Indecent Proposal

While in Stanley I proposed to Aya. We had already been talking about getting married, we have a date and location set, have sent out invitations etc. but I had still not proposed, getting married was something we had just agreed upon. So 4 months ago I bought her ring and ever since have been trying to wait for a good moment to come along for me to propose, some nice location or specific event or something. I didn’t know, I just thought inspiration would hit me and I would think, ok, perfect timing, let’s do it Kevin, but that didn’t happen. It finally occurred to me that I had to make it happen and so determined that I would do it in Hong Kong come hell or highwater. I knew that we would be near the sea, which would be nice, so I waited until we were alone, which we were in Stanley.
After having lunch along the board walk I said, let’s take a walk by the seawall. So we did as I thought about how to start. Of course I had an idea of what I wanted to say, but I did not know how to begin. First things first I distracted her by pointing out a junk (ship) in the harbor and saying she should take a picture of it. Meanwhile I slipped the box out of my pocket and put the ring on my pinky finger so that I would have it ready. I then hid the ring as best as I could and tried to begin. But the words just didn’t come out and so Aya said, lets go. I told her I wanted to stay a bit longer and sat on a ledge by the sea wall. I thought perhaps if I just start it will come out alright. So as she turned to walk away I started to get on my knees and said, “Aya I…” and then the ring slipped out of my hand. I watched it make a few weak bounces on the boards of the board walk, praying that it would not fall into the space between the slats and trying my best to put my body into motion, but by the time I made any kind of move to recover the ring it had quietly slipped into the space between the boards. I was shocked to say the least. Aya, who had watched the ring fall between the crack, wasn’t so concerned, so I said, “the ring, the ring fell between the cracks! (frantically pointing)” and she said, “oh well, its ok” and I said, “no, no, not this ring (pointing to the ring on my finger) THE ring, the wedding ring!” At which point she came around to what was happening and we both fell to our knees peeking between the cracks searching for the ring. Luckily it had landed on a flat piece of concrete about 2ft below the surface of the board walk. As some relief crept in that we knew where the ring was we began to talk about how to get it out and how much of an idiot I was. Luckily, just as I was starting out towards the commercial area to find something a security guard was walking by and I flagged her down. I told her that we had lost a ring, she came to take a look, confirmed that I had in fact dropped the ring, and then said she was going for help. About 5 minutes later she returned with two other security guards and a number of thin long tools. The first she tried was a long wire with a hook on the end, which worked and she gave me back the ring which I heartily thanked her for. Meanwhile Aya and the other two security people were taking lots of pictures. Thanks for the memories.

So I had the ring back in my hand and said to Aya, “Despite that I am and idiot…” which was the perfect start that I had been looking for. As we discussed the whole incident we both agreed that it was very much us, a perfect fit, and really the only way to go about it. Oh, and she said yes.