Yes, it finally happened

On Saturday 18th March 2006, I proposed to Jenny. She responded in the affirmative, and so now we are engaged! For those who are interested, I’ve included the details leading up to the event below – from my point of view, anyway. It was very hastily written just before leaving work, so expect it to be constantly rewritten as I start remembering various details here and there, and pick out my own spelling and grammar problems, as well as other nitpicky things.

This, friends, is the fruit of my labours. Towards the end of last year, I started shopping around for a diamond. Being a child of the information era, my search started and ended on the Internet. The rock itself came from the Diamond Exchange, recommended by Dillon, and was selected by me based on a very stringent set of criteria. Being a total geek (and a man), size didn’t matter as much as the specifications. For those not in the know, diamonds can generally be categorized by the four C’s (Carat, Colour, Clarity and Cut) After some lengthy deliberations, I settled on the following:

Carat: 0.52 ct
Colour: E
Clarity: VVS1
Cut: Ideal+ Hearts and Arrows

“Hearts and Arrows” just means that the diamond is perfectly symmetrical. There are a whole bunch of other specs that apply for Cut, like pavilion depth, table width, etc. etc. but suffice to say that the one I chose was a good cut. At the end of the day, it just means that the diamond will look “brighter”.

After I received the diamond, it was time to get it set. Going from another recommendation by Juan and Glenda, I went to see Ron Crisp with nothing more than a couple of printouts of some solitaire engagements rings that I looked up on the Internet. The Tiffany setting was probably the nicest clawed setting I could find (bezel = NO!!!), so I went with that, and chose a custom band ‘coz I didn’t like the angular look of the Tiffany one. The “shoulder” (how it starts out as a knife edge after the setting, but smoothing down to a round edge as it goes around) was suggested by Ron and it turned out really nice.

The where and the how

Of course, this is the part that most people will be interested in, and luckily enough it’s a good story. Jenny and I have talked about becoming engaged before, and the only thing she asked for was that it be a surprise. Easy enough, you would think…

Well firstly, there’s the matter of the ring. The current trend seems to be for the couple to go out and shop for the ring together. But nope, part of my mission would be to source the thing itself. You can read the details of how I went about it above, but in terms of trying to find out the right size, I have to admit that it was a bit of a miracle. Through some combination of techniques such as sneaking different rings onto her fingers while trinket shopping and then trying them on my own, I eventually discovered that her ring finger is a fraction smaller than my pinky finger on my right hand.

After that was settled came the matter of informing the parents. As if the task itself wasn’t daunting enough, there was also the language barriers and the fact that other people can’t be trusted to keep secrets. At first, when Jenny’s mum and step-dad were visiting from Belgium, I sneaked in a quick conversation with them, which they then promptly relayed to Jenny – much to her chagrin. Strike 1….

Next, I informed my parents of the good news that I was ready to propose to Jenny, and they reacted in a way that I was totally not prepared for. In the Chinese culture, it seems, there is no engagement period. When a couple are ready to marry, they throw a big engagement party – and my parents, having recently undergone medical treatment, were in no condition to travel, so they were immensely offended that I intended to have a party without them (as they thought we were going to do). That, and the fact that they haven’t met Jenny’s parents yet, which is another big cultural faux pas. This particular problem ended up being resolved with a long-distance teleconference between me, Jenny and my parents. Strike 2….

Lastly, I had to ask Jenny’s dad for her hand. Learning from previous experience, I specifically requested that they keep it a secret from Jenny. However, the next day, Jenny gets a call from her cousin congratulating her – they had heard the news from uncle (Jenny’s dad) that I had spoken with them. D’oh! Strike 3!!!

By now, Jenny’s expectations had been growing and growing, to the stage where she was beginning to feel immensely frustrated that all this stuff seemed to be happening, but no proposal was forthcoming.

