In my wonderful 30 years of existence in this world, I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing the ups and downs life gives me.
Thankfully, I’ve had more ups than downs. Even the downs were awesome.
While the ups and downs were aplenty, I’ve also had several memorable “moments of self-realization”

Just like a G-spot orgasm by a girl, I think that self-realization moments are very rare in one’s life and can usually be counted on one hand. Some people go through life never having a moment of self-realization. It’s a sad thing not to experience but at the same time, it’s good to think that you never have to change in life – you won’t have to know what you’re missing.

Just to clarify what I mean by “Moments of truth” – it’s a situation when you’re put through the fire and you have this sudden break of clarity. For example, it’s when you finally realize that the girl you’ve been chasing all these years isn’t for you. It’s when you finally give up on alcoholism or you realize that you actually don’t love the job you’ve been doing for 10 years (or for that matter, the person you’ve been married to). These are significant changes in life perspectives.

So I’ve had several key moments of realization in my life and I can recall the exact scene, feelings and surroundings when these moments occurred. I’d share them with you but I don’t really know you so you just have to trust me.

Okay, fine. I’ll share one thing with you:

This weekend, I just had a major realization that goes against a major part of my perspective on people:

I used to think that  I can help guys and girls get better at meeting people and having good relationships…but now I realized that I can’t help them.

I quit.

This thought has been lingering in my head for several years now but I always paid no attention to it until the past weekend. I realize that guys can’t help themselves. Girls can, but guys can’t. If this is the case, which it is – then I’ll go back to my mantra:

I can’t help you if you can’t help yourself.

If half the population of the world can’t help themselves, then what’s the point?
It takes two to have a conversation, dance the tango, fuck and get married.

As a result of this significant but unfortunate finding -

I quit.

I quit this blog too.

There are two critical roadblocks that stop me from helping people:

PRIDE: As you know, I ran my little dating consulting in China but it’s always been the same old song: girls are willing to learn new things but guys aren’t. There’s so much pride and denial in guys – they want a quick fix and they refuse to admit any short comings. Guys are defensive when it comes to constructive criticism. Again, I’m trying to help them but they constantly defend their rationale. You’d think that they would start questioning their rationale since it constantly keeps them on Virgin Land. It’s a guy thing – same thing in Toronto and same thing in Beijing. I figure that if I can’t help them, they can all burn in hell.
Fuck them all.

LOOKS – this is the elephant in the room that I need to address. I’ve always been open about my shallowness that looks matter to me. In my heart, I always hoped that it was only my problem and other people weren’t as superficial but I’m beginning to find out that it’s true for other people: LOOKS MATTER SO MUCH IN THIS WORLD. If you are a guy who’s short or not very attractive; you better be really talented or really rich. I know it’s a controversial thing to say – I really don’t want to say it but just look around: good looking people date good looking people. You meet guys that are dumb as a brick but they have good looking girls just because they’re good looking. I know it’s not fair but who are you going to complain to?

I experienced this first hand – I met a girl in Beijing that really likes me. She’s a great girl – everything is cool except for one thing: she’s not good looking. Due to that, I’ve put her in friendzone. It’s a shitty thing to reveal but I can’t do it. So I did a scenario in my head: if she were good looking, would i put her in friendzone? The answer is no. I would definitely date her. There’s no right or wrong implication to this – I just realized that looks matter to me that much. Again, call me a shallow bastard but I just realized and accepted that about myself. It goes both ways – I understand when good looking girls don’t want me: they’re clearly out of my league. I’m uglier than them but at the same time, someone is also uglier than you.

So that’s the problem – Looks and Pride stops me from making a significant impact in other people’s lives. These two things are unbelievably hard to change since I think it’s hardwired in our brains psychologically. It helps our survival (I subscribe to evolution theory). Pride is a self-defense mechanism while being big on looks helps find an attractive biological mate.

At the same time, I’m not condemning everyone. In Life, there are always exceptions. There are people that do change their perspective and their attitude – and that’s when they change for the better. First. they have to break themselves down first and critically look inwards. I still believe people do change but I also do believe now that most people won’t. They say they want to but they refuse to in their hearts.

