I could almost tell the time has come after heard James Blunt’s new hit ‘goodbye my lover’… or perhaps the instable side of me had started crouching as I began to feel more comfortable living here...

Like my friends June and Steve would say, life is like sometimes you are f**king, and most of times you get f**ked… and I can’t even recall how many times were there when I thought I was running ahead of the game but eventually the reality will show me just how unlucky I was as I might running into a dead end…

I was dating this marvelous girl from Vancouver, as my hommie Judy describes: ‘a once in a life time opportunity’, ‘the hottest girl will ever go out with me’; lived in one of the city’s sparkling high rise apartment; had a decent salary more importantly surrounded by some of greatest friends; meanwhile we cooked for each other and walked our dog everyday before and after work (some post-marriage lifestyle I used  to describe on my cousin and her boyfriend back in Toronto); she would struggling every morning to attend class and study Chinese; explains to me how much prettier she looks before met me; and give up all her plans when I was sick in bed…all my friends firmly believed we were going steady and about to settle here for good… and It wasn’t until the night in June, like I always knew, challenges and new opportunities would always come quietly and knock my door whenever I felt a sense of belonging… maybe from taking this offer I could really get a break through with my professional development, maybe to have a fresh start will somehow ease the emotional challenges with my love which something I haven’t learned enough from my previous love and relationship…

5 days to Dubai, I never thought leaving Beijing could be so hard, like I still let my student to complain about what make them dislike Beijing; the pollution; the traffic; the social hierarchy; the cab driver who doesn’t care about you and his own life; the overwhelmed Olympic brainwash makes you bend your knee and cry to god ‘give me a break!’… Of course, not to mention nothing can compare to a 2 yuan ‘yanjing’ or ‘tshingtao’ after a long day; a street ‘chuaer’ vendor near your doorstep, a cheap cab ride home with a earful of cab driver’s political science lecture; a forest of legs and heels after a long nice summer breath near ‘gongti’…… all of these loves and hates come in waves, the complex feeling of these moment made a slideshow in my memory, time certainly flies like a blink of eye…as I’m packing up and preparing to move on, I discovered, there is a actually a whole new way of looking at these things…

Life goes on, goodbye my lover, goodbye my friends, you have been the one for me, I will always remember it…

San

BJC