I had to act. Having decided when I was going to do the deed, I chose to work from home on the day, allowing me some time to prepare. But wouldn’t you know it, Jenny caught Laryngitis, losing her voice, and spoiling the plans I made. Honestly!

Fast forward 2 weeks…

Finally, everything seemed to be lining up. It was a Saturday morning and Jenny was at college. I set everything up as you see in the picture. The album consisted of a few collages with pictures, photos, print outs, etc. of sentimental occasions that we shared. (I got all the photos printed out during a Harvey Norman special – 15c for up to 200 photos… I printed 189. Hahaha…)

Jenny finished up at college and came around to my place. She browsed through the album, while I hid, and at the end, I came out and popped the question. The conversation went a bit like this:

Caesar: <comes out of hiding>
Jenny: No way! You can’t be serious. Are you serious?
Caesar: …
Jenny: You’re not serious? You are serious, aren’t you?
Caesar: Jenny…
Jenny: Oh my…
Caesar: Will you marry me?
Jenny: <grins> Nah!
Caesar: <flabbergasted> That’s your answer?
Jenny: No, of course not! I was joking!
Caesar: So?
Jenny: Oh, alright.

After about 2 hours of phoning various friends and family, we went out for dinner in Chatswood, where she finally said “a million times yes” to my original question. Then we went to Darling Harbour for a bit of a walk and some dessert.

It is done…

So at the end of it all, the ring is on the finger…

The snails rejoice

Update: Booyah! I’m back, baby! My e-mail is now hosted by GoDaddy. I lose some of the advanced spam-filtering capabilities from my previous service provider, but hopefully now I’ll be able to send e-mails when I’m at work (my company blocks SMTP, whereas GoDaddy has a mail relay on port 80).

If you’ve been having trouble e-mailing me in the last few hours (or maybe even days), then it’s probably because I’m in the middle of swapping mail servers. So it’s going to be a bit funny for while until the various computers sort themselves out. You can still get me on my work, hotmail, gmail, yahoo, or any number of other e-mail addresses if you want.

Intelligent Design not very intelligently designed

You know, I completely understand what the proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) are trying to accomplish, but I disagree 110% with their means of doing it.

To put it simply, the teaching of evolution is causing kids (who sometimes have a tendency to grow into adults) to develop a world view that may become an intellectual and moral road block to somebody’s willingness to adopt Christian beliefs and behaviours – eg. evolution implies that widespread procreation helps to ensure the survival of the species due to genetic diversity. Therefore, children may think that sex with multiple partners is a normal and acceptible behaviour, which obviously goes against the teaching of Christianity, which promotes sex within marriage and monogamy.

Therefore, what ID tries to achieve is to remove these “seeds of thinking” from schools so that they might end up with a more level moral playing field in regards to not having to deconstruct pre-conceived notions, before applying their own.

It is just very sad that the way they have chosen to address this is to try and establish equivalence between dogma and science, and in doing so have distorted religion into something that it was never intended to be. The bible itself says a whole bunch of stuff about how infallible God’s word is, and how one should not being ashamed of it. But the proponenents of ID have turned Christianity, and God, into a thing of ridicule. I can’t see how these people can conscionably refer to themselves as Christians any more. It’s shameful, and not a little pathetic.

Where religion has a purpose is to define a set of morals by which one can choose to live. Whether a person wants to subscribe to that set of morals should be entirely left to the individual’s assessment as to the merits of that particular way of living. Just like we don’t allow children to vote, we should not be placing the choice of moral stance into the hands of minors, until such a time that they are able to be trusted to make such a decision. Educators should be tasked with ensuring that our children have all of the necessary information to make that descision. This is where the ID folks have gotten very confused. They should have pushed for mandatory religious studies, rather than trying to shoehorn religion into science.

Granted, children will then also need to learn about Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Scientology, etc. etc. but if they have as much faith in what they believe as their bible tells them to have, then they shouldn’t have to worry which of these will be chosen.