Introduction to me

I'd always planned to be a doctor, but since I'm a math- and science-loving geek, I thought I'd better study engineering first in case they didn't let me into med school or I changed my mind about it. Thank God I did a practical degree like that, cause of course I didn't clear the wait list the first time around and was left looking for a job about 6 months after everyone else graduating with me had already found theirs.

By some fluke connections, I managed to get a technical support job with Nortel in Germany, and had the time of my life for 5 years. There was a big group of young single people at work who all hung out together, and we had a fantastic time getting together after work and taking the occasional road trip to fun places like Amsterdam, Normandy and Switzerland. My job sent me to some great cities as well, so I had no complaints.

A year after I started working there, I finally realized that one of my male friends (S) was pretty cute, extremely nice, and really easy to talk to and spend time with. On a business trip to Ireland, I ended up having to try to resuscitate an old guy who'd dropped dead in Dublin airport. A doctor showed up in short order and took over from me, but the whole experience grossed me out and left me feeling so glad I hadn't gotten in to med school. I desperately had to talk to someone, and my best friend's phone was busy, so the next person I thought to call was S. He talked to me for a good long while until I felt ready to fall asleep, and then called to check in on me the next day to see how I was doing. I finally twigged to the fact that I might actually like this guy.

A couple weeks after, when I was going on a business trip to Paris, and he was going to be there around the same time for a concert, I somehow talked S into sharing a hotel room with me "so that his costs would also be covered by the company". (Yeah right!) We had a few beers at the concert, got a little tipsy, and ended up making out for a good part of the night... And we've been together ever since. He tried to scare me off about 6 weeks into the relationship by telling me he wasn't cut out for monogamy and wanted an open relationship, but somehow he never went out with anyone else again.

A couple years later, I was getting tired of all the traveling, even though it was the best part of my job as far as I was concerned. I was 26, and I thought I should find a career that would let me settle down so that when I had a family, I'd be able to work and not travel too much. And I realized that I was considering med school again. S and I had some long discussions, and decided that we'd stay together if I moved back to Canada for med school and see how things went. Luckily this time when I applied, I had my choice of a few schools, and opted for one with a 3-year program so that I could finish by age 30.

I met my now in-laws 10 days before moving back to Canada, and then spent the next 3 years doing the transatlantic long distance thing with S. He'd come and stay with me and work remotely for a couple weeks every few months, and I'd go back to Germany to see him and his family a couple times a year when I had vacation. Somehow it didn't seem so bad - at least with an ocean between you, there's no expectation that you'll kill yourselves every weekend to spend time together, and with MSN messenger and internet telephony starting up, it was really easy to stay in touch.

The three years of med school flew by, and then S had to help me figure out where to go for residency training, since we were by then hoping that he'd be able to find a job in Canada and we'd finally be able to be together in the same country. I found us a 2-bedroom apartment in Toronto, and 10 months later we finally decided to get married, about 7.5 years after we started going out.

We didn't have long to plan the wedding - about 4 months to be exact. I bought my wedding dress in the first store I went to, on a day that I was post-call and exhausted. We had a nice little civil ceremony in Germany so S's family could be there, and celebrated with family and friends. Had our honeymoon in Paris where it had all started. And then I went back to Canada to finish filling out the immigration paperwork for S. Amazingly, within 2 months, we got his permanent resident papers and he moved to Canada to be with me.