Grace Tan

Was her name Jaavaani, or Pravani, or something like that? John didn’t quite remember, after meeting Praveena at workk for the first time in Singapore. She was annoyed because he could not pronounce her name properly, plus the extroverted John was a little too loud for her liking. Finally, after a few weeks of calling the wrong name, he got it right.

Getting to know each other

Praveena: We worked really long hours and found common friends with those who had as little work-life balance as us. Our clique was called “Macarena Madness”, named after some incident where John had to do the Macarena for losing a challenge. Over the years, we’ve had many challenges (e.g. weight loss challenge, 6 pack challenge, KFC double down challenge). We trained for a marathon, had various drinking sessions and even dressed as corpse bride and groom for Halloween.

While I was getting fond of him, I realized that John might have feelings for me only after thinking about all the nice things he had done for me (e.g. making breakfast on my birthday, bringing me home when I’m drunk, defending me when other teased me, protected me from questionable strangers). I guess John slowly grew on me.

John: Working long hours, we got to talk a lot. We worked through nights and went for breakfast together. Not realizing it myself, I started doing things that favor her and sharing secrets with her, so much so that the colleague behind me asked me if there was something on between us. Not good at lying and taken by surprise, I didn’t have an answer and that was when I realized that there was probably something going on. I realized I enjoyed making her smile!

Dating phase

Praveena: John asked me to be his girlfriend in true Love Actually style – with the cue cards – because he knew I liked that movie. After the initial anxiety of telling our friends and family (who thankfully were supportive), it was pretty much the same usual things we did after. It was just nice to know that John was always there to have my back.

John: There was a phase when I thought she liked another guy and she thought I liked another girl. But once I realized we were actually talking about each other (Praveena kinda gave me a big hint when she was drunk), I was overjoyed and went on to text her about it the next day. She was feeling embarrassed for a moment cause she was still thinking the girl I liked was someone else. But I told her all was well and hinted her that she was the one I was talking about. Playful me wanted to let her feel embarrassed a while longer and so hinted her to let her realize it herself. xD

Then we had our first date and we got together. Since we already got to know each other in office and spent maybe one or two months thinking that each other liked someone else, we didn’t really have a dating phase of knowing each other more to ascertain if we like each other, but more of went on to the dating phase of knowing each other more.

Being in the same line and having similar mindset about how things should and should not be done at work, we quickly realized we are a great match! =p We were excited to move on to the next phase of the relationship!

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