We contact doesn’t mean we connect. The connection between people comes from heart and soul and not just the activity being carried out.
A girl can be flirting with you but she may only be looking for some temporary excitement from your guileless reaction while she has already got someone in mind that she would only be faithful to. A guy can be going out with you for a date but he may not be thinking romantically about you because he prefers someone else.
Love is a matter of heart, a matter of lots of feelings that lead to commitments and continuing activities. It is not any single activity happening that signifies the existence of love. Although some activity does signifies some landmark in the route of love.
I sent Minna (the person using the Youtube account called minnaslyfan) a request letter of the song I’ve been looking forward to sing for so long. The letter was fairly long and well written. I wrote it with considerable effort because being able to produce the duet of A Whole New World is important to me and I really hope this person can be kind enough to produce the song with me. Inevitably, I have doubt how reliable and how responsive she can be. In my mind, I told myself if this girl cannot produce the song with me after more than 2 weeks, I would start looking for other potential collaborator.
Collaborator? Yes, the intended relationship in the request was professional and nothing romantic. I did share some personal interests and personal details with Minna in the first letter to build a friendly environment for our conversation.
The next day when I check my Youtube account, BLAM!! I saw a mail as long as the one I sent out. It was Minna’s mail! I was overexcited when reading it. What’s most important is her tone and attitude in her reply. Not only being prompt, she was very friendly, very responsive and very enthusiastic to work together and be good friends. Minna talked about her plan in recording the song for me and shared some manageable amount of her interests and life. It was joyous to learn from her that she is very interested in Asian cultures and would appreciate my help in translating some lyrics of Chinese songs. Although very enthusiastic, Minna’s attitude was sincere and demure; there is no flirtatious or suggestive element in her language or overall appearance. I appreciate that very much.
I know it when a girl suddenly becomes suggestive or flirtatious; it is not a good sign. Instead it is often a good indicator for me to leave the girl. I learned this hard from an experience, but the experience will guide me through my entire life.
It was about the mid-year in 2009, I met a girl called Clara who is older than me by 3 years. She and I took the same graduate module that time studying about mathematics in engineering. We started talking when I noticed her in the library and realized that we were in the same class. After talking for a while and discussing concerns about tutorial questions, we found each other to be suitable enough to study together. We started studying together for exams.
One day after consulting a teacher about that mathematics module, we left the teacher’s office together. When passing through a corridor, I held the handle of a door to allow Clara to walk through the door, and then I felt Clara’s hand holding firmly over my hand on the handle. It was too sudden, it was unnecessary, it was long enough to feel unnatural, and it seemed too much like a flirt. I buy the signal and went on to be very nice to Clara. She had been very nice too. We studied together at school even through the night. It was her preference to study at night and I was being nice to be her company. One day I felt that it was too much for me to bear studying through night anymore and I told Clara that I couldn’t make it. She begged me to accompany her but I insisted that it was not good for me. Her attitude towards me changed drastically after that. She was not as friendly anymore, and she became difficult to contact (ignoring phone and very late reply to text message). After exam, I tried to call her for an outing but she ignored my contact, even though she said before exam that she would like to go out with me but it had not been the right time. I have not heard from her then on.
I realized that her signaling at the start, by holding my hand “unintentionally”, was purposeful and insincere. Giving me a false impression of potential love, she wanted to cheat me for my time and intelligence (academic intelligence in specific) to study with her and after that she had no intention to follow up in friendship or in any other way. I was devastated. I learned. Now I met Minna and things are very much different.
To Minna’s request about translating lyrics for her, I don’t even hesitate a bit in doing it for her. I cannot be happier that I’m able to help her. She is an important person who can produce the song with me. I started imagining how great it would be when the song is done. How envious people would be when two of our beautiful voices are combined properly in such a glamorous song.
Our email started taking off. We exchange our mail one per day and we talked about how the song should be produced. I remember that my second mail to Minna was 2 times the length of my first mail to her, which is very long and I didn’t expect her to reciprocate that. But she did!! Her mail was as long as mine if not longer, and even more enthusiastic than mine. I felt so grateful to have met this person and I no doubt want to continue the communication. We wished each other Merry Christmas and we started to talk about what is “I love you” in various languages. Good feelings and affection seemed to build up naturally instead of all of a sudden.
In Christmas Eve 2010, when I heard the fireworks celebrating the day, I was writing a mail to Minna. I felt very pleased to be typing a reply to her. I told my mom I was replying to her, and I showed my mom some of her Youtube videos. Shockingly, my mom asked me “do you want to marry this girl?” I didn’t know what to answer to her because I didn’t expect this could be the first thing my mom said when she looked at Minna’s video. I did show my mom pictures of other girls I liked before, she often comments about the girls based on her feeling, usually in a neutral and objective way. I wonder why mom had that special reaction this time. I guess my mom saw something unusual on my face when I talked about Minna. It is perhaps something unusual that I didn’t even notice.
Minna and I maintained our contact almost every day since then. We learned about each other’s contact details, each other’s lives, and each other’s interest in songs of various genres. There are a lot of things in common that we wouldn’t have found if we didn’t talk so often. Our basis of relationship was built upon the frequent contact, trust and knowledge of each other’s lives.
Two weeks had past and I didn’t feel any urge to find another collaborator to sing the song with me, but I wait for Minna. I want to sing this song only with her.
To be continued…
--TK
(This is Minna and TK’s story episode 2, episode 1 was posted on 8th May 2011 titled “The beginning”, Minna followed up episode 1 with “A new fantastic point of view... ♫♫”)