You can’t buy a new personality.
If you’re an asshole, its really hard not to be an asshole.
That’s just how it is.

I think a big change in my perspective has a lot to do with getting older. Now that I’m motherfucking 30, I see the younger guys doing the same mistakes I did when I was their age. It’s like that scene in “Above the Rim” when Leon schooled the young hotshot on the playground. If there’s anything guys should change, they often should chill out more than become more intense. Don’t be so anal about stuff and don’t try so hard to impress a girl. I think the most attractive thing a guy can have is self-confidence. That’s what gets the girl. In order to have self-confidence, you have to know yourself. Once you know yourself, you should be able to be fine just by yourself. That’s when you’re no longer needy – because you don’t need anyone in order to have a good time. When you don’t need a girl is when girls want to be in your life – because you’re so fucking interesting.

My parting advice is this:

Just be yourself, and hope someone loves you for who you are.

That’s it.

Thanks to all my readers.

Sincerely,

Mark

So I went online today and looked up the melting points for the following things:

24 k Gold: Melting point of 1063 degrees C
Pure Silver: Melting point of 961 degrees C

Finally:

Friends: Melting point of 1000

Well, how realistic is that? I have 1180 friends on Facebook but I really only talk to about a fraction of these people now.
What I’m trying to say is that there’s probably a maximum when it comes to having friends – I think I’ve hit my max a long time ago.

How do I know that I’ve hit my max?
Answer: sometimes, my friends INFURIATE the shit out of me.

I have some friends that drive me fucking insane by the things they do. Usually, it’s the same people that do it and then call me later to tell me stuff. They burden me with their shit which always leads me to ask this rhetorical question:

Why the fuck am I friends with this person again????

When I find myself shaking over this question, my mind goes to only one thing:

Mi Mi Mian.

So you’re probably asking: what the fuck is “Mi Mi Mian”?
Here it is:

One of the great things about living in China is that traveling within the country is dirt cheap. The cost of going to Shanghai from Beijing is probably the equivalent of one night snorting baking powder from a second rate hooker’s ass. As a result, whenever there’s a long weekend, I always make it a point to get the hell out of Beijing and hop on a plane. Since I often go on trips, I’ve become used to the Beijing airport. Call it the menstrual cycle of traveling – I’m there at least once a month.  Due to my irrationality and paranoia of missing my flight, I always make it a habit to show up to airports super early. I’m just fucking insane like that. As a result, I always have to resort to eating there. Here is where Mi Mi Mian comes in:

Again, I wanted to remind you that I HATE BEIJING FOOD solely from the fact that it sucks a donkey’s asshole and a gelding’s left testicle.  Beijing food is God’s way of punishing Chinese people for every sort of act they’ve committed against humanity: from inventing gun powder to making lead paint for children to lick. The karma of thousands of years of death, rape, infanticide and massacres all over the world  have translated into the cuisine of Beijing food. Despite my intense dislike of it, there is one dish I can tolerate: beef noodle.
I can stand it. So give it to me.

So whenever I need to eat at the Beijing airport, I only have one choice – I always go to this restaurant called “Mi Mi Mian” to eat some beef noodle. Okay, so in Chinese, “Mian” means “Noodle”. “Mi Mi” is the clever name concocted by whoever it is that named the restaurant (who I pray becomes a leper). I only go to this restaurant for two reasons:

1) As stated earlier – beef noodle is the only dish I tolerate in Beijing
2) It’s relatively cheap compared to the other places

You need to keep these two important reasons in mind because whenever I go and eat in this joint, something always happens:

The waitresses like to give me this big sell on their noodles and how fucking great they are. It’s not just “Mian” – it’s “Mi Mi Mian”. Like that fucking has anything to do with it. So this is all I hear whenever I sit down:

“Blah blah blah…mi mi mian” “Blah blah blah mi mi mian”

Must they have to fucking say “mi mi mian” all the time? Why can’t they just say “mian”?
It’s like adding “Super duper” to “Have a nice day” – “Have a super duper nice day”
Shut the fuck up.

