happy new years

wow. I don't know why i was in a tex-mex resturant in beijing and accidentally linked to a blog and it actually opened. not sure how or why this worked but ti is.

Anyways been a big year. Left a horrible job then spent the summer improving my chinese and hanging out in north korean villages on the chinese-DPRK border.

Then took a new job making some cool outsourced 4-D ride films from the USA.

I also have a new apartment in a fancier part of town surrounded by fancy american restaurants.

Still writing my love advice column after 2.5 years can't believe thats still going. Been getting a bit of love advice column hate mail as well will include that on here.. can anyone guess where i plagiarized the anti canadian humor from?

Dear Ariel and Ben,

Last month ,28 students from one canadian university came to our college to learn chinese culture.I worked as vollunteer for a guy called Mark. After he finished his classes and homework ,we often had dinner together and he asked a lot about chinese traditions.At the weekend I showed him around our city.In KTV,he imitated my icon Miachel Jackson and performed his style of moonwalk.We did have a lot of fun.I had to admit that i was really attracted by this funny,gentle and humble guy. However,all good things come to an end.It's time for them to go back to Canada.His flight was 5am and i saw him off.He hugged me and i couldn't help crying.I love him but i never told him because i know there are many hurdles ahead. Since he left, my life has been empty and i cant repress my missing. What's worse,he seems very busy and our contacts become less and less.Sometimes i just wish i had never met him.How could i get over it?

I have heard it said that love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a teardrop. And we never know the true depth of this love until the hour of separation. Its a tough situation, you start a brief friendship with a handsome young canadian suitor and then he is abruptly whisked out of your arms right back to the great white canadian north. I know right now it hurts and you probably feel like your experience is unique. You'll come to realize it's not. You should ask yourself did you really want to spend the rest of your life living in canada? Think of your children pledging allegiance to the maple leaf. Mayonnaise on everything. Winter 11 months of the year. Not to mention the food in canada is inedible. When have you ever heard anyone say, "Honey, lets stay in tonight and order Canadian food"? Canadians are always dreaming up a lotta ways to ruin our lives. Look at Dashan for example! I think you also need to realize that this guy was
not "The One That Got Away". He was only practice. So now when you finally meet the love of your life, you'll have the experience necessary to recognize it and not let it slip through your fingers. For now I think the best thing for you to do is go out there and start dating. If life hands you a lemon, you gotta crush it into lemonade. Find some other boys that occupy your time and get your mind off of the vacuum that this young canadian mounty left in your heart. The past is the past. It was meant to be that way. Getting over him is not going to be easy but life's hard. It's supposed to be. If we didn't suffer, we'd never learn anything.


and the hate-mail than ensued...


I am an English teacher at Qiong Zhou University in Hainan province and have found that my students love to read English advice columns, especially those dealing with matters of the heart.?I often use the Love Lessons column in my teaching.?This past week, however, I found the column extremely offensive.?I have to assume that Ben Radcliffe is an American in that he shows such appalling ignorance of Canada.?Or - perhaps he was attempting to be funny.?Instead he ended up being grossly insulting.
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Canada is one of the preferred destinations of Chinese immigrants.?We have a large Chinese-Canadian community and, after English and French, Canada's two official languages, Chinese is the 3rd most common language in Canada.?I'm not sure what makes pledging allegiance to a maple leaf any more offensive than saluting the stars and stripes or the various symbols of other countries.?At least people aren't burning our flag in protest.
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With respect to the weather, if Ben has paid any attention to (and can actually read) the U.S. news,he will know that it is not Canada which is currently "snowed in" along the eastern seaboard.?
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Ben's comments about Canadian cuisine were also off the mark.?Perhaps the reason you don't get Canadian cuisine as takeout is that it actually takes time and quality ingredients to prepare. This is,of course, unlike the constant diet of truly American junk food which has resulted in a population where more than 30 percent of the adult population is morbidly obese.
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Ben - you owe an apology to Canadians.
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Judith McTavish