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Jun 25, 2010
Love @ 130kmh
It's set then. I'm saying goodbye to my life as I know it and getting, um, married
By sumiko tan
It's set then. I'm saying goodbye to my life as I know it and getting, um, married.
View more photos
He started the engine and we got going.
I didn't dare look up. It was hard to, anyway. The helmet was clamped tight on my face. My cheeks were bunched up like a chipmunk's. I didn't feel particularly attractive.
He went a bit faster.
I squeezed my eyes shut and kept my head low. I could feel the cold eating into my legs. I should have worn thicker tights, I thought.
It was early spring in Wales and still very chilly. The wind forced its way into the sliver of space I'd left open in my helmet. I couldn't breathe otherwise. I'd never realised how claustrophobic it'd feel under a helmet.
I wrapped my arms more tightly around his waist but my fingers - clumsy in thick gloves - couldn't grab him properly.
The minutes passed.
I opened first one eye, then the other, and lifted my head a bit. I peeped to my left and right.
A quarter of an hour went by. I was now sitting straight up on the motorbike and turning my head coolly.
Cars were whizzing past us on the right. Hedges and stone walls loomed dangerously close on the left. But I wasn't scared, not really.
When we reached a bend, our bodies swayed with the machine and dipped low near the tarmac.
I looked at the speedometer. It was inching past 100kmh to 110, 120. I pressed my body closer to his and wrapped my thighs more tightly around him.
Then I noticed something happening. Whenever we went downhill, he would have to adjust himself and would slide down the seat. I could feel the gap between his body and mine - an emptiness, almost, a sort of loss - and I'd make a desperate grab for his waist.
Then when the road levelled up, he would inch himself back up the seat and I could feel his body again. I felt safe once more.
And it was at that point that I realised that, yes, if I could trust my life to him as we zipped up and down the motorways and country roads of Wales on his scary-looking 1,000cc bike, I could trust my life to him.
And so, dear reader, I am doing it at last. Getting, er, married. At the grand old age of 46. Next month. To Hurricane, my crush from junior college with whom I reconnected after 29 years.
I called him Hurricane because he looked like the actor (an unknown Hawaiian called Dayton Ka'ne) in the cheesy 1970s disaster flick, Hurricane, starring Mia Farrow.
We went on one bad date in 1980 when we were both at Anglo-Chinese Junior College. We watched a movie at Capitol and had a milkshake. We were both so shy we were almost mute. We couldn't wait to go home. I took the bus and he cycled back.
That was my memory of what happened.
His version is a little different. 'You broke my heart - twice,' he said when he looked me up last July.
'You're crazy,' I said. 'You're imagining it. We had just that one awful date and never saw each other again.'
No, he said, you broke my heart first in JC and then again a few years later. He said he'd phoned me when he returned from university in Canada. I'd been curt and that was that.
'You're wrong,' I said. 'I have no memory of that.'
But he was probably right. While going through my old things last year after we'd re-connected, I discovered that he had actually sent me a birthday card, a Valentine's Day card and a love letter (all without dates, unfortunately) after we'd left JC.
In any case, we went our separate ways. I became a journalist and worked in the same newspaper for 25 years.
Among other things, I wrote many (too many - sorry) columns lamenting and celebrating love and singlehood.
He, meanwhile, worked at the Singapore Sports Council for a few years. In the early 1990s, he met a Welsh woman while they were both playing in a chess tournament in Kuala Lumpur. They got married.
She lived here for a while but the mosquitoes gave her hell, so they packed up for Britain. He taught in a primary school for a while and played in lots of chess tournaments.
They lived in a few cities before settling in Wales. He became an electrician and taught chess in a few schools. They had a daughter five years ago but the marriage was already breaking up.
There was no communication, he said, and communication, he's since realised, is critical to a good marriage.
His divorce was finalised early last year. In July, he came to Singapore to visit his family.
There were actually two former girl friends he thought of calling, he told me later. He couldn't get the number of the first girl but he knew where I worked.