So every time I go to this place and sit down, I hear their entire spiel on “mi mi mian”. It’s gotten to the point that I curled my toes the last time because I was so fucking pissed off  that they said “Mi mi mian” for the 89th time. I wanted to hurt every single one of the people inside with bad intention kicks to the groin. Why can’t you just fucking call them noodles, which is what they are?

So the last insult that goes with the mental rape that I endure each time I visit this fucking noodle stand is that I reinforce their shit from the very fact that I go back there each time I’m in the airport. They must think it’s because I love the mi mi mian. Little do they know that its because their food is the only one a shade above dog shit. I fucking hate that place.

Going back to friends – this place is just like these friends I fucking hate. Why am I friends with them?
Simple – the “mi mi” part is because these friends were good looking, which is why I became friends with them in the first place. At this point, you probably have figured out that they’re girls. Yeah – so they were good looking and I tried to sleep with them but it didn’t work out. I befriended them in hopes that they might lead me to their other good looking friends but I soon found out that I got hoodwinked solely from the fact that good looking girls surround themselves with ugly girls to make them look extra good looking. So now I’m stuck with a good looking friend that does stupid shit that piss me off.

There is one important lesson to be learned here which is as fundamental as the concept of gravity: it helps so much to be good looking.
Looks matter so much in this world – the people that say they don’t are just ugly. Not just in love, looks help out in terms of getting jobs, making friends and being on a promotional flyer. Good looking people has even made me stay friends with people I absolutely hate simply from the fact that I want to have good looking facebook friends (note: even their statuses piss me off).

So here’s the rub about good looking people – if you see them enough times, they actually lose their appeal to you. This is the only saving grace I have in deleting these people from my life forever. Right now, I don’t see them enough for me to think they’re really not that hot. I’m still surprised by their hotness. Give me some time though and when the looks go – so does my contact with them.

Then it’s just mi mi me.

When I was in highschool, my friends and I were gaga over the game “Golden Eye” for the Nintendo 64:

It's like the Brady Bunch intro, except with killing.

So while it was really fun, my friends would sometimes get mad at me when I played due to a simple reason: I cheated like hell.
Here’s how it works: as you can see on the screen, there are four screens for four players. You’re not supposed to look at other people’s screens.
I did it all the time.
I’d wait until my friends would shoot each other and when they’re all near death, I’d walk in and clean them all out. Of course, I got called a lot of names: cheap, rat bastard, asshole and…opportunist.

The last one never really bothered me – I actually liked it because it reminds everyone of one simple fact: Life is not fair.
My friends called me all kinds of names but at the end, it didn’t take away the kills I had. It’s similar to thinking that there’s some sort of rules surrounding street fights – there are no rules in a street fight. You can hit someone in the nuts or hit them from behind with a chair. Sure, you can get on his case about cheating but at the end, who’s the one in the hospital?

So the reason why I’m talking about this is because I’ve been helping out my mom these days as I chill in Toronto. My mom and I like gossiping like two old women in the park. Being Asian, it’s only a matter of time when the gossiping turns to the topic of gold diggers. You see in Asia, there’s always the newest gossip about a 70 year old tycoon and his new 20 year old wife.
Like all people from the older generation, my mom gets upset at stuff like this and cries out that gold digging is a crime against the fairness that should exist in this world. So this is my thoughts on gold digging:

I’m really into sports. I specifically love watching the NBA and the NFL. I have my favorite teams in all sports and I really like cheering for them. Just like any die-hard fan, I go through mood swings when my team wins/loses. I get depressed and shit like that. Sometimes, my favorite team would blow a game. They were up by 15 going into the fourth quarter and they would fuck up and lose the game. When that happens, I get sad but eventually, I get mad at my team. This is my rationale: if you’re going to play like a bunch of assholes, then maybe you do deserve to lose that game.

