Beautifully Imperfect

While the furor over the latest MCYS commercial about the Indian lady giving an eulogy at her Chinese husband's funeral is still getting everyone all emotional, let me add my two cents worth to this interesting debate.

Yes it may be cliche and yes it probably was a rip off of the scene from Good Will Hunting, but it sure did leave me with a lump in my throat. (And did i detect a sniffle from the whereabouts of my man too?)

I guess it strikes a chord with couples who have been together for a long time, such that they know each other inside and out, and all their idiosyncrasies right down to a fault.

We know exactly what makes the other happy and what exactly gets the others' goat. And yet it isnt easy to always do the things that makes the other party happy.
Call it character differences, complacency, or simply Im-in-a-foul-mood-so-I-just-wanna-be-a-pain-in-your-a**, we get fuming mad with each other, have a cold war for half a day, yell, scream, cry, but ultimately forgive and forget.

That's what its all about right? People have written into the papers condemning the commercial, saying that it advocates settling for 2nd best in a life partner. I dont think they have grasped the essence of the clip. Nobody's perfect - so its really just up to you whether you want to celebrate the differences between you and your partner and work hard at your marriage or just take the coward's way out and not even try.

Hubby and I have known each other for 16 years and we have been together for 15 of them, so you can be sure we know each other like the back of our hands.

Ive seen pictures of him snogging other girls. He's seen my granny underpants. I know all about the oily, birds' nest, walking fashion disaster hairstyle he sported all those years ago. He knew how i looked like with my thick as a magnifying glass spectacles.

We thought we really knew each other. We thought we were safe. Yet many things have surfaced to surprise us once we were married. Let me list a few:


- He has an extremely short fuse. Yet i always find ways, both inadvertently and deliberately, to light it.


- He abhors ants in the house and takes it upon himself to eradicate every single one of them, to the extent of following their trails with a torch into the deepest, darkest and tiniest crack.

Me - I leave tiny food scraps on the counter, I bring food upstairs to eat in the room, I do a sloppy job cleaning up, I leave junk food packs unfastened properly.

He thinks I must have been an ant in my past life so Im encouraging their existence in our house now.

Its not that I dont care...its just...I dont know...Whats wrong with a few teeny weeny ants? They're harmless right?


- He is a neat freak, im fine with chaos. i can leave my clothes, books, knick knacks, accessories, in fact anything and everything in disarray and i think its alright. So....He usually picks up after me.


- When we got married, I suddenly became Wife: Finder of all Things. Whenever he cant locate a certain item, a string of frenetic "Where??"s escalating in volume and exasperation will come my way until i locate the blasted thing.
I hate it! How would I know where he put the measuring tape/screwdriver/cufflinks/ear digger/whatever! Im not psychic!

Even Terelle is following in her Daddy's footsteps, yelling a staccato succession of "Where"s whenever she cant find her toys.

My reply to both of them - "Use your eyes not your mouth!!"

- He falls asleep in seconds, so much so that I could still be running circles around the kids and he wouldnt (or couldnt) open half an eyelid, much less help.

Worse, sometimes i cant get to sleep and i so resent the serene, contented little snores emanating from his direction.

Yes we're both imperfect but we're still hanging on tight on this roller coaster ride called marriage. And that's what makes it fun right?

(Though i dont think he finds it very fun when he's up following an ant trail at 4am just cos i left the cornflake box half open yet again...haha)