Consider yourselves warned: it's a very very looong post.
Key 1: things in (here) are author's notes and spoilers that I couldn't resist not inserting, but for a full reading experience don't read the things in (here) if there is a spoiler alert prefacing it.
Key 2: things in [here] are actual things I wrote, so feel free to read them. They often add to the story.
Today's story is about a girl. I'm very tempted to say that it's sort of like a summer fling, but that would imply that we had a 'start date' and an 'end date'.* A start date is likely to be found, like the day we were both matched on CMB, or the day we went on our first date together, and perhaps an end date can be intepreted as the day she told she only saw me as a 'buddy', or perhaps an earlier day when I spoke to her on the phone telling her how much I missed her and wanted her to give me another chance with her concluding, "well let's see how it goes".
*It would also imply that we slept with each other, or at the very least, in a conservative society with conservative values sense, shared a kiss, but neither of these things happened.
It doesn't matter if there is a start date and an end date really. What matters is that the both of us gave each other an opportunity to take what we had and make it meaningful for the both of us. And though we may be at the last phases of the romantic pursuit of one another and are turning the page on romance towards friendship, I think it's worth writing about how I felt throughout the time we were together.
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The First Date
Asor.
She's the one. Idk how long it took me to come to such an idea, but I'm positive. She and I can be described as the same, "glasses, lactose intolerant, prefer dogs over cats, history buffs..." like she really likes old bicycles, like the one we saw at Kensington Market (KM). I'm actually kinda dumb lol, thinking that it'd be enough to just bring her to Konnichiwa for lunch as a date. Good thing Kensington came to my mind. In the future though, I'd have to find artsy/vintage bookstores to bring her to. And unlike with yesterday's date (not Asor), I felt like everything flowed naturally for me without me feeling any pressure or feeling nervous.
Right from the get-go, we talked about social businesses, innovation and initiatives. That in itself was like the best icebreaker I have experienced so far. I mean it's a little inconceivable almost that she as an optometry student was interested in giving back to society, forming a sustainable cycle. From this first conversation topic, I began to develop a good feeling toward her.
She enjoys Greek Yoghurt and allowed me try 2 scoops of hers, and I was sold. We talked about the murals and street art (or as another friend of mine named Irene would call it, "grafitti/that painting on the wall") found in KM and were definitely the loudest at the store we visited (Blue Banana Market).
We talked interchangeably between English and Chinese, and I think that's another aspect of her that I rly like. She came to North York when she was 9yo, yet her Chinese is fantastic. She attributes most of it to her homeroom teacher who instilled the passion of remembering her identity as a Chinese, all this through a small note the teacher wrote in a book. The teacher even threw a farewell party for her. On a more personal level, her bedtime stories were about Liu Bang, founder of the Han Dynasty. Thus she's definitely one of the more successful people who have retained their Chinese identity not just through food preferences, but through reading and speaking the language as well. Oh and she likes Cantonese food, which already ticks off a check box on my imaginary list. Asian Legend, then, would be a place I'd be down to bring her to, perhaps later though, with a larger group of friends.
She's an explorer and has SE Asia on her grad bucket list. I told her about my experience to Edinburgh and how I like climbing hills, while I was amazed by the vividness of how she described Prague, Czech Republic and Italy (Rome, Venice, Florence, Tuscany...) and she did this all before her convocation. After it, she travelled China, and I most enjoyed recalling bits and pieces of SH with her. We actually had a meaningful conversation about history, she prodding me about Portuguese, Dutch and British colonialism in Malaya as well as the separatedness of Malaya and Indonesia...
But anyway the link we found most in common was probably 798 (in Beijing). It led to us talking about anything in the world, and like me, she wants a typewriter. At one point she even made a metaphor accessible to me by framing it in terms of writing [she was talking about her love for cooking]. We both like tea more than coffee [she likes jasmine and camomile]. (We were talking about all this when we were walking along Dundas from KM to Dundas Square, and it was precisely near the public parking lot). She's pretty active, since we walked from KM to Eaton. She is a little allergic to alcohol, as inherited from her dad. And she likes all things French, having previously done a program called Explore (which like helps her improve her French by immersing her in a small village in Quebec).
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There she was, sitting at the table looking off into the distance, never once showing signs that she was checking her phone or being so bored that she seemed impatient and wanted to carry on with her life. From the back, she reminds you of a dream you once had about the right girl, who seemed so elusive to find in your dream, but now that she's here in real life, you just don't know what to do.
