my name is yao and i'm a chip addict. about half-way through last semester, i had my first of these tortilla chips. i had found them on sale at this one store near campus. so i tried some, thinking it couldn't possibly do any harm. first it started out as an afternoon snack. after a while, it progressed to a meal accompaniment. before i knew it, i was going through bags of chips like they were nothing. i would wake up to a handful of tortilla chips and grab some with salsa for a midnight snack. i even found myself bringing bags of these chips with me on the vacations i took away from ann arbor. i'm not sure if this is a real addiction or if i even want to attempt to break it. all i know is that i feel utterly powerless to control it.

and that is a glimpse of the darker side of yao.

changes and having fun the british way

as a blogg writer, i often feel it convenient to update my friends on what is currently going on in my life. or it seems as though that's what everyone else is doing with their blogs. after all, what better way is there to keep in touch with your friends than to do so without actually keeping in touch? i will admit that in the past, i have blogged about things simply to tell people what i was up to... but no more! from now on, i will do my best to only write about things that would interest you.

on that note, let me talk about what i've been up to. this afternoon was spent in front of angell hall, enjoying the sun and playing a rousing game of croquet. i had always thought that only old fogies from england played croquet. this was my first time playing the game, but i must say i had quite a bit of fun. we even had a few spectators who watched the action occasionally interrupted by an exclamation of "oh bugger!". one of our spectators even approached us, saying she wanted her "crew" to play against us some time. i'm not sure my crew would be able to provide adequate competition. who knew there were actual croquet crews? i'm kinda scared of her crew.

dribble down in VA

my trip down to virginia was kinda interesting. in particular, i managed to get lost on the same road, not once, but twice. this highway was the indomitable 295. i had managed to overshoot my exit by more than ten miles. doesn't seem too bad until you learn that i was only supposed to be on 295 for about 10 miles. i blame that mishap on unclear and confusing signage. clearly not my fault. the other navigational error was a bit more mysterious. i was happily driving up 295N, minding my own business, when i suddenly noticed that i was now on 95. i'm not exactly sure how i got onto a different highway by going straight, but apparently it is possible. so i didn't get to herb 'em in the home of the terrapins, but luckily i filled up on gas and left early to account for said navigational difficulties.

humble beginings

the past two days, i have been volunteering at the pound house, which is basically a day care facility for preschool children. the job i was doing happened to be organizing all of the books in their library. as i was looking through the books and entering them into their database, i took the liberty of perusing some of the fine literature, including some of the books i had read as a child. what i found surprised me. an example of this was the book "where the wild things are". i distinctly remembered how it was a great book and how proud i was that i had read it when i was a child. after having picked it up this time around, i found that each page only had one line of text, accompanied by an illustration on the opposite page. i felt somewhat foolish that such a simple book had been such a source of pride for me. i guess we all have to learn to crawl before we can learn to walk.

i also still enjoyed the riddles book i happened to look through while i was organizing. when do chickens have eight feet?? when there are four of them!! haha. then again, perhaps i haven't progressed as far as i had originally imagined. once in a while, some of us still like crawling.

writings on the wall

today i was utilizing the washroom facilities in angell hall when i noticed writing on the bathroom walls. there was the usual scribblings and argument on the spelling of stephen hawking's name. above all of this random bathroom graffitti, one person wrote in large letters asking "how the hell did all of you get into U of M??!?!", expressing incredulity at the base humor which is normally involved with bathroom writings.

just below it, in smaller letters was: "affirmative action".

below that was a long discussion with multiple participants on the effectiveness of affirmative action and michigan's old point system. someone had even researched the percentange of white and black people in america and compared them to the student body population. it's always best to have your facts straight when you get into a bathroom writings argument.

i'm just glad we can discuss this in a (somewhat) open forum.

the perils of interviewing

a couple weeks ago, i decided to give up an onsite interview with company 'S' to get a first round interview with company 'A', who was interviewing that same day. the onsite interview with company 'S' was the final step in their selection process and their interview promised a lot of wining and dining. though i really liked the prospect of getting flown out and filling my stomach with good food, i decided to be responsible and try to get a job with a company i would rather work for. so i was resigned to give up my onsite wining and dining session with company 'S' for a chance to work at company 'A'.

unfortunately, today i received a phone call from company 'A' saying that they didn't have anyone who was going to be able to come to ann arbor to interview me, so we would have to both reschedule the interview and turn it into a phone interview. this meant that i could have been wined and dined by company 'S' in a nice hotel while still interviewing with company 'A'. and i also would have been able to skip class under the pretense of interviewing. instead, i'll be waking up early, in my own bed, to do the phone interview without nice food in my stomach.

decisions, decisions. the interview process at company 'V' has been similarly frustrating. i guess some of this has been fun, but it hasn't been all hotels, fly outs, rental cars, and nice dinners like i had imagined.

"spring" break

for us here at michigan, this past week was spring break. when most people think of spring break, they think of those girls gone wild places where it's warm and everyone wants to take off their clothes. at least, that's what i think of. for me, spring break was quite the opposite. i went to a place colder than michigan to put on more clothes. meaning i went to vermont to go skiing/snowboarding.

the adventure started with a visit to the local eastern mountain sports to get equipped for the slopes. i had not intended to buy anything, since i already had everything i needed. however, i did end up finding a pair of gloves on sale. this was the same pair of gloves that i had really wanted to buy during christmas, but was unable to because they didn't have my size. well, this time i was able to find the gloves that fit me--unfortunately, they were "women's" gloves. i'm not sure what exactly the differences were, but they looked exactly the same, save the label on the inside. my initial reaction was "i can't wear women's gloves, i'm a man!". but after my roommate's urging that there was no difference, i ended up buying them.

after three days of skiing, i noticed that one glove's soft outer shell had started cracking off. after the next day of snowboarding the outer stitching was already starting to unravel. clearly, my manliness was too much for the girly gloves. needless to say, i felt rather bilked and returned the gloves the next day. i guess it just goes to show that what's good for the goose might not be good enough for the gander. and for the record, it had nothing to do with the fact that someone said "hey, isn't that guy over there wearing women's gloves??"

as for snowboarding, i managed to hit only one girl during my multiple tumbles down the bunny hill. i even have a sore butt as a souvenir. i faired somewhat better on skis. though i did manage to smack into and break a warning pole and then slide down the hill on my head. embarrassingly enough, this was also on the bunny hill, but in my defense, i would like to say that this was done while attempting a jump. interestingly, my roommate had hit the same pole earlier that day, attempting the same jump. though it put her out of commission for the rest of that day. i guess some people just can't learn from their friend's past mistakes.

the great thing about skiing is checking out the snow bunnies. as far as you can tell, unless they have removed their goggles or jacket, they are all hot. so even though i didn't get to see girls going wild, i was happy enough with my spring break.