It’s official!

Across the miles! Aaron was in California; working in the desert. Serena was in England, exploring Salisbury when we first “met” online! Lots of long email conservations about everything from the difference between ale & stout, poetry, bread making and telepathy to how to pull off an art heist. When we finally met in person, months later, it was in San Francisco, California! Our first date was at the De Young museum of Art in Golden Gate Park, where we visited Degas's Dancers, the target of our very hypothetical heist discussions! A few months later, early in 2013, Aaron visited Malaysia for the first time with Serena. We spent several months together in the area and Aaron met much of Serena's family. Later that year we moved in together, settling into Aaron’s apartment in Oakland, California. In January of 2014 we decided we were ready for the next important step in our relationship - adopting our first cat, Hedwig! And,after a miscommunication ;) ,we added two more cats to the family, Wiscus- Nimoy & Shasta a few months later! We did quite a bit of travel during our time in Oakland, exploring more of California, visiting Serena’s family in Malaysia & the U.K, and visiting Aaron’s extended family and friends in Montreal amongst others! In 2017 we started to talk seriously about moving on from California & by the end of 2018 we made the move to Serena’s hometown of Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia with our cats. We finished off 2018 with a bang by getting “officially” engaged on December 31st 2018! We have since added another cat to the family, Cinnamon, and moved to Germany for Aaron's work!

During Aaron’s second trip to Malaysia, Serena told him about her favourite tree in the garden of her family home. She was quite upset because there was a possibility it would be cut down, and told him she’d always imagined getting engaged under that tree. It was too soon then, but Aaron never forgot how important the tree and her family home were to her and on New Year’s eve 2018, he proposed under the same tree!