A summer in 2 years ago, my company sent me to our Redmond office to lead the local business development. It was my first time to come to the states with no friends and no family members. In the beginning, the life and new work were very tough for me and I almost lost my personal time through the whole winter. All I was doing was to sit in front of computer, talking with my team in China and meeting with my customers.
Next Spring, workload was getting better and I was so desperately looking for something to change my work and life balance, tennis, travels or anything. What I was gonna do in this new country? I started to search a local community website and also looking for some tennis practices in MS internal websites. The first social website within MS I joined was called “Redmond Tennis Players”. This is a fantastic website showing you tennis practices, players/partners, competitions or tennis classes. Why not join a local tennis class to get to know some new friends for tennis playing popped up into my mind.
I was not the only one within this social community looking for a tennis class. Soon in Feb, someone called Debbie emailed a post looking for joining a local tennis class together as a group. Excellent, this post came in at the right time! I replied immediately without thinking. The classes kicked off in the Bellevue High School and I was assigned to the advanced class. Yes, that was also my first time to meet up with Min.
What was my first impression about him? Haha….this guy is very talkative and runs fast in a tennis court. In that spring and the following summer, we were so crazy at tennis playing whenever we can, including weekdays and weekends with other classmates. Nothing happened to us till my Canadian colleague, Bart, got to know Min through me. They two seemed to know each other in their previous life, so many things to talk about when they first met. In that late summer and following fall, they watched the airshow and partied together. Because of Bart, I began to spend more time with Min though I did not join every single party he threw out. (yes, btw, my second impression of Min- he’s a party animal).
Time quickly moved to Christmas time and everyone was preparing family reunion. I headed over to Europe for my Christmas trip and did not come up after New Year Eve. That’s how we met in 2008 and the whole year we stayed as normal friends for tennis, parties and eating out. My single story ended up here.
Our story and our lives had a dramatic change after my European trip. To be more specific, it was after we had our first dinner in 2009 in the Ginza Japanese restaurant. The food was great, but more importantly, we both enjoyed hearing each other’s traveling stories and we then had our first hug. There was a miracle happened at that dinner I guess and two hearts came together.
So, that’s our story how we met in 2008. Our hobbies: tennis, travelling, clam digging, snowboarding, cooking and photo taking.