When Love Comes A-Calling ( V )

May 2001

MAY proved a busy month on both professional and personal fronts. Workwise, she hardly had time to breathe. While it was bad enough that her client was very demanding, she also had to contend with additional workload.

She learned from an equally harassed senior colleague that financial institutions had that irksome reputation. More often than not, they were both merciless and disdainful in dealing with agencies that served and serviced them.

While she had the patience of Solomon, there were times when she felt like lashing back, especially when given the third degree by those still wet behind the ears.

These were the lightweights who knew not what they were doing, whose PR knowledge and expertise did not exceed their paper qualifications from some foreign universities.

Frankly, they were no match for practitioners with decades of on-the-ground experience, who knew the local industry like the back of their hands.

What really got to her most times was the fact that they balked at accepting professional advice from the very people they hired to do just that - advise them professionally.

She was so mentally exhausted that sometimes she just didn't feel like getting out of bed at all. Not wanting to go to work and earn one's daily bread was a dangerous state to be in, and she knew it.

Thankfully in Ashburn she found a sympathetic ear. It didn't really matter if he was doing his own bit of PR (who knows?) by gamely commiserating with her, either in the chatroom or over their endless teh tarik sessions. At least, outwardly, he showed that he cared.

The developing friendship naturally did not escape the eagle eyes of their chatroom buddies. There were good-natured ribbings all around whenever the two of them were in the chatroom together.

Whatever her innermost feelings insofar as Ashburn was concerned, her thoughts had yet to breach the normal boundary of relationship.

True, there was a hint of romance in the air, but there it remained - suspended and afloat in space.

Little did she realise this was where Ashburn and herself differed vastly. While she was in no rush to know where they were heading, he proved to be one man in a mighty big hurry.

It was late May and the evening air was cool to the touch when she settled herself comfortably, as always, in front of her desktop next to the open window.

The housework was done, the pile of office work that she brought home was finally taken care of, the cats were fed and the kids were watching TV. All was well with the world - or so she thought.

As usual, the chatroom was jam packed with chatters. It was one of the most popular local chatrooms at that point in time that entry had to be modulated to prevent system breakdown.

At its height, some 250 chatters crowded the room at any one time. One could hardly "hear' oneself, let alone focus one's attention to whatever that was being discussed.

One also needed nimble fingers and the ability to type very fast, or else one would be left far behind in chatdom, for there were multiple topics discussed at the same time, by different clusters.

She was thankful for her years of journalistic training, from the typewriter to the computer, for it had enabled her to pound the keyboards at a pretty decent speed.

Above the din, Ashburn beckoned. Distractedly, she joined in his chat with a few regulars. She had not gotten into her 'chat mode' yet. Usually it would take a few minutes for her to adjust to the surroundings and join the flow.

She did notice, however, that he wasn't quite his usual perky, gregarious self. His tone seemed somewhat subdued.

Suddenly the din and clamour mysteriously ceased. All chat stopped in their track and the room grew unusually quiet. She wondered why... until her eyes latched on Ashburn's last entry:

CAGE, WILL YOU MARRY ME?

Oh, for the love of God! She could feel the flush creeping up her face. All of a sudden, alone in front of a solitary computer, with a few cats for company, she felt exposed and stripped to the bone.

She, GildedCage, a loner in life who preferred feline to human company, who liked nothing better than anonymity and inconspicuousness, had been proposed to in a roomful of faceless entities; some friends and many strangers.

With the room suspended in motion, she felt lost beyond words. Jumbled thoughts raced through her mind: "Is this for real? He can't be serious, can he? What if he is? Hell, what am I to do?"

The words of her mother, uttered hardly a fortnight before, suddenly came flooding back. "Tak percaya tengoklah, jodoh awak dah sampai." Oh, Mak. Oh Mak. Is this it?

She was jolted out of her reverie when Ashburn repeated the question.

Scanning the list of chatters, she spied PalmGrower, a chatroom old timer in his 40s from Batu Pahat and one of their closest chat friends. "Help me out here Palmie, please," she pleaded, not knowing what else to say.

The good-natured Chinese man responded, "Hehehe, Cage. Only you can answer that question and you better think fast. He's waiting and so are we!"

Slowly, feeling both defeated yet exhilarated at the same time, she typed with trembling fingers, spelling out each alphabet as she did: YES ASH, I WILL.