So that’s the same mentality I have towards “victims” of gold diggers: if you’re going to be stupid with your money, maybe you do deserve to have it taken from you. There’s that old saying “a fool and his money are soon parted” but then again, this got me thinking. If you’ve been smart enough to make a lot of money in your lifetime, you should be able to see this coming. If that’s the case, then perhaps…

The rich guy knows what he’s getting himself into. It’s a simple transaction: I will buy you a lot of nice shit and in return, you will be my concubine. If you’re old, wrinkly and nobody loves you  - this might be a really practical way of having someone. Who cares about the money if you’re about to die anyway? Can’t take those gold coins with you to heaven. You might as well have some fun on Earth. These rich old-ass business tycoons in China aren’t stupid – they know that these 20 yr old actresses are looking for the payout.

If you’ve read the book “Spermwars”, you’ll realize that this thinking falls in line with the book’s argument: men are intrinsically built to have as much off-springs as possible with as many women in order to increase their chances of genetic survival. Specifically, if you want to have healthy off-springs, you’d look for healthy mothers aka young girls. Girls on the other hand, are on the look out for good  genes and also a good provider to give her and her off-springs the comfort of survival. In this case, it’s a balling ass place in Discovery Bay.

Again, from the perspective of the gold digger, the prospect of having your life changed just because some old dude wants to fuck you is hard to pass up. What’s a bit of sacrifice for a lifetime of luxury? I hate it when people say shit like “I’d never do that” because I think that honestly, a lot of people would. Even the proper, Irish Catholic Mrs Schroeder from Boardwalk Empire couldn’t resist Mr. Thompson’s proposition and becomes his concubine:

The Suffrage Movement takes a backseat to Benjamin Franklin.

It’s hard to judge gold digging because you can argue that anyone who marries above their means is technically a gold digger. Also, what happens if the girl marries up, bears his kids, takes care of the kids and that’s it? Sounds like a wife to me.

It’s hard to talk about gold digging without thinking of Wendy Murdoch, the current wife of Rupert:

Took the saying "Movin' on up" to heart.

If you read this girl’s biography, you’d see that her life is peppered with moving up the social ladder with different men until she hit the penthouse. My mom gets pissed when she hears about her and warns me to stay away from types like these (okay, first let me be filthy rich then I’ll worry). My rebuttal to my mom is: you have to give it to her – she got what she wanted and Rupert’s not a stupid guy (he’s like a James Bond bad guy) – they both got what they wanted. What more do you want?

One of the things that linger in my head though is the power of some women over men. Cleopatra, Marilyn Monroe etc hypnotized powerful men and maybe Wendy’s doing the same thing. One thing I’ve learned repeatedly in my short existence on this Earth is that if you can’t kill’em with knives, you can kill’em with love.

I’m sure not a lot of people agree with me – I’m just saying that honestly, if you gave me a choice between two girls that are completely the same in personality and looks but the only difference is that one is rich and the other is poor, why wouldn’t you want the rich one? You motherfuckers can upsize your McDonald’s combos anytime you want.

As long as relationships aren’t coerced with any sort of weaponry or torture and both parties are out to exploit the shit out of each other, I say go ahead.

Ain’t no rules to love or money.

Hey everybody,

So today, I want to specifically talk to girls about something that they’ve all encountered at one point in their life (unless they’re really really ugly). Today, I want to talk about guys who liked you but you didn’t like them back.
So you rejected them and they said “fine. I’ll stop liking you.”

Stop.

If a girl thinks that a guy will stop liking her just because he said so, she’s got another thing coming. Just today, my friend told me about a guy she was going to hang out with. He liked her in the beginning but she couldn’t reciprocate the feelings so he just stopped liking her…or so he claimed. This is a tale all too common I hear from girls everywhere. This happened to me before in highschool – I had a crush on a girl but we were “just friends” so I would stay friends with her but periodically declare my undying love and devotion to her over the phone. She would freak out and things would usually go to shit afterwards. You see, girls need to learn two important lessons about guys and life in general.

The first lesson girls need to learn about life can be captured in three simple words:

Lesson #1: Love Never Dies

If you think you’ve heard this line before, you have. It’s from the scary-ass movie “Dracula” starring Keanu Reeves (the scary part was the acting):

The story of a guy who couldn't read the signs.

When you think about it, it makes sense – feelings don’t go away that easy. It’s really hard for a normal functioning human being to just stop liking/hating someone. It’s not a fucking academic debate where you’re trying to sway opinion. This is your brain telling your heart to cut it out (which usually never works out).