Thanks, I told him, I'm so flattered to have been your second choice.
I wasn't at my desk when he called and we kept missing each other's calls thereafter. But we finally got in touch.
We met up for lunch and we weren't shy anymore. It felt nice resuming our friendship. It felt comfortable.
When he went back, we kept in touch via e-mail and Skype. I made it clear that I was not looking to be in a relationship. We're like siblings, okay, former JC mates. I felt for him like I would a brother, and I really did.
We talked a lot, about nothing and everything. We argued and quarrelled a bit too. But mostly, he listened to my endless woes and buoyed me whenever I felt depressed.
Don't ever do anything stupid, okay, he said. Come visit me first.
He was open about his feelings for me and was nice. He got a birthday cake sent to my house. He kept me company over Skype on Christmas and New Year's Eve when I was feeling desperately lonely.
He badgered me to visit him. Ya, I said, I will. In 2010. End 2010. Maybe. See how.
In March this year, I was feeling particularly down and in need of a friend. I decided on the spur of the moment to visit him.
Guess what, I told him, I'll see you in two weeks' time, okay? But, please, we're just friends. I merely want a change of scenery.
Sure, he said, we'll have a great time, as friends. I'll show you around, I'll make you happy.
I nearly didn't go because we got into a silly tiff over whether he'd drive me back to Heathrow from Swansea. He'd casually mentioned that should he be really tired, there was a bus I could take to the airport. I flipped at that. Some kind of friend you are, I said. I'm not going.
We didn't talk for two days. Then he gave in. He sent me a bunch of roses and the note read: 'I'll drive you to the end of the world and back. Love, Hurricane.'
There you go, I scolded him, always speaking so extravagantly. But I couldn't help smiling.
So he picked me up at Heathrow. He had bought tickets to a Liverpool v Portsmouth EPL match and we drove to Anfield. It was fun.
We made our way down to his house in Wales and spent the rest of the week there. We did the usual touristy things. He cooked for me with Don McLean playing in the background. ('We've very different music taste, you know,' I remarked. I prefer Usher and Sean Kingston. I don't think he's heard of them.)
It rains a lot in Wales, I discovered. But on the Sunday before I left, the weather was bright and sunny.
Let's take the bike out, he said. We'll go to the Gower peninsula.
I told him I wasn't sure about that. I'd told my mum that I wouldn't go on his bike.
Oh come on, he said, it'll be fun. I'll take care of you. I'll be careful. We'll have a great time.
He fitted me with a biker jacket and biker gloves (his ex-wife's actually, she'd worn them only once) and I was in tights and boots. I felt like a biker chick.
And he was right. It was great.
That night, he asked: Will you be my girl?
It wasn't the first time he'd asked me that. He'd been doing it from last July after we'd met.
Aiyah, I said, you and your girl girl girl. If you mean girlfriend, say girlfriend.
But maybe it was the bike ride, the romantic rainy weather, Don McLean even, or maybe I was just sleepy.
I thought, oh, what the heck, you live only once. Grab the chance. Be bold. Take the plunge.
Ya okay, I added.
Okay? He did a double take.
Ya okay, I said. I'll be your 'girl'.
He looked at me, shocked. Then grinned. A really big and silly grin.
You'll be my girl, he said, in wonder.
Ya, okay, stop saying it, will you?
We might as well get engaged then, he said. Why wait?
What? You mad?
No, let's get engaged. I'll buy you a ring.
He was very happy.
So was I.
And so, that's how I finally did it. At such an old age. Giving up my singlehood after so many years of wondering if I'd ever find the right one - or if there was a right one in the first place. And there he was, right under my nose when I was 16 and in school.
He'll be moving back here and the wedding's set for the end of next month.
What happens if it doesn't work out, I asked him at the bus station before leaving for Heathrow (in the end I decided to spare him and I took the bus back to the airport myself.)
It will work out, he said. Marriage is forever.
Well, it wasn't forever for you the first time round, was it, I retorted.
This time it will be, he promised. We can communicate.
I looked into his eyes gazing at me and at the lines that have appeared on his face in those 30 years I hadn't seen him, and I said: 'Okay, Hurricane. I trust you.
'We'll get married.'
[email protected]
Sumiko Tan's column in The Sunday Times will resume in September.
Swept away by Hurricane
It would be fair to say that journalist Sumiko Tan is Singapore's most famous single woman.
The 46-year-old, who is editor of The Sunday Times and supervising editor of Life!, Urban, Mind Your Body and Digital Life, has been baring her soul as a successful single career woman in a column in The Sunday Times since July 3, 1994.
In her fortnightly columns, she has written about topics such as her mixed race parentage (her father was a Chinese Singaporean businessman and her mother is a Japanese housewife), not being shy about her age, the plight of foreign workers and her fear of wrinkles, mosquitoes and iPods.
But a running motif is singlehood: The joys and stresses of it, the boyfriends and marriage proposals, her awkwardness with children, of watching her peers walk down the aisle while she watches television alone on a Saturday night.
Over the years, she has built up a cult following. She was Singapore's Carrie Bradshaw even before Sex And The City hit TV screens here.
Many have read the highs and lows of her love life. Some single career women see her as their role model. But she also has her fair share of detractors. Some say her musings are repetitive. Her belief that a woman is not complete without a man does not make her popular with feminists.
Still, it is undeniable that she is one of the paper's most influential writers.
For one of her early columns in 1994, where she meditated on being a single mother, she was ticked off by then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong in his National Day Rally speech. He said he was disappointed that an educated, serious-minded woman had considered having a baby out of wedlock.
Then there was the 'prawn-peeling' column in 2002, where she defended Singaporean women, who were seen by some men as being too argumentative and hard compared to their counterparts from other Asian countries. She would never shell prawns for her partner, she declared.
That column drew more than 100 responses. Some applauded the strong Singaporean career woman, others criticised her lack of feminine 'charm'.
Asked if she was shy about revealing so much of her life in a national paper, she says: 'Yes, I sometimes wonder why I write such stuff myself.'
On a more serious note, she says that she had been tasked to write a personal column, and 'the only way to write sincerely and honestly is to write about things happening in my life'.
The number of responses to her columns varies depending on her choice of topic. For example, those about her dogs draw many e-mail. 'I've been writing so long, I guess readers know what to expect,' she adds.
Well, here is something that they will not see coming: She is getting married.
The man sweeping her off her feet is 'Hurricane', a teenage crush from Anglo-Chinese Junior College.
His real name is Quek Suan Shiau and he is an electrician and chess teacher based in Britain. He has a five-year-old daughter from a previous marriage.
The ex-schoolmates reconnected in July last year and he started making appearances in her columns as a friend.
Next month, he will be her husband.
She had in fact mentioned him twice in her old columns - one in 1993 about her alma mater and her schoolgirl crushes, another in 2002 about recalling old crushes in states of loneliness.
She says: 'So I wasn't making Hurricane up. He does in fact exist.'
He says he did not follow her columns until recently, and is not averse to her writing about their married life. 'There's nothing to fear and hide in life,' Mr Quek, 48, tells Life! over the phone.
He is moving to Singapore to live with Ms Tan and her mother. His daughter will remain with his artist ex-wife in Wales. They will be in touch daily through Skype.
He is in the midst of selling off his possessions, including the motorcycle he has owned for six years, and plans to start an electrical company here.
He says leaving his daughter behind is the hardest part. 'But I love Sumiko. I have to choose,' he says. 'I made my choice and I'm confident it will work out.'
He says he fell in love with her on their first date when he came back last year.
'I've not gone out with someone I've known for such a long time, from when we were young,' he adds. 'I had a flashback of how I felt about her the first time. I remembered her facial expressions and the tone of her voice.'
On why he loves her, he says: 'She's straightforward, kind and genuine. She can also be petulant, fiery and bossy. There's always going to be a dominant half in the relationship and she's going to be the dominant one. I've asked her to be a benign dictator.'
Adeline Chia
Love @ 130kmh
It's set then. I'm saying goodbye to my life as I know it and getting, um, married
By sumiko tan
It's set then. I'm saying goodbye to my life as I know it and getting, um, married.
View more photos
He started the engine and we got going.
I didn't dare look up. It was hard to, anyway. The helmet was clamped tight on my face. My cheeks were bunched up like a chipmunk's. I didn't feel particularly attractive.
He went a bit faster.
I squeezed my eyes shut and kept my head low. I could feel the cold eating into my legs. I should have worn thicker tights, I thought.
It was early spring in Wales and still very chilly. The wind forced its way into the sliver of space I'd left open in my helmet. I couldn't breathe otherwise. I'd never realised how claustrophobic it'd feel under a helmet.
I wrapped my arms more tightly around his waist but my fingers - clumsy in thick gloves - couldn't grab him properly.
The minutes passed.
I opened first one eye, then the other, and lifted my head a bit. I peeped to my left and right.
A quarter of an hour went by. I was now sitting straight up on the motorbike and turning my head coolly.
Cars were whizzing past us on the right. Hedges and stone walls loomed dangerously close on the left. But I wasn't scared, not really.
When we reached a bend, our bodies swayed with the machine and dipped low near the tarmac.
I looked at the speedometer. It was inching past 100kmh to 110, 120. I pressed my body closer to his and wrapped my thighs more tightly around him.
Then I noticed something happening. Whenever we went downhill, he would have to adjust himself and would slide down the seat. I could feel the gap between his body and mine - an emptiness, almost, a sort of loss - and I'd make a desperate grab for his waist.
Then when the road levelled up, he would inch himself back up the seat and I could feel his body again. I felt safe once more.
And it was at that point that I realised that, yes, if I could trust my life to him as we zipped up and down the motorways and country roads of Wales on his scary-looking 1,000cc bike, I could trust my life to him.
And so, dear reader, I am doing it at last. Getting, er, married. At the grand old age of 46. Next month. To Hurricane, my crush from junior college with whom I reconnected after 29 years.
I called him Hurricane because he looked like the actor (an unknown Hawaiian called Dayton Ka'ne) in the cheesy 1970s disaster flick, Hurricane, starring Mia Farrow.
We went on one bad date in 1980 when we were both at Anglo-Chinese Junior College. We watched a movie at Capitol and had a milkshake. We were both so shy we were almost mute. We couldn't wait to go home. I took the bus and he cycled back.
That was my memory of what happened.
His version is a little different. 'You broke my heart - twice,' he said when he looked me up last July.
'You're crazy,' I said. 'You're imagining it. We had just that one awful date and never saw each other again.'
No, he said, you broke my heart first in JC and then again a few years later. He said he'd phoned me when he returned from university in Canada. I'd been curt and that was that.
'You're wrong,' I said. 'I have no memory of that.'
But he was probably right. While going through my old things last year after we'd re-connected, I discovered that he had actually sent me a birthday card, a Valentine's Day card and a love letter (all without dates, unfortunately) after we'd left JC.
In any case, we went our separate ways. I became a journalist and worked in the same newspaper for 25 years.
Among other things, I wrote many (too many - sorry) columns lamenting and celebrating love and singlehood.
He, meanwhile, worked at the Singapore Sports Council for a few years. In the early 1990s, he met a Welsh woman while they were both playing in a chess tournament in Kuala Lumpur. They got married.
She lived here for a while but the mosquitoes gave her hell, so they packed up for Britain. He taught in a primary school for a while and played in lots of chess tournaments.
They lived in a few cities before settling in Wales. He became an electrician and taught chess in a few schools. They had a daughter five years ago but the marriage was already breaking up.
There was no communication, he said, and communication, he's since realised, is critical to a good marriage.
His divorce was finalised early last year. In July, he came to Singapore to visit his family.
There were actually two former girl friends he thought of calling, he told me later. He couldn't get the number of the first girl but he knew where I worked.
Thanks, I told him, I'm so flattered to have been your second choice.
