As you know, I'm a Canadian living in China. I also have a Chinese girlfriend, much to her chagrin right now. Specifically, I'm about to leave Changsha and she's not really a fan of that idea.

I'll be heading back to Canada in June or, worst case scenario, early July. And while I'd like to spend all of my time thinking about nice things to say to a girl, that isn't what I'm focussed on. I have to worry about heading back home, Project Rockstar, and all of these other wonderful things in my life.

Plus, if I spend my time thinking about funny things to say to a girl, I'll actually lose her.

That's the paradox... If you need someone and really focus on them so much, what'll occur is she'll start ignoring you. But then again I can't let myself be bothered by the idea, and she has no idea that it's true either. If I give into it and buy her flowers and chase her all of the time, she'll hate me. Not that I want to, in any case--it's time to move away. Sigh.
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Updates and stuff!

I've been working really hard on the back-end of my web application. This is probably going to sound boring to you since it has nothing to do with dating or social dynamics, but it's pretty exciting for me. Also hugely challenging.

I've been building this website (www.realcompliments.com) for about a month now. I was rolling out updates slowly, but since Google seems to be a fan already and I have lots of repeat visitors, I decided that I wanted to have a really solid application before huge sums of traffic really start kicking in.

Tangent! If you really want  to help me, please link to funny compliments, sweet things to say to your boyfriend and sweet things to say to your girlfriend. Use that anchor text too! There are a surprising amount of people sharing the site already but it's the bread and butter of my traffic so I'll never complain about getting MOAR :)

Anyway, the new features I've added are as follows:

A user system where you can register and write compliments under your own name instead of as a stranger. You can also check out your score, because people voting for your compliments or comments will move you up and down score-wise, and there's a leaderboard where the people with the best compliments reside.

My favourite feature is a random compliment feature. It'll help me moderate new compliments when they come in because of how I coded it, and it'll also get more exposure to compliments that sadly slid off of the first page. This feature is really exciting for me!

They aren't online yet since I'm doing a huge rewrite of  the back-end and I have to re-theme a lot of the pages, but when they're up I'll put up some links.

Have a super fantastic day!
 
 
I'm sitting in a Starbucks thinking about my travels so far. Let me give you a break-down.

Last year I decided to move to China (because my bus pass expired... true, though strange, story). I visited my dad for three weeks (he lives and works in a small-ish city called Changsha), and then moved to Shenzhen for two months. Lo and behold, that didn't work out as planned, so I was looking for something else. A university in Changsha offered me a contract with reasonable terms, including very minimal hours worked, teaching oral English. I seized that as a wonderful opportunity to subsist while working on my own business and chilling with my dad.

Also, there's a pretty girl I'm dating :)

Anyway, in the summer here the temperature is incredibly high - 40 degrees Celsius is a normal day. In the winter it only really drops to about 10 degrees. For some reason this feels to me like swimming in cold water all of the time despite much, much colder temperatures in Canada.

I'm staring at the picture above (taken in Shenzhen) and wishing for warm weather.

-Live from Changsha
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My favourite style of compliment is simple. I point out something I like about a person and then I say, "I really like that about you."

You're reading a blog about making other people feel good. I really like that about you.

But I also think of memories when complimenting my friends. This one time at band camp... I could keep the simple style of (positive characteristic) + (I like that), but my band camp memories show so much more about my friends.

Images from stories make compliments sweet; a stranger who never had the chance to meet you when you were poor doesn't understand you as well once you become rich. Stories show that you have really thought about your friend and decided that, yes, they're pretty cool.

...Read more at a sweet thing to say to your friend.
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