to Novita Estiti – from Mamad

We met for the first time on July 12, 2007, after 1.5 years of email exchange. He gave me a handmade card with a little poem on the backside.

Sometime later, I recalled my feeling when I saw his face for the first time and wrote the passage below:

“A smile on a certain face. You were looking up at the face and waiting for it to come down to you. All it needed was only 3 seconds to reach you, but it felt so long yet so soon. You remember every details. The cheeks were a bit pinkish, and you thought that was oh so cute. The corners of his eyes moved as he was smiling, as if his eyes were smiling too. No, not only his eyes, but his face, his body, his whole being were smiling to you. Only to you.

Everything around you receded to a distance as if they were making a space for the two of you. You waited happily at the feet of the stairs in what felt like forever. If you’d had a tail, you’d be wagging it excitedly. The feeling was so strangely [...]

Today is our second wedding anniversary.  Sometimes it feels like we’ve been together for a long time, but sometimes it feels so fresh and new. Since it’s our special day, I would like to share a short story about us. Maybe not that short.

The first time we knew about each other was in 2006. He was already living and working in Japan, while I was busy with my own little life in Indonesia. That year, he often exchanged emails to a certain friend, and one day they happened to talk about books. As it turned out, that certain friend happened to be my ex-officemate, and she told him about me and my novel. You’ve probably known that I published a novel in 2004 (see #5 here).

He got a bit  curious, and the easiest thing to do for a programmer when he gets curious about things is going to Google. So he googled my name and found my blog. Not this blog, but my old writing blog in blogspot. For several reason, it is set into a private blog now. He liked what he read there and proceeded to send me a fanmail. In fact, the subject of his email is [...]