***Speech my husband Rommel wrote for his Toastmasters Club here in Australia***

Love or Passion

December 17th, 2008 by beautifulladylaurize

 

What have I got to lose? Love or Passion.

I was staring blankly on the air one ordinary night and wondering if the sleep ahead will give me the nightmarish answer to this question? The cold feel of the floor carpet’s embrace is my luxury as my darling wife lays enjoying the comfort of our bed. You guessed it right, I just got booted off after I tried to crack a joke off a “serious” question she was asking earlier about love or passion.

The days leading to that dreadful night were mostly happy…

I first caught an eye of her beauty at work. I was a young manager and she was an applicant for a vacant role in a non-financial department. I really have no business of talking to her but when I saw her, I silently decided that “this is the woman I’m going to marry” and prayed “Please God make her single”. I called up the friendly HR assistant and arranged that she see me for an “interview” which started with the usual “What are your strengths / weaknesses?”, “what do you know about our company?” stuff then skilfully interjected with “Do you have a boyfriend?”. My heart sank when she replied “yes”. Damn, why do 95% of the women who men wants to marry are engaged!

Anyway, she got the job. On her first day at work, I have displayed my feelings to her. Eventhough I am not her direct superior, I have taken the advantage of showcasing her the whole resort. I did everything to win her heart. She didnt make it easy for me. And because she was already involved with someone, It had been very difficult for her also. But, yeah — maybe we are really meant for each other as few months later — She gave her heart to me.

It was a whirlwind romance. We were always together as we both work at the exclusive resort hotel about 2 hrs from the nearest City. During ordinary days, just thought that lunchtime is almost there and we will soon see each other at the pantry simply brightens up our day. At night, we would talk hours and hours about our plans of family and the future. During weekends, we would hop in a bus and head for the City or go in an unplanned / impulsive trip somewhere away were we both haven’t been to. Those days were one of the happiest times in our lives.

To this day, I am simply amazed how perfect we are for each other. We enjoy the same leisure activity, laugh at the same jokes, shopping… it was like a dream partnership. I could fairly say, we got the same tastes of anything until it gets to my passion…

I grew up a typical boy in the love and care of my parents. While we are a large family I got my father and mothers liking. My father would regularly keep a portion of a forth night’s pay to spare me matchbox or hotwheels die cast toy car. This is how my passion for cars started. I remember how my little hands would wind up the small car’s “engine” and let it drive to a wall or have it jump through chairs or my personal favourite – our dining table while I mimic the engine’s roar. As my teenage youth came, the passion shifted to admiring cars I see off the street. I would literally show off my passion by saying something about a great car I saw to somebody I am walking with that day. My conviction is I should know all cars I see – if there is one I don’t, you will find me a few days later at the local library pouring over books and magazines looking for that particular build, year and model. I was pretty clever on my research methodology before Google.

I finally got the realisation of my passion when I got my 1^st car. It was a Toyota Corolla AE101 which is a younger sibling of Toyota’s iconic AE-86 drift monster. It was dead stock and pristine in form and I really got a good bargain. It got heaps of potential and the country is a haven of cheap aftermarket parts which won’t cost me an arm and leg to dress up my supercar. I have big plans for it and some of them came into reality – a metallic paint, a ground pumping sound system, a blacktop engine which made it ride like a rocket, racing seats, aftermarket exhaust system which made it roar like Godzilla. The list is endless. It seems like each payday, a new project is coined for the car – I was even thinking of fitting it with a gull wing.

That’s when the household’s lady version of Russel Crowe steps in – Master and Commander. We were in bed, embraced and discussing the day that’s ending. When she just remembered I was supposed to buy her a new bag but wasn’t able to coz 
I spent the day with the mechanic for a serious braking issue with the car. What followed is her, enumerating all the things I have poured into the car. It can see the fire of jealousy burning in her eyes… but it think it was just one of those talks we have that usually starts with teasing and ends up with both of us laughing with some petty issue. So when the discussion came to a comparison between my love for her and my passion for my car, with her asking “Who would you choose me or the car?” I sheepishly grinned and joked, “My love, don’t ever put me in a position where I have to choose between you and the car.” That’s when everything went blank… I literally got booted off the bed and taken a fall.

The next days that followed there was total silence in the house… you could hear the constant dripping of the water from the incompletely closed faucet at the kitchen sink… you could hear my muted groans of pain as I nurse a bruised hip at a corner sofa… It took about a week before I got promoted back to the comfort of our bed and my wife’s embrace but not without a price – a couple of bags, a pair of shoes, a new dress and weeks later I lost my beloved Toyota Levin on a deal she helped me brokered.

So, is the passion gone? Allow me to answer that by saying as a family man I now own a Toyota Corolla with heaps of potential…

***Speech my husband Rommel wrote for his Toastmasters Club here in Australia***