So we’ve established that feelings don’t go away. We bury it deep within us but for the sake of keeping face and to keep the relationship going, guys will say anything to not get cut off from the loves of their lives. They’ll say anything:

“Fine. I don’t like you anymore. I’m into Christain Rock now, okay?”
“I got over it last night. I’m into Christian Rock now, okay?”
“I was just kidding. What I meant to say is that I’m really into Christian Rock now, okay?”

This is what guys want girls to hear and believe but it’s not true – the feelings will always be there. This is just like the STD – Herpes: once you get herpes, it never goes away. Sure it may lie dormant for a while but occasionally, it flares up and you have to deal with it. This is like dealing with those guys – everything will be cool but once in a while, this thing comes to the table and when it comes out, it just reinforces the fact that he’s never moved on and he’s kept his feelings inside of him.

This brings us to the second lesson girls need to learn about guys:

Lesson #2: Guys are retarded with their feelings

I just read somewhere today that Emotional Intelligence is one’s ability to understand and manage his/her own emotions. From my humble years on this planet, I’ve come to believe that girls are way better in understanding and moving on with stuff than guys. It’s because girls talk to other girls about this type of shit. They analyze and over-analyze a thousand times until it finally makes sense to them and they’ve developed some fucked up algorithm that rationalizes their feelings.
Whatever floats their boat, man.

Guys on the other hand don’t talk about their feelings. Guys play basketball and while shooting jump shots, talk about the girl to his buddies. There is no eye-contact to be made among bros because that’s just wussy. Even though he’s made an effort to talk about his girl problems, his buddies are not helpful at all with any good advice. Guys need to be macho and to always be posturing about their manhood so this guy doesn’t get a helpful ear, what he gets is useless macho advice like, “Fuck some bitches and she’ll leave your mind” or “She must be up on some guy. We should beat him up” <– totally unhelpful advice.

What this means is that usually, when a girl likes a guy but the guy doesn’t reciprocate his feelings, the girl usually takes it, hurts a bit but eventually moves on. They can get over this shit. Guys on the other hand, don’t. They take the hit, save their feelings for a rainy day and half-ass move on. When he thinks the coast is clear, he’ll try and cross the street over to happyland but usually there’s someone to stop him and send him back to his side.

What everyone absolutely absolutely have to do

You need to move on. I think there’s no bigger tragedy in life than the inability for some people to move on. I hate it. I hate people who can’t do it but at the same time, I know how hard it is to move on. Happened to me too – I was gaga over a girl for a few years and my friends couldn’t convince me to move on (in the end, only you can convince yourself). At the end, I finally got over her after the realization that I was about to become just another victim. I got rid of her and it feels so unbelievably fucking good. Sure, sometimes the feelings are still there but I don’t think about it. That shit’s so 2000 and late. We only look forward in this motherfucker.

Nothing sadder than a guy who can’t move on from his past. Notable characters in literature and media bearing this trait are the following:

Blanche Dubois from A Street Car Named Desire
Willy Lowman in Death of A Salesman
Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite

"I could have gone pro, man"

If you find this happening to you, I urge you to really think hard about this. Love may never die but you eventually will so don’t waste your life on people that mess you up - don’t be a fucking tragedy.

Alright, so first of all, I need to apologize for being MIA.
For those out of the loop: I quit my job in Toronto, packed up my stuff and moved to Beijing, China.
Sounds pretty crazy if you ask me but I had to do it.

Why did I have to do it?

When I got here the first natural thing I wanted to do was talk to a lot of girls and find out about the dating scene. I did just that – I met a lot of girls and talked to all of them. I even started my dating business here and give out consultation advice to people. Some days I’m excited to get out of bed and some days I think about packing my stuff and just going home. I really don’t know what I’m doing but it feels good and it feels right to me. A friend from Toronto asked me today whether I was happier here or in Toronto. Let me put it this way: In Toronto, I was content and satisfied. In Beijing, I’m broke and never know what tomorrow brings…I couldn’t be happier.

