random thoughts from gay shanghai

It's been like a rollercoaster lately, so busy I've neglected this blog for some time.

Busy at work since the promotion (I guess that's what happens after you get promoted and your director wants to get you ready to be Marketing Director in one year's time... My colleague's leaving, so I have all the enquiries to reply (up to 3 or 4 a day!), I have loads of marketing projects my director gave to me (online, in magazines, networking etc.), I'm still working on many operation related projects, I'm looking for an intern and training my assistant. Anyway, sometimes it's a bit crazy, but the things is to relax, finish one thing at a time and keep breathing.

The weekend was great though, very relaxing. Lots of heroes on Saturday and loads of reading on Sunday (I went to the library!!, thinking of getting a subscription where I can borrow the books and take them home with me, only 25RMB extra), went to the gym did some further cleaning in the kitchen and ironed a huge pile of clothes.

Yesterday, S. came home, so we had some fun :-)) It's nice to have him back...

Ok, still loads of stuff to do, gotta go!

This, from heroes:

Do you want a life of happiness or a life of meaning? If you want a life of happiness, you have to absolutely live in the moment, if you want a life of meaning, that's a whole different thing. Then you have to fret about the past and obsess about the future. Two different paths. Which to take?

It's a novel, that I know. I was skimming and read somewhere he was talking to god about getting a bigger dick. I'll read it in the weekend, I think... It's on a website called christreturns and is called Sex Attic.

????? indeed

I'm still working on the script for our promotional video, but much less stressful than yesterday. My boss agreed we are rushing things a bit if we want to get it ready by the end of this month. It would mean they'd have to start filming next week. Now I can work on it slowly.

Yesterday altogether was a strange day. For the first time, I felt stressed, like I had so many things to do (film script, marketing approaches, sales emails (loads), reports, coming up with standard procedures for all locations,...) and they came all at once. I have to accept I'm no Superman and should do things effeciently - in a minimum of time - but that quality comes first - so sometimes take it more slowly. On top of that, my boss told me she thinks i'm so hardworking, know what i'm doing, know myself, have a great future and so on, so today I feel much more relaxed.

So what I did was just write everything down that needed to be done and see what was most important. Now I'm going through the list. I've allocated time for everything that needs doing today and won't do more, so I book progress on all fronts and feel I'm really moving ahead.

This weekend I'm going to the library after a long time to see what books they have on marketing, which I really need to work on and also about business and people management which I will also need more and more as manager of our department.

S. has left for Nanjing and coming back on Monday morning. That means I have the whole whole weekend to myself. Let's hope someone invites me for karaoke so I can have some fun.

Back to work...

Just had a brief meeting with my boss about the future of our department and my career at Mandarin House. All very good news actually, she was very happy with my thoughts on how to achieve more business and managing the department. I also suggested to learn more about marketing and team management with which she agreed fully - saying that she reads all the time and even has a book on the toilet to read - and said I knew myself really well. So I will drag myself to the library in the weekend. S. will be in Nanjing and A. in Poland, so I have nothing else to do.

Anyway, so now I'm department manager and by the end of the year we will have a performance and package (!) review. Let's hope I get a big raise...

S. took me out for the classic date yesterday: dinner and a movie. First we went out to have sushi in a sushi bar, lots of fun and really quite delicious, and then we saw Transformers, the movie. I never watched Transformers as a child, but couldn't remember why. After watching the movie, I remembered: I could never distinguish between the good ones and the bad. I'm not one for machines apparently.

It led me to think to my favourite childhood cartoon: He-Man! Do you remember? Well, in my internet search I found out they suspect him of being gay (read here) This is a quote:

The best part about rewatching He-Man, after the initial nostalgia-burst, was tracking the show's hilarious accidental homo-eroticism—an aspect I missed completely as a first-grader. In the ever-growing lineup of "outed" classic superheroes, He-Man might be the easiest target of all. It's almost too easy: Prince Adam, He-Man's alter ego, is a ripped Nordic pageboy with blinding teeth and sharply waxed eyebrows who spends lazy afternoons pampering his timid pet cat; he wears lavender stretch pants, furry purple Ugg boots, and a sleeveless pink blouse that clings like saran wrap to his pecs. To become He-Man, Adam harnesses what he calls "fabulous secret powers": His clothes fall off, his voice drops a full octave, his skin turns from vanilla to nut brown, his giant sword starts gushing energy, and he adopts a name so absurdly masculine it's redundant. Next, he typically runs around seizing space-wands with glowing knobs and fabulously straddling giant rockets. He hangs out with people called Fisto and Ram Man, and they all exchange wink-wink nudge-nudge dialogue: "I'd like to hear more about this hooded seed-man of yours!" "I feel the bony finger of Skeletor!" "Your assistance is required on Snake Mountain!" Once you start thinking along these lines, it's impossible to stop. (Clearly, others have had the same idea.) It's a prime example of how easily an extreme fantasy of masculinity can circle back to become its opposite.

I especially like that he was hanging out with people like Fisto and Ram Man...

Why 3?

1. S. brought me back a diary of a guy who used to be madly in love with him and wrote about his feelings and their time together (a few lunches and a dance only - but enough to get him to fall in love...) I read it yesterday morning and it really reminded me of myself when I was in love with a beautiful boy whom I couldn't "have". All seems so far away and it's easy to pass his whole diary off in a condescending way, but really, what's wrong with love? Sometimes it hurts. Plus he really put a lot of time and effort in the diary. Anyway, I hope he's over him already...

2. My blog is kind of turning into my diary now. I haven't written in my diary book in ages. There is of course a difference, since you are reading this now, and otherwise you wouldn't have. But some diaries also get read - which brings me to three

3. Anne Frank, she never thought anybody would read her diary. She even writes it, "Who is ever going to read this diary but myself?" You can't really say it's a good book somehow, because it's true and tragic, but sometimes it's also funny and the feelings of being misunderstood by everybody ring true for everyone.

For the 3rd night in a row I dreamed about having sex with someone not S. The first two times it was with a generic guy, but last night I dreamt about this ex-model hot friend of ours. He had a very big dick. What does it mean?

Write it yourself!

I've never read one. Maybe I should?

Andrew Sullivan's blog gets 3 million hits a month, Dailkos has 500,000 a day. I'm thrilled to announce... are you sitting down... I got over 1,000 visits last month. 1141 to exact. Thanks for dropping by, whoever you all are.

It's raining in Shanghai, so nice. It's the first in a long time that i was walking down the street without feeling i could collapse any minute.

Going to my first business trip in years on August 20. To Beijing!

S. is in Hangzhou visiting his parents these 2 days, then he's working the whole weekend and next week he's off to Nanjing because Shu Uemura is opening a new store there. I'll have a lot of alone time on my hands and no A. to go out with, i have to plan ahead. Maybe I'll go to Hangzhou next weekend for a small break - if it cools down a bit that is. So typhoons, get over here!

 I had to link to this: 237 reasons to make love