Not wanting to keep her waiting any longer, I came back to the table and sat opposite from her as I did previously. In other words I returned to my seat, opposite from her. We were talking the most normal, regular stuff and never once did I feel nervous talking to her at all. As our conversation kept going, it was as if we had known each other for ages, and that this was not the first date but perhaps like the 3rd one (spoiler! don't read the text in the brackets here if you don't want to know the endgame/result: who knew that date would be the last one?)
She was the one who suggested leaving the restaurant. We had been in there for 2 hours, and she wanted to check out hipster bookstores. I took her to KM instead. She betrayed hints of disappointment at my inability to know good bookstores, but I saw that I redeemed myself through the walk at KM. We went into this TYPO-like store (Blue Banana Market), and I got to know her even better by pointing at things and playing around with them. She'd pick up objects and tell me to come look at them, like a notebook with a super old looking cover (it's the one at the front of the store near the cashier). She said that it would look better if there are coffee stains on it, and that the paper was too white for her liking. At other notebooks she would tell me that the cover looks so nice that she wouldn't want to write in it. I disagreed, but buying a cool notebook from the store and having coffee stains on them is something I'd do to give to her as a present.
We're similar in that we both like the smell of coffee, but dislike drinking it. We both like dogs over cats, yet she finds some images of cats cute. And I've begun to fancy/ like the way she says cute as "Quuute".
I explained to her the way those fragrant sticks worked, those where you'd stick a stick into a long box and light up the tip (similar to the one Vic Lin had in her rez room). It made for a good segway (apparently segway isn't a word, but I used it rather often while in Malaysia to refer to an appropriate time to turn a conversation heading towards topic A to become heading towards topic B, if you get what I mean) to talk about drugs as there was one fragrance labelled "mariguana". She said, "Yeah well I guess since we're at a hipster area, there's bound to be sth. like this".
What I like about her is the things we're both similar at. I also like how she's passionate and inquisitive about French history and SE Asia History; my favourite time period being the French Revolution and she followed along my narrative perfectly, and I felt like I was speaking to another history student. I like how she has played both the piano and flute, and I rmb how she wanted to learn the guitar but (she claims) her fingers were too short. I think she'd enjoy going to watch concertos/symphonies at Roy Thomson Hall/Koerner Hall with me, besides a future date location being the tandem bikes on TO Island and walking around Eaton. For the future, I must do research on optometry, and recall our mutual interest in social business. After all, that was our memorable first conversation at Konnichiwa.
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I don't really know much about North York, but I do know some things about a person who's been living there for like 12 years now. Her view of that place is coloured by the need to drive everywhere; unlike in DT (downtown) where you can just walk from KM to Dundas Sq, for example. I was pretty surprised that she was the type who didn't mind a 30 minute walk, but then again she was eating Greek Yoghurt so I guess that makes up for the reason why she was fine with the walk. Also I guess for young people like us, we should always walk as opposed to taking the streetcar/subway.
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| KM |
While in the fun KM store (Blue Banana Market), I spotted a chess set but said nothing of it. She on the other hand spotted it and asked if I play board games or not. I answered, "Yes, Anomia". She's played that too, and the conversation went to wards the direction of the importance of being, "able to lose," i.e. the importance of not being a sore loser (small spoiler: the boy she was seeing previously was a sore loser). After all, it's just a game. She was telling me about this other game where you take sides to defeat your opponent, and there were past instances where her friendship with friends took a turn for the worse because of the allegiance structure of the game. I guess eome people are just really sore losers to the point they wanna keep playing 'til they win.
Very briefly it's worth recalling that from what she comes across as from a limited 4 hours together, she's a great chef at fusion food, likes Golden Retrievers (dogs) and enjoys a slow-pace life. Meaning if I ever go travelling with her, it'd be more chilled and less on the go; on the other hand, maybe she'll even have all the days planned out too haha (small spoiler: I learnt after the first date that it was the latter, not the former).
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The Second Date
Dear Eiluj,
I've just returned from a second date with girl from Nanjing named Asor. She's a pretty fascinating person and I believed that the ice between the both of us were broken pretty well. Today we mainly spoke in Mandarin to each other so I was constantly thinking in like 2 languages when speaking to her. It was pretty cool though, and I guess she was really supportive of my 'futile' (read: pretty bad) attempts at speaking Mandarin.
