Do It For Yourself

By Andy

The other day I recalled one of my trips abroad. It was just over a year ago, when I was out on a date, at a café in Eastern Europe, having a pleasant conversation with a beautiful Slavic woman. In the middle of our lovely chat, out of nowhere, from across the table, she commented on my muscles. She said she liked muscles, and was so impressed by mine. Now, I’m not a bodybuilder nor do I have the body to compete in a competition or be a model, but I do work out on a regular basis, and look decent for someone who has spent the last few years erasing many more years full of bad habits and poor diet. 

Five Reasons Why the Gym Is NOT a Good Place for Dating

By Andy

By now you're probably aware that this is the time of year where the new year’s resolution gym-goers come out of the woodwork. If you're a regular gym-goer like I am, it's bad enough to have to search for a parking spot and wait your turn to use weights or machines during the month of January. What is worse is that regardless of what time of year it is, unless you're Mr. Olympia, you're probably not going to be getting any dates at the gym. That is one of the things I've noticed while frequenting the gym more often and switching gyms in different cities over the years, it is not a dating paradise. Simply put, gyms in the U.S. are not a good place for men to get dates.
  
Here are some reasons why: 

Traveling While Black Part 2

Why I waited so long

As I mentioned, the motivation for sharing this has been brewing, but there've been some other reasons why it's taken me this long to speak out.

1. I have a dear friend who has three daughters.

During my most recent six-month stay in China, I would often write private emails to my friends in the states letting them know everything (and more) that I'm sharing with you in this book and this chapter. Once, I even joked that I should write a book about dating overseas for Black men. One of my female friends half-jokingly, --but with a real exasperation at the underlying reality it hinted at--asked me not to write such a book encouraging mass exodus, as she wanted the pool of eligible and available Black men to be there for her daughters when they reach dating and marrying age. She didn't want me diminishing the pool by telling men what they could be experiencing overseas. (Seriously. I'm not kidding.) So, while I haven't forsaken my friend's daughters, I'm sure she'll understand that in the words of the great philosopher, Mr. Spock, "the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few."

Traveling While Black Part 1

C O M I N G B L A C K T O A S I A? Brother, You Have NO idea! 
A curious and observant nomad dispels some myths, allays some fears and corrects some misperceptions of what "traveling while Black" in Asia really means. Tales of Black Privilege in China (and Beyond)

From my Jamaican in China Blog (available in the free ebook "Guess Who's Coming to Dim Sum: The Jamaican in China Chronicles." Download free here: http://www.jamaicaninchina.com/jicpreview.html