THE ADVENTURE BEGINS HERE!

Toi and Shawn met the old-fashioned way - in a bar. Shawn claims this to be self-evident, as alcohol clearly had to be involved for him to have the nerve to talk with someone as beautiful as she, and for her to talk to someone with a face like his. Toi says this isn’t true, that the alcohol wasn’t necessary, but it probably helped him more than he’ll ever know. Local legend has it that they were introduced by T, at a friend’s birthday. That’s mostly true, but Shawn is adamant the ‘introduction’ wasn’t voluntary - he would have met her regardless. They talked, drank bar-hopped, and perhaps even flirted, but being the capricious creatures they were at the time, they would wander off into the deep, dark night alone (or at least not with each other - neither is saying). It would be nearly two years before they truly met again. Toi, the romantic of the two, claims this was fate, karma, kismet - that the universe knew they had to wait two years for them to be in the right place in their lives for love to bloom. Shawn is skeptical of such things; he’s just ecstatic it worked out when it did (and takes more than a little credit for making it happen). It was yet another friend’s birthday where their paths crossed once again. Toi, according to Shawn, came in like a Texas tornado, all light and laughter. With recollections of her slipping away two years ago haunting his thoughts, Shawn declared he was going to make her his. Apparently he can actually accomplish a goal when he sets his mind to it, all previous evidence to the contrary . Go figure. The next several weeks were a whirlwind of behind the scenes byzantine machinations by Shawn, to ensure Toi was at yet another birthday party. He had the good sense to merely lay the metaphorical table that night, and ask her to dinner at his place the following week. The night had the potential for disaster, as she arrived late (shocking, we know), informing him that she didn’t eat certain dishes he planned (who doesn’t eat salad?), and liked her steak well done (seriously? Well done?). Well not quite a culinary disaster, it certainly wasn’t his finest feast. Yet as the evening wore on, he was more smitten with each passing moment, and perhaps sensing his growing desire, she flatly informed him they wouldn't be hooking up that night. Shawn accepted this with as much decorum as he is capable (not much), while mentally noting the evening officially ended at midnight… They didn’t ‘do it’ that night, but she did spend the night - and every night thereafter. Shawn claims it was like feeding a street cat - a single meal and she never left. To be clear, the ‘she never left’ isn’t hyperbole - Shawn and Toi counted the number of nights they were apart over the course of the first year. Three. Three nights out of 365, in spite of having separate jobs, homes and lives at the outset. Three. They were soon nearly inseparable, so much so that friends soon dubbed them with the portmanteau ‘Shoi’, and it immediately stuck. It soon became apparent that Taiwan’s most avowed lifelong bachelor and single lady were head over heels in love. With each other. Well the advice to Toi was varied, and mostly positive, except for the occasional ‘Shawn? Are you sure? Shawn?’ (fair comments all, admits Shawn), the advice Shawn received was universally the same: ‘Don’t eff it up..” (They didn’t actually say ‘eff’, but you get the idea). So far, we’re happy to report, he hasn’t. ***Continue below

While she effectively moved in on the first date, they would make it official a month later, would be shopping for a ring two months after that, and he would pop the question a few months after that (word has it that he did a decent job of the proposal, and while we may never know if that was, in fact, the case, as Shawn puts it, she said ‘yes’, and so everything else is details). While not a typical love story, we think Toi’s and Shawn’s is a pretty good one. Sure it took a chance encounter, a series of birthday parties, spread over years and months, their past noncommittal natures submarine their first encounter, a two-year wait, a world-wide pandemic that kept Toi from moving back to the US, and Shawn from his globetrotting ways, allowing them to explore the island and each other over those first magical months. (for the constant ‘exploring of each other’ bit, Shawn and Toi would like to sincerely apologize to their friends for all the homes and places they violated). When you put it like that, it seems like an inevitable, foregone conclusion. Or perhaps it was fate. Or a testament to human willpower. Whatever it was, they are most certainly in love, have been since the night of their first date, every day since, and every day to come.