Happy Days... I found Pepperidge Farm cookies

A bunch of other cool stuff happened too, but I'm really excited that City Shop carries Brussels and Chessmen, which share a solid "bronze" position behind Oreos (Gold) and Girl Scout Cookies (Silver.) Still in a great mood from the news that I'm moving out of marketing, I was more productive than usual this morning and in the afternoon I met with the CFO, a guy named Bart Daniels, and got some more information on my new job in finance. Good thing I have a really positive outlook on things right now or I might describe my new job as daunting, horrifyingly complicated, or way, way beyond my capability; but I do have a nice optimistic outlook right now and so I think writing a budget for an entire hospital will be a great learning experience and really push me to learn new skills. Who am I kidding? The excel file for the service demand profiles alone is just under 8 megabytes (which is an f-ing HUGE excel file)... why, oh why, couldn't they use a relational database like normal people?

Staying positive... tomorrow is a big party for my New Zealand (kiwi) friend, Laurie, who has also offered to let me move into his huge three bedroom place if I can get the hospital to give me in cash whatever my apartment is costing now, which seems reasonable... right? Finalized some more details for my trip to Vietnam over the October holiday which is exciting... our hotel on the beach is 160,000 Dong a night (which may sound like a lot, but is actually only $10... gotta love that exchange rate.) It definitely looks like I'm going to be here long term, so anyone who was toying with the idea of coming out to China... now's your big chance to visit Shanghai and have a tour guide if you come before July 2007!