I guess I’m happy because this is something I wanted to do and I made this decision on my own. It can end horribly or horribly well. I’ve thought about the consequences and I’ve decided that I’m willing to pay for whatever happens. I’ve only got one life and I might as well live the shit out of it. I liken our lives to a video game called “Metal Gear Solid”, one of the best selling franchise for the Playstation:

Holy Shit, it's Kenny Rogers with an eye patch!

So in this game, you walk around as a guy named “Solid Snake” and you pretty much kick ass and shoot people. The great thing is that you can pick up a lot of weapons and cool stuff. The weapons need ammo. If you run out of ammo, you can’t use the gun anymore. So what I used to do was collect the weapons and never use them because I was afraid I’d run out of ammo. So I’ll go through the game using a shitty gun until lo and behold…I finish the game…and I never got to use my cool weapons. That really sucks.

This is how I saw my life – I felt that I had all this potential but I was afraid to use it or else I might run out of it. Then I realized that if I died the next day never taking that chance, I’d have lived a really pathetic life. If I stayed and kept doing what I was doing, it would have been a very mediocre life for me. Since I have a propensity to ruin friendships, birthday cakes and my own life – I knew I had to do it.

So I did it.
It feels okay.

So I have some good news and some bad news – the good news is that now that I have some more time, I’m going to resume blogging. The bad news is that my blogs are going to be about dating in China. I guess that’s good if you’re someone who wants to learn about Chinese dating. Bad news if you came here hoping to look at Chinese porn (Note: Porn is illegal in China). So let’s get going!

Shuai Guy
So in Mandarin, if you want to call a guy good looking, the word is “Shuai”. This is an adjective: He is very shuai.
While there are a lot of good looking people in North America, the ratio of good looking guys here to the population is very small. I’d say 1:100,000,000. Seriously – a lot of guys here are not good looking. It’s not genetics or anything natural like that. I believe that the guys here haven’t really put “looking good” as their top priority. If we cracked open the head of a Chinese guy, this would be his top priorities:

#1 – Go to a good school
#2 – Do well in school
#3 – Get a good job
#4 – Make enough money to buy a place
#5 – Sing Karaoke effectively
#6 – Marry someone
#7 – Level up on WoW
#8 – Learn never to pass the ball in pick up basketball
#9 – Look good
#10 – Master the Finnish language

There you go, as you can see, “Looking good” is second last only to “Master the Finnish language”
The first thought that came to me was normally, “What the fuck is wrong with these people?” Then the second thought that came was: “If they’re not going to look good, isn’t that an advantage for me? HOORAY!”

I thought I was set. This was going to be easy – then I realized something.
Well, after five months, I realized something after two people echoed the same sentiments:

In China, girls don’t want you if you’re too good looking.

WTF? Sounds counter intuitive doesn’t it? You work out, eat healthy and get cool haircuts and that’s NOT a good thing?

So I had to ask why. This is what two girls said: “If you’re too good looking, you are…how you say…PLAYBOY.” (Yes, they actually said “Playboy”)

So it made sense – one thing I found out is that China girls are really careful. They’re a bit more pragmatic when it comes love versus us North Americans. You know how some girls in North America run away with their boyfriends and plan to “live on love”, that shit doesn’t really fly here. They’re more like “Before I run away with you, do you have a job or rich parents to take care of us?”

It’s only natural that if you have this mentality, you’re a bit cautious when a good looking guy comes up to you. This is especially a problem in Asia where 8s and 9s are crawling everywhere and karaokes provide girls to sit on your lap if you pay extra. I’ve started thinking hard about this – would it be counter intuitive then to help groom guys in China for my dating business if this would actually disqualify them from meeting girls?

I don’t know – I don’t even know if I believe what these girls say. In my mid-length time on this earth, I’ve learned that looks matter so much that people are willing to forgo their integrity and rules just to get with a good looking guy/girl. The universal rationale of “Who cares, look how good looking he is” applies to all countries regardless of political ideology.

Well i’ve only hit the tip of the iceberg and there’s definitely so much more to discover about this place and dating but I’m getting sleepy now. Cut me some slack – I’m 12 hours ahead of you guys…it’s fucking bed time for me.

See you in a bit