Warning: Long (and somewhat mushy) post!

Since things are a little slow in the office today…and the fact that it’s Friday (yay!), I shall indulge in some blogging before I lose the zeal to update.

Come next week, James and I would have been seeing each other for 4 months. To celebrate the occasion I shall pen the whole dating story down while it's still lucid in my mind so that I can blackmail him in the future.

James and I met in JC. He was a good friend of my classmate and so we were kinda introduced vaguely. According to him (which I have absolutely no memory of), we took bus no. 33 home together once and that was the only time we really chatted. Apart from that bus ride, we chatted sporadically on ICQ and that was it. He knew me as “the girl who lived near him” and I remembered him as “Fred’s good friend”. We went our separate ways after JC and didn’t keep in touch.

Fast forward to September 2006. One bright morning, at 8.20am, I was walking to work when from a distance I spotted a familiar-looking chap who was heads above the crowd. He was drinking milk from a carton and walking towards me. We recognised each other immediately and stopped to chat for a while. He passed me his namecard (mine weren’t ready yet) and we said we’ll meet for lunch. A couple of hours later he text to say it was nice bumping into me after all these years and I replied through email that yes it was nice and we should catch up soon. Two weeks later I emailed him to see if he was keen for lunch but he had something planned already. Later in the afternoon he told me he was going to work late and asked if I was keen to have supper instead. I was meeting Tab in the evening at HV so I told him that if he was done by the time I am then yeah we could do supper. So that night he came by to pick me up from HV and we proceeded to Chun Tin Rd for our first meal together.

Thereafter we met about once or twice a week for lunch. Nothing spectacular happened though I found him easy to chat with and he found me “interesting” (his own words). In between lunch dates we kept in constant contact – either through email, sms or msn. Not a day would pass without him initiating some form of contact so naturally after a couple of months I began to wonder if he had something more than friendship in mind. But every time I tried to fish something out of him or nudge him towards telling me, he would retreat and make me feel that I was thinking things. So I grew increasingly frustrated because I thought he was playing with me…he was growing on me but I wasn’t getting the same vibe from him so I decided that I should cut this short by stepping back from the intensity. We had a mini-argument the day before my birthday because he wanted to bring me out on my birthday and buy me a gift but I refused. I told him, “I don’t want anything from you. Just give me a card if you want. But no presents and no dinner.” That was when he dropped the bomb saying that if I’m rejecting his offer because I think he likes me, then I’m wrong cos he doesn't like me- at least not now cos he felt that he didn’t know me enough to know if he wanted to date me (those were his words). That made my heart sink a little, but I was glad that it was clear and I can move on.

I then decided that we should stop going out that often (every few days) because it wasn’t right and I knew that if we continued in that intensity, I might wind up getting hurt. We were having dinner that Friday so I told him we should not see each other that often after that night. He thought I was joking initially but when he realized I wasn’t, he got a little upset and asked me why I wouldn’t go out with him. So we talked. When we couldn’t finish our talk after dinner and drinks, he drove to the public carpark at Chun Tin where we continued talking till 4.30am.

That was when the silly boy said that he said he didn’t like me then cos he thought that by saying all that, I would relent and let him bring me out on my birthday. It was a knee-jerk reaction when in fact he liked me since Christmas but was afraid of my response cos he couldn’t tell if I liked him. So after that long, long chat we decided that we shall continue seeing each other. No more ambiguity. From level 6 to 6.5/7.

Then during a work-trip to KL in January, he hinted over the phone that he wanted to make it official but wasn’t sure if I was ready. I coyly replied that he wouldn’t know till he asked. When I arrived in Singapore on Sunday in the afternoon, he whisked me home from the airport to shower and change. “I’m bringing you out for a nice dinner”, he said. It was off to Equinox for dinner, followed by a walk in the Botanics. That was where, on a wooden bench facing the Swan Lake, he asked if I would like to “give us a shot”.

And you all know the rest of the story.

Looking back, I thank God that despite the mess we created, we still ended up together. I think I would have lost out if my plan that Friday night succeeded. James has been so amazing in so many ways that it really isn’t possible to put them all down here.

It doesn’t matter how it happened as long as it did happen and we both have each other. *smiles*