Hi everyone!

I'm a 44 year old gay guy who grew up in Canada and is now living my dream life in Hawaii for work. I'm a computer programmer for an astronomical observatory.

My favourite things to do are to study languages, math, programming, and southeast Asian cuisine. I love to play video games and am hoping to learn enough Japanese to be able to play JRPGs without English subtitles or dubs. I also love black cats, pharmacology, running, swimming, and chatting online.

English is my first language, but I studied French for most of my life and my French is pretty good. I studied Mandarin Chinese intensively for four years and used to be fairly advanced, but I haven't used it in eight years and have forgotten so much of it... I hope to learn it again. I lived in Chile for a few years and know some basic Spanish as well, and I took a couple of years of Japanese classes, but they were very slow paced.

I would love to find friends to help with English or French who could help me with Mandarin or Japanese. I prefer to use 繁體字.

I speak English fluently, both Canadian and American style, which are slightly different. (Canadian English is like a hybrid of British English and American English.) I would be happy to help you learn or practice your English.

I speak some French, but have forgotten a lot. I would like to find some people who want to practice French together.

I lived in Chile for a few years and learned some Spanish, but my Spanish is not very good. If you want to help me with my Spanish, I would really appreciate that.

I also want to practice and learn more Mandarin Chinese. I prefer to use traditional characters so someone from Taiwan would be ideal, but I can read and write in simplified characters as well. I studied Mandarin for four years with a private teacher and loved it. My favourite part of Chinese are the characters and their history, and I love learning new characters and their meanings.

I also want to learn classical / literary Chinese so that I can read some classical Chinese texts, like the 道德經 and the 莊子. I think it would be a lot of fun, but I have barely studied it: I learned just enough to read 道德經第一頁.

More than anything else, I really want to learn Japanese. I only know a little bit: hiragana, katakana, and maybe 200 kanji or so, although I can recognize many kanji since I used to know 3000 hanzi.

Playing video games (mainly JRPGs) Cooking Thai food Studying languages Math and computer programming

I listen mostly to electronic music of many different types. My car is usually playing the remixed soundtrack "The Branched" from the video game "13 Sentinels - Aegis Rim."

Adrian Lux is probably my favourite artist.

I don't really watch movies, but if I had to pick one, Trainspotting.

Too many to mention. I prefer comedies, but I am hopelessly addicted to the People's Court.

George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series... if it ever gets finished.

PiHKAL by Alexander and Ann Shulgin.

“We are part of the universe that has developed a remarkable ability: We can hold an image of the world in our minds. We are matter contemplating itself.”
Sean Carroll

"Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness."
莊子