Puddles’ Weekend Adventure! The Finale
The day started out like any other. I woke up at the usual time. My clothes were pretty casual. I went to the studio to do some work. But unlike any day, this one was going to have a special ending. With some well-wishes from my coworkers and a ring in my pocket, I made my way down to Olwen's office to pick her up. On they way, I called Desmond to confirm the plans for tonight. Last year I was the cameraman when Des' proposed to his schoolteacher girlfriend at her elementary school (think Meet the Parents). I wanted Desmond to be a part of this proposal, so I also asked him to videotape my proposal. He was in Yakima for an interview and was finishing at 4pm, so we needed to make sure that he was going to be beat to the house before us since Thanksgiving traffic can be unpredictable. We created some "signals" to use for the trip to time ourselves in the form of two phone calls from Des. The first call would be to chit chat about his interview; that call would let me know that he was leaving Yakima. The second call would be to talk about hanging out in Portland with his wife during the long weekend; that call would let me know he was a half-hour away from Portland. It was kind of cool plan to be covert with the fake calls, but like all well-thought-out plans, we never used them. Turns out Thanksgiving traffic never showed up on his route, so he beat us home by a good hour and a half.
When I arrived at Olwen's office, she met me in the parking garage to load her bags. She needed to use the restroom before we left, so we went upstairs to her floor. In the elevator lobby, we ran into one of her coworkers, Melody. Olwen then went into the restroom while Melody and I made some small talk. When she asked me about our weekend plans, I put my finger to my lips, reached into my coat pocket, and pulled out the ring. Her face lit up and loudly whispered, "Is that what I think it is?" I nodded, and hid the ring. We both smiled right as Olwen walked out of the ladies room. "Ready to go?" Olwen asked. Melody exclaimed, "I do NOT like your boyfriend!" as she walked off. I simply smiled as Olwen was left confused.
By the way, my roommate Jae designed the ring. The ring is made up of three platinum bands. For the engagement, I've given her the middle band first. Here's the final design of the ring:
Thanksgiving traffic between Seattle and Portland was terrible. Cars were bumper-to-bumper in a never-ending stream of red lights. If Olwen didn't have to work a full day, I would've left the day before or early in the morning to save the two hours that I wasted on the road. But I had Olwen with me, and that made the trip so much more bearable. I heard somewhere that a good litmus test for finding a good spouse would be someone that can go on a long road trip with you without making you want to scream and throw kittens off a bridge. Someone who makes the ride enjoyable and would even make you wish the trip was even longer just so you can spend more time with her. We talked about a number of things, and at one point, the topic of marriage came up. "So," I said, "when do you want to get married?" "Right now," she joked making her eyes big and wide. Oh, it's going to come sooner than you think...
We finally arrived after 4 hours later on what was supposed to be a 2 1/2 hour trip. I grabbed a couple bags and went into the house first as Olwen was getting her things from the trunk. Mark's family was at the house visiting from the Bay Area. I walked in to find all of everyone milling around the kitchen area either chatting, eating, or cooking. Whenever Aunt Ruth and Uncle Doug, Marks' parents, would come to visit, there would always be a ton of food to go around, and tonight didn't disappoint. There was my Dad cooking his famous sourdough waffles, hot congee was bubbling on the stove, colorful fruit platters were on the table, and even a couple slices of leftover pizza were heated up.
There were almost a couple hiccups when we arrived. Even though Desmond was supposed to be hiding in bedroom with the camera, I spotted him chowing down on a waffle. Fortunately, I slowly went back to the car to briefly stall Olwen as he made his way up the back stairs. Dad almost had a slip too. When we sat down to eat, there was a bag of oranges sitting on the table. Mom picked up the bag and asked Dad where the bag came from. As Mom handed the bag over to her, he said, "From Rex." I looked over at Olwen and she didn't respond, so I assumed it was too noisy for her to notice. I went over to Dad and told him about his slip-up. He stopped and paused to think. The gears finally clicked when his eyes got big and exclaimed, "AIYAH!"
I tried to make everything seem pretty casual as we ate and relaxed from our long trip, but there was so much that was going to happen in the next few minutes. What Olwen didn't know was that her parents as well some family friends from Vancouver, Uncle Dick, and Auntie Lydia, were hiding in the basement. I had also instructed my brothers earlier to set up a laptop in the room with webcam that fed down into the basement, so her parents were able to watch the whole thing. There was also another laptop with a camera that was fed to Olvie all the way in Toronto. Olwen also didn't know that all the stuffed animals I had kidnapped in Toronto was sitting upstairs in Daren's room. I was planning on waiting for about 15 minutes until we go upstairs just we don't keep everybody waiting for long. Unfortunately, someone served us two big bowls of congee, and I couldn't just up and give her a birthday gift when we haven't eaten yet. I tried to make it seem like I wasn't in a real hurry and tried to pace myself. Occasionally, I went upstairs to check on things, even bringing food up for Desmond as he hid behind a clothes rack. I didn't go downstairs to check on the parents, since Olwen was nearby and might wonder where the Cantonese was coming from.
Afte a while I finally decided that we needed to get things going. I turned to Olwen and told her that I had a birthday gift for her upstairs. In my parents' house, my brothers and I used to share the whole attic together, so there was a lot of space. After Galen and I moved out, Daren was left with the room all to himself. We walked up the stairs to Daren's room where I sat her down on an old chair. Daren was also around just doing miscellaneous stuff like checking his email, cleaning up the room here and there. Behind the chair were a bunch of clothes thrown in a big pile, but underneath it all were all her stuffed animals. While she looked the other way, I reached behind the chair and pulled out the Puddles doll that I brought with me to Toronto. She was pretty excited when she received the doll after which I presented her with the book. She started reading it page by page. Daren had not seen the book either and I told him to read it with her just to keep the atmosphere casual, or as Daren would say, "keepin' it funky."
I had planned for someone to call me downstairs to do a chore just so that it looks like I'm not leaving awkwardly. I headed downstairs to my sister's room where Galen and Mark helped me put on the Puddles costume. Once in the costume, I stood at the base of the stairs listening for my cue to head upstairs. Olwen was talking out loud as she was going through the book saying things like "He's crazy!", "Is that my house?", and "Did he take my stuffed animals?". I couldn't wait to see her face when she sees Puddles in real life, but that enthusiasm was tempered a bit when it took her a little longer to get through the book than I expected. It was also starting to get hot in the suit. Daren pretended to clean up the room while Olwen was reading, but what he was really doing was unveiling all the stuffed animals.
Finally, she finished the book, I made my way up. She was distracted at first when she noticed all the stuffed animals behind her. When she saw me approaching, she started laughing and telling me how crazy I was. She gave me a big hug, thinking it was a extravagant birthday gift. I then drew away, held her hands in my paws, looked at her through Puddles' mismatched eyes, and got down on one knee. Actually, I grabbed the her right hand, started to put the ring on, then fumbled to grab the left hand when I realized I had the wrong hand. As I was slipping the ring on her finger, tears were forming in her eyes. I slowly took off the mascot head, looked her in the eye, and asked her to marry me. Two of months of planning and hard work concluded with a soft-spoken "Yes."
I've witnessed a couple proposals before, and there was always a thrill of excitement when watching two people commit themselves to each other. Now it was my turn, and I never expected the moment to feel the way that it did. It was the happiest I have ever seen her. As we were still hugging, everyone was making their way upstairs, including her parents and their friends. We turned off the screensaver on one of the laptops to have Olvie join the celebration as well.
Two months of planning was worth it. Happy Birthday, Olwen, and here's to many memorable days together. Love ya.
THE END
I'd like to thank a bunch of people for their help in all of this: to God for watching over this relationship and not letting me get caught by the Royal Mounties for stealing toys; HUGE thanks to Sammy for making the suit and the bear, you're just as ridiculous as I am; to Desmond for returning the favor, you're NOT invited to the bachelor party ;P; to Candy for planning and housing me in TO; to Phil, Johan, Donny, Darrin, Kitty for helping out with the photos and the gifts; to Mike for the crazy early breakfast at 5am; to Galen, Daren, and Mark for transferring the goods and prepping things for the big day; to Olvie and Olga for keeping everything under wraps and surprising the parents; to Jae for designing a beautiful ring; to Derek for his "consulting" 
; to Rex and Polly for the planning and even flying all the way out to Portland to be part of the surprise; to Mom and Dad and my sisters for their support through this endeavor; and finally, to Olwen, for saying, "Yes."
Puddles’ Weekend Adventure! The Book
Here's a copy of the book I made of my trip to Toronto. You can probably figure out where the story corresponds to the last few blog posts.
Here are some photos that my brother took of the finished product. I used Blurb's BookSmart® software to make the book and ordered two copies, one for keeping, and one for viewing. It does a pretty good job and there are a lot of options at your disposal to make a pretty professional-looking book. Not bad, huh?
Puddles’ Weekend Adventure – Part 3
I got about 5 hours of sleep that night. I usually have a habit of hitting the snooze button a dozen times before I get my day started, but I resisted and got up. It was around 9am EST, and no one else in the house was up yet. Candy had instructed me the night before about how to let myself out in the morning. As I was making my way to the garage, I bumped into her mom in the laundry room. She smiled and said something in Chinese that I couldn't understand. I tried to act natural, smiled, and mumbled something incoherent as I headed to my car. I guessed she figured I was one of Candy's friends.
Before I left on the trip, Maurice told me I needed to get oranges and "herng peen cha", jasmine tea, for the parents when I show up. I'm not sure why, but he's more Chinese than I am, so I took his word for it. I knew of a 24-hr grocery store that I came to on my last visit called Metro, and last night, Phil showed me the location for specialty tea shop nearby called TenRen. I arrived at TenRen first, but they weren't open for another 15 minutes, so I went to the Metro first. Originally, I had planned to buy some navel oranges, but I wasn't sure how much. I knew "8" would be a symbolic number in Chinese ("ba" which sounds like the word for "prosper", "fa"), but for some reason, I thought it wasn't impressive enough. So I looked at the other fruits and saw the smaller Mandarin oranges which were a similar price per pound (or kg since we're in Canada). I don't know what compelled me, but I thought about buying 88 oranges. (On a side note, I would hear about "88" when referring to Chinese weddings akin to the character for "double happiness," ?, which is made up of two copies of "joy", ?.) I thought about it for a moment, since 88 oranges is a LOT of oranges. But considering I'm in Toronto... by myself... with a stuffed bear... to ask her parents for permission to marry her... which I will... in a stuffed bear suit... I figured I shouldn't be batting an eye at getting 88 oranges. So I loaded up the cart with nearly $40 worth of oranges, put them all in one of the suitcases, and made my way to the tea store. My purchase at the tea store was more modest with just one box of tea. While I may be crazy enough to buy 88 oranges, I ain't buying no 88 boxes of tea!
Olvie had called me the night before on Candy's phone about my arrival time, and she told me her parents were going to be there when I arrived. I parked down the street from the house and walked to the front door with Puddles, the tea, and the suitcase full of oranges. I was expecting to have one of her parents open the door, but it was Olvie who greeted me with the family German shepherd, Jen. Her dad, Rex, was taking a nap, and her mom, Polly, was on her way back from running errands. She slