Happy Birthday, Love

Alright now.

It’s Daphne’s birthday today.

Those of you that know me personally you know how I feel about being overtly mushy, particularly in front of people we know. I’m not one to blow kisses at her from a distance or call her sweety-pie names like muffin, cupcake, chee-cheong-fun and other saccharine sweet delicacies. We have this agreement that started from our NTU days that we won’t make the people around us feel uncomfortable, simply for practical reasons – we didn’t want to be ostracized and left without group partners for all our assignments. Just imagine doing a project in a group of four and two of them spend half their time cavorting with one another. Urgh.

I digress.

Remember the great Boyzone song – Love me for a Reason?

Don’t love me for fun girl

Let me be the one girl

Love me for a reason

Let the reason be love

It’s a nice idea but let the reason for love be…love? Nah, it doesn’t make sense even after a sixpack of beer.

There’re always reasons why you are drawn to a person, and I love Daf because of real reasons. Here are five of them. I’m not sure if this post qualifies as too much information but there, you’ve been warned.

1. She’s smoking hot.

I’m not sure what you can use to describe that except one word – NOSEBLEED.

2. She’s darn smart.

You know, I’m no half-wit myself (heh-heh).  So when I say she’s smart, believe me, she’s smart.

We had this competition in church called the Word Power which was basically a competition where you memorise bible verses – SIXTY of them, including punctuations, commas, full stops, the whole works – and recite them without reference. Daf, her sister and I formed a team and we topped the first two preliminary rounds before choking in the finals on a rather careless mistake.

The point here is that anyone who can memorise Habakkuk 3:17-19 practically backwards is no mean intellectual slob for sure. I’m not proselytizing but you might want to check that verse out.

3. She has a radio voice.

You’ve read her blog for sure, but did you know that Daphne was one half of NTU’s internet-radio DJ team called the Mad-Crappers? She actually hosted a public event at Scape Park, IMPROMPTU as well. Got the crowd worked up and all. Which was really impressive. Unfortunately I’m sorry I can’t find any old audio clips of her program. But she has one sexy voice I tell ya.

4. She’s sporty and fiercely competitive.

I know, I know. She doesn’t seem like the sort. But Daf was actually captain of her Anglican High School basketball team during her secondary school days and they were apparently really good.

I once played a pickup game with her against two ah bengs and me being a soccer guy I inevitably misplaced a pass to her.She came up to me real close, right in my face, gave me the most fearsome glare I have ever received in my life and said quietly,

“Are you serious about the game?”

I nodded furiously.

“Then make sure you don’t make another pass like that.”

I was left shivering in my pants and I didn’t misplace another pass for the game, nor for the rest of my life for that matter.  There, I confess it, I’m henpecked like that. We crushed the two ah-bengs and I didn’t make a single basket – true story. When you find someone like that, you just gotta marry her.

5. She loves me right back.

This is where it gets a little cheesy and emo here.

Having been together for almost ten years, we’ve been through some crazy, amazing times. Always crazy and mostly amazing. Even times when we were so broke all we had was a plate of char kway teow (plain) which we bought for 80cents and shared it while having a good laugh about our sorry plight.

But whether it was watching Serendipity for the 12864th time…

kissing in the rain at East Coast Park…

sharing a warm cup of toffee nut latte at Starbucks on a chilly nite…

trying to act young and hip at another Jason Mraz concert…

saying yes to me when I was a mere student with nary a single cent in the world…

Every moment is and will always be close to my heart.  You are the most beautiful and awesome person ever and five is really just a micro-milli-mini-fraction of the reasons why I love you. And thanks for loving me right back.

Ten years seems like an awfully long time but I know it’s just the beginning for us.

Happy birthday, love.