The snow virgin, so sad I worried my arms would fold themselves around her on their own, was sitting on a chair in front of the window. With the curtains drawn, she was looking at passersby on the street, dressed in winter clothes. I knew she wasn’t aware of my presence, and I didn’t mean to let her know about my being there. If I had, I would have risked breaking my train of thought. Read more…

Canada: Lots and lots of snow, hockey, the second largest country in the world by landmass, an opportunity for many to improve their lives. These were the few things I knew about Canada before immigrating here. Read more…

Inside was cool, quiet, and fuggy. Perhaps too quiet and too fuggy. But what did I expect? It was a nursing home, not a nursery school. No one was supposed to run around, tug your coat, and make funny faces at you. Read more…

After learning about my upcoming trip to Hungary, someone asked me if I could take some money to her mother. The bank fees were too high, she told me, and the amount in question wasn’t enough to pay a hefty fee on. Read more…

I'm asleep, I'm sure of it, and this has to be a dream. The realization gets through my mind slowly and wearily, gasping for validity in spite of my sureness. Read more…

"There's so much inside us that can't be erased. It's our blueprint of who we are. Our past, present and future." Read more…

I'm holding this piece of small device we call a cellphone in my hand. Actually, I'm hanging to it for dear life even though I feel a profound hatred for it. The only thing that stops me from throwing it against the wall is the fact that my wife lives in it. Yes, it's true. My wife is so tiny that she fits in my phone, living her life away without me. What a world we live in!    Read more…

I know the subject of this blog doesn't relate to Chinese dating, online dating and/or international relationships, and I need to apologize for that. However, I couldn't hold myself back from writing this article for a personal reason. There is a blogger on CLM, whom I'm going to name later in the article if you bear with me, who, like a parrot, keeps repeating his preferred words of nonsense in almost everything he writes about as of late. And what really pisses me off is that he does this condescendingly, calling us, ordinary people, CLM members, and bloggers, sheeple. Well, he's flat out wrong. Read more…

On my last day in China, in appreciation of my help in the gym, Mandy invited us for dinner at the restaurant she worked at. After two weeks of dieting, my wife was exuberant. Not just because she could eat anything, but because the place was so fancy.  Read more…

The Shouting Boy

So I turned to my wife and asked, “Did you hear that shout?”

“What shout?” she asked, sleepy-eyed.

It was Sunday morning in Shenzhen. The streets were quiet, nearly without traffic, cars and pedestrians alike. My wife and I were already up and on our way to the gym. I was very much jet-lagged and about to convince myself that the airplane engines were somehow still roaring in my ears, when there it was again—a bawl. This time, it got my wife's attention as well. Read more…