I find her to still be the one I intend to settle with (NOTE: by settle I mean to settle as my gf, not anything else beyond that), although she wants us to remain the stage where we're both trying to get to know each other. "I don't want to settle" is almost verbatim of what she'd said, but like always I was on top of my game [so I played it cool when she said that]. I learnt more about her family, like her grandma is from SH, how her parents met and how her dad lets her do whatever she wants whereas her mom is more concerned. I suppose it's pretty inevitable to talk about family by now.
We talked about why I'm choosing not to write the LSATs [fairness...justice...personal relationships etc being my reasons] and she mentioned that she did the OAT (optometry admission test thingy). We opened up a lot more to each other and like I enjoyed casually flirting with her. I talked about bees and sweetness, complimented her on her polka dots dress. She'd very casually brush off my flirts with her in a cute manner, saying, "Psshh." before looking away.
She's only sort of been in one relationship, and that was one directional (the boy liking her) and it happened earlier in 2016. It was long distance and the guy just assumed they were a couple though she didn't want to settle. But [they] mainly [left each other] because the guy was a sore loser (i.e. 输不起), leading to her breaking up with him. Not that they were ever properly in a relationship anyway. In return I told her about my relationship with Eniale who went to Switzerland for uni.
I guess I should say what we did besides what we talked about, but I ought to recall that she likes royal green coloured mini coopers. We watched "Blind to Happiness" at TO CFA which was good. I liked the poem delivered a lot. I mean for something performed by one person, there were lots of depth behind the comedy message. We wandered into the Civic Centre, there was a booth which provided free cold water 'coz it was really hot (they was an extreme heat warning issued). We spent some time at the library nearby, where she told me more about Yang Jiang, an author who wrote "Wo Men Sha" (The Three of Us). We stayed there 'til 5pm, then went to people watch at the seating area outside Empress Walk theatre (oh I rmb that place so well from going there to see Atina two years ago). I told her the complex story of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, Catherine, Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots and Mary I, and James I on top of Protestantism and like how the UK works [things about Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales].
At around six, we left to walk to the restaurant. Before that though, she told me about 红楼梦 "Dream of the Red Chamber" and she seemed happy that I remembered how she told me her father would tell her historical Chinese stories as bedtime tales. In return, she remembered I was wearing some kind of polka dots shirt, which is close enough. We had dinner at a Taiwanese place, where we commented on our young server who had too much make-up on. While people-watching, I learnt that she's not the make-up type.
Walking to Finch station, she told me about her hat constantly falling down and asked if there was anything she could do about it. I said no, bid her happy birthday (her birthday was in 3 days) [I didn't give her a gift], hugged her goodbye and left saying, "下次再约吧!" (let's go on a date again next time!)
Sincerely,
S (this letter was not actually posted/sent out. I just chose to loosely write it in a letter-format)
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I suppose I should mention that we talked about CMB and dating too, but it was all done in Chinese. Like omg, there was just so much speaking of Chinese I almost felt like I was back in SH. The restaurant we went to mostly played Chinese songs and we were pretty much surrounded by other Chinese people our age.
We talked about our travel experiences, and I told her about my experience with Legna in Edinburgh. I didn't mean to play the politically correct (PC) card with her, but the beauty of the Chinese language is that you can conceal the gender of a person by the character 他/她. These two characters sound exactly the same, and all Asor knows about Legna from our conversation is that s/he is from BJ. Asor told me about her travel buddy to Italy, but it took a lot out of me to reveal that: "我在机场与他/她道别的时候,超有感觉" (when I was at the airport bidding him/her goodbye, it was really emotional for me". Perhaps now I"m just feeling guilty that I didn't correct her when she broke into English and referred to my friend as 'he'.
I feel like I might've been too pushy about me wanting her to cook for me. I recall her liking fusion food, and she doesn't like Japanese food a lot. The next time we meet (and I'm 99% certain that there'll be a next time), we aren't gonna eat a meal together I guess, but rather do something different like biking on TO Island.
I still have a good feeling about Asor, but I'm treading carefully because I don't want to be friendzoned by her. In fact, I'd say I still intend to settle [with her].
*This concludes part one of the story. If you haven't figured out the names already, I'll let you in on a hint: all of the names were flipped around.
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