I wasn't at my desk when he called and we kept missing each other's calls thereafter. But we finally got in touch.
We met up for lunch and we weren't shy anymore. It felt nice resuming our friendship. It felt comfortable.
When he went back, we kept in touch via e-mail and Skype. I made it clear that I was not looking to be in a relationship. We're like siblings, okay, former JC mates. I felt for him like I would a brother, and I really did.
We talked a lot, about nothing and everything. We argued and quarrelled a bit too. But mostly, he listened to my endless woes and buoyed me whenever I felt depressed.
Don't ever do anything stupid, okay, he said. Come visit me first.
He was open about his feelings for me and was nice. He got a birthday cake sent to my house. He kept me company over Skype on Christmas and New Year's Eve when I was feeling desperately lonely.
He badgered me to visit him. Ya, I said, I will. In 2010. End 2010. Maybe. See how.
In March this year, I was feeling particularly down and in need of a friend. I decided on the spur of the moment to visit him.
Guess what, I told him, I'll see you in two weeks' time, okay? But, please, we're just friends. I merely want a change of scenery.
Sure, he said, we'll have a great time, as friends. I'll show you around, I'll make you happy.
I nearly didn't go because we got into a silly tiff over whether he'd drive me back to Heathrow from Swansea. He'd casually mentioned that should he be really tired, there was a bus I could take to the airport. I flipped at that. Some kind of friend you are, I said. I'm not going.
We didn't talk for two days. Then he gave in. He sent me a bunch of roses and the note read: 'I'll drive you to the end of the world and back. Love, Hurricane.'
There you go, I scolded him, always speaking so extravagantly. But I couldn't help smiling.
So he picked me up at Heathrow. He had bought tickets to a Liverpool v Portsmouth EPL match and we drove to Anfield. It was fun.
We made our way down to his house in Wales and spent the rest of the week there. We did the usual touristy things. He cooked for me with Don McLean playing in the background. ('We've very different music taste, you know,' I remarked. I prefer Usher and Sean Kingston. I don't think he's heard of them.)
It rains a lot in Wales, I discovered. But on the Sunday before I left, the weather was bright and sunny.
Let's take the bike out, he said. We'll go to the Gower peninsula.
I told him I wasn't sure about that. I'd told my mum that I wouldn't go on his bike.
Oh come on, he said, it'll be fun. I'll take care of you. I'll be careful. We'll have a great time.
He fitted me with a biker jacket and biker gloves (his ex-wife's actually, she'd worn them only once) and I was in tights and boots. I felt like a biker chick.
And he was right. It was great.
That night, he asked: Will you be my girl?
It wasn't the first time he'd asked me that. He'd been doing it from last July after we'd met.
Aiyah, I said, you and your girl girl girl. If you mean girlfriend, say girlfriend.
But maybe it was the bike ride, the romantic rainy weather, Don McLean even, or maybe I was just sleepy.
I thought, oh, what the heck, you live only once. Grab the chance. Be bold. Take the plunge.
Ya okay, I added.
Okay? He did a double take.
Ya okay, I said. I'll be your 'girl'.
He looked at me, shocked. Then grinned. A really big and silly grin.
You'll be my girl, he said, in wonder.
Ya, okay, stop saying it, will you?
We might as well get engaged then, he said. Why wait?
What? You mad?
No, let's get engaged. I'll buy you a ring.
He was very happy.
So was I.
And so, that's how I finally did it. At such an old age. Giving up my singlehood after so many years of wondering if I'd ever find the right one - or if there was a right one in the first place. And there he was, right under my nose when I was 16 and in school.
He'll be moving back here and the wedding's set for the end of next month.
What happens if it doesn't work out, I asked him at the bus station before leaving for Heathrow (in the end I decided to spare him and I took the bus back to the airport myself.)
It will work out, he said. Marriage is forever.
Well, it wasn't forever for you the first time round, was it, I retorted.
This time it will be, he promised. We can communicate.
I looked into his eyes gazing at me and at the lines that have appeared on his face in those 30 years I hadn't seen him, and I said: 'Okay, Hurricane. I trust you.
'We'll get married.'
[email protected]
Sumiko Tan's column in The Sunday Times will resume in September.
Swept away by Hurricane
It would be fair to say that journalist Sumiko Tan is Singapore's most famous single woman.
The 46-year-old, who is editor of The Sunday Times and supervising editor of Life!, Urban, Mind Your Body and Digital Life, has been baring her soul as a successful single career woman in a column in The Sunday Times since July 3, 1994.
In her fortnightly columns, she has written about topics such as her mixed race parentage (her father was a Chinese Singaporean businessman and her mother is a Japanese housewife), not being shy about her age, the plight of foreign workers and her fear of wrinkles, mosquitoes and iPods.
But a running motif is singlehood: The joys and stresses of it, the boyfriends and marriage proposals, her awkwardness with children, of watching her peers walk down the aisle while she watches television alone on a Saturday night.
Over the years, she has built up a cult following. She was Singapore's Carrie Bradshaw even before Sex And The City hit TV screens here.
Many have read the highs and lows of her love life. Some single career women see her as their role model. But she also has her fair share of detractors. Some say her musings are repetitive. Her belief that a woman is not complete without a man does not make her popular with feminists.
Still, it is undeniable that she is one of the paper's most influential writers.
For one of her early columns in 1994, where she meditated on being a single mother, she was ticked off by then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong in his National Day Rally speech. He said he was disappointed that an educated, serious-minded woman had considered having a baby out of wedlock.
Then there was the 'prawn-peeling' column in 2002, where she defended Singaporean women, who were seen by some men as being too argumentative and hard compared to their counterparts from other Asian countries. She would never shell prawns for her partner, she declared.
That column drew more than 100 responses. Some applauded the strong Singaporean career woman, others criticised her lack of feminine 'charm'.
Asked if she was shy about revealing so much of her life in a national paper, she says: 'Yes, I sometimes wonder why I write such stuff myself.'
On a more serious note, she says that she had been tasked to write a personal column, and 'the only way to write sincerely and honestly is to write about things happening in my life'.
The number of responses to her columns varies depending on her choice of topic. For example, those about her dogs draw many e-mail. 'I've been writing so long, I guess readers know what to expect,' she adds.
Well, here is something that they will not see coming: She is getting married.
The man sweeping her off her feet is 'Hurricane', a teenage crush from Anglo-Chinese Junior College.
His real name is Quek Suan Shiau and he is an electrician and chess teacher based in Britain. He has a five-year-old daughter from a previous marriage.
The ex-schoolmates reconnected in July last year and he started making appearances in her columns as a friend.
Next month, he will be her husband.
She had in fact mentioned him twice in her old columns - one in 1993 about her alma mater and her schoolgirl crushes, another in 2002 about recalling old crushes in states of loneliness.
She says: 'So I wasn't making Hurricane up. He does in fact exist.'
He says he did not follow her columns until recently, and is not averse to her writing about their married life. 'There's nothing to fear and hide in life,' Mr Quek, 48, tells Life! over the phone.
He is moving to Singapore to live with Ms Tan and her mother. His daughter will remain with his artist ex-wife in Wales. They will be in touch daily through Skype.
He is in the midst of selling off his possessions, including the motorcycle he has owned for six years, and plans to start an electrical company here.
He says leaving his daughter behind is the hardest part. 'But I love Sumiko. I have to choose,' he says. 'I made my choice and I'm confident it will work out.'
He says he fell in love with her on their first date when he came back last year.
'I've not gone out with someone I've known for such a long time, from when we were young,' he adds. 'I had a flashback of how I felt about her the first time. I remembered her facial expressions and the tone of her voice.'
On why he loves her, he says: 'She's straightforward, kind and genuine. She can also be petulant, fiery and bossy. There's always going to be a dominant half in the relationship and she's going to be the dominant one. I've asked her to be a benign dictator.'
Adeline Chia
