Certainty

When I was in middle school, I secretly wished to become a fashion model and live a life of glamor. But my short Asian genes and my startling good appetite doomed my dream to strut down the runway.

In college, I thought about working in the Wall Street one day, suit in suit out. I trekked all the way to the business school to pick up the freshly printed The Wall Street Journal, practiced mock interview questions with a financier wannabe, and tried to pad my resume with more As in econ courses. I would like to be a self-sufficient city girl and need no man in my life. After a total disaster interview in NYC, I was deeply humiliated and realized that I did not want this life as badly as everyone around me. For too long, I had blindly followed other people's path, mistaking their ambition for mine.

Then I came to law school, still not knowing whether this would be the right move for me. I met a bubbly guy who occasionally acted a bit overly friendly but can be easily forgiven because he happened to be dashingly cute in my biased opinion. He certainly had made the right move by casually asking me out when he was scrubbing dishes over the loud sound of splashing water. He later tried to make a point that saying "I love you" without looking at the love interest makes everything much more dramatic. This novel theory-like anything else he knew of relationships-came from an SNL skit, an endless source of heartfelt advices for dysfunctional couples.

Our first summer together was sometimes challenging. He moved out of La Aldea so that he could hang out with his manly friends, paint his room in a suspiciously brothel color, and openly play with fire, on a grill. He started to work for a professor whose headshot appeared at the Tucson International Airport. He got to order expensive solar cells or burn money all under the grand name of research. He became really good at what he was doing and was proud of it.

I, on the other hand, was browsing food blogs which always ended up crashing the office computer with only a floppy disk drive. I was worried about finding a paying legal job and starting my second year in law school. I missed a couple deadlines for career fairs. The desert heat was taking a toll on my mane and every day, I saw mass casualties on the floor.

And like every good Chinese woman, when I got frustrated, I wanted to get married, even though neither of us was ready at that time.

So the question is, how could we reach a consensus on a matter of such gravity as marriage within a year? Not that we have become more emotionally mature. I would still throw an adult tantrum and protest by not making dinner from time to time. Blake would respond by burying his head in Reddit posts like an ostrich in the sand. In fact, he is now on a very stupid game called QWOP, thanks to Reddit (for mentally debilitating details, see http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html).

But I am glad that he is by my side, in all the good times and bad times. Before he masters the QWOP hand-arm-thigh-shin-feet-hip coordination by keyboard, he would fall heads over heels for me.

Finally, there is some certainty in life!