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Wen's Story on how we met

My mom used to tell me the way I hold chopsticks was a sign of how far away I'd have to travel to find love. As someone with improper chopstick technique and a penchant for gripping them as far up as possible, it looked like I would have to travel around the world before I met my wife. Turns out she was sorta right...

Well, as it happened my special someone ended up being just two flights of stairs above me, but fate, having a sense of humor, would still have both of us criss-crossing the globe before we would finally end up together

Our first encounter didn't exactly create sparks. For many reasons too boring to describe, we didn't end up talking much save for brief meetings in the elevator.

Flash forward one year- both still living just steps apart, we run into each other at the infamous Hotel Ibiza. She was bored, and I was helping to throw the party. Sparks still didn't fly, or so she says... I did get her number though.

A couple of SMS's, a few AIM msgs, and a trade center bombing later, we finally hang out. Now to this day she still maintains that it was this bowl of soup I made:



that led to her taking a liking to me.

*While* I believe it was my devilishly good looks:



that had her stopping by my apartment for seconds on the soup mentioned above muwahahahaha!

Now for those of you that know grace- she luuurvs food, but was never fond of leftovers, so you be the judge of what actually happened ;-)

and to make a long story short, we started dating shortly after...

Since love is never simple, Grace left for Singapore about a year later. What started as a walk upstairs, save on the phone-bill type of relationship turned into a meet couple of times a year test of faith.

Two years later, we're finally tying the knot and hopefully living in the same country again. So those of you younger kids reading this- let this be a lesson to you all- hold your chopsticks as close to your food as possible!



This has nothing to do with the story, but this dish is more photogenic than the soup.

 
... and Grace's Side of the story

After reading Wen's obviously biased account, here is a more accurate narrative of how it really was.

Our first encounter did create sparks. Only it wasn't the kind romance stories are built on. I'd just broken up and was feeling quite jaded. Men were obviously the inferior species to me and it didn't help when I found out that Wen was from the same Asian country my ex was from. I guess it was easier for me to just categorize this nationality as "people-I-never-want-to-date-again". Then I found out that it's not jus about the nationality and decided to take a break from dating altogether.

A year later in July, I decided I was ready to have men falling at my feet again. Ok so I'm exaggerating a little here but I did have a few men going after me. In fact when I met Wen at Hotel Ibiza, I was there with someone who had been parading his fleet of luxury cars to no avail (apparently I'm just not cut out for Ferraris cos they give me a thigh sprain from having to get out of the terribly low seats).

Anyhow we exchanged AIM details along with some of his friends that I had met from the first encounter. I ended up AIM-ing all the guys randomly until September 11 2001. On that fateful day, I woke up to the radio DJ's excited commentary of something happening over in New York. Things happened rather quickly and we ended up spending almost the entire day together save for the evening when two other guys joined us for dinner. Read here

One thing that wasn't mentioned though... was that I had a date the very next night. The date I went out with was about a decade older and he decided to show me some really aggressive tongue action when he dropped me off at the Fillmore. My reaction? Lean as far away as possible and find something to wash away the distaste. And since I knew that Wen had a bowl of leftover lima bean soup, it was clearly the best solution to my distressed state of mind (I'm fairly certain my refrigerator did not have any of my favorite milk tea that night). In my defense about leftovers, soup left over often tastes better. Just like stews and curries.

As I left Wen's apartment that night, I could see an evil glint in his eyes. My suspicions were confirmed when, the next morning, he AIM-ed me some lame messages asking how I'd react if a particular guy was interested in me but he was actually supposed to be helping his friend to hook us up. (Yes! He didn't even have the nerve to come out and express his attraction to me and actually went around the bush albeit in a very obvious manner).

And the rest as they say is history.

Our first year was a tumultuous one in itself. I had two car accidents, one of which led to the scrapping of my faithful Honda Accord, in the span of nine months. I had a brush with a jealous wife. He got disgustingly drunk on his birthday. I went to Colorado for Christmas with him. Actually most of this happened in the first few months of our relationship. He melted my heart early on when he spent the entire day at the horrible SF General Hospital keeping me company throughout my ordeal (first car accident) and standing by me when I was being accused of being the other woman. This was maybe a few weeks after we had started dating.

Anyhow, we decided to try our luck at the long distance thing. Something I'd sworn I'd never be part of since I didn't believe in it. Two years of long distance later, I'm still not quite sure how we stuck it out together through his roommate's bad mouthing and my family commitments. Maybe it was the minimum two-phone-calls-a-day or the meet-every-three-to-five-months in Singapore or San Francisco policy (I can tell you one thing - it wasn't cheap). Personally I think it's because he knows he got himself a good catch. Ok maybe so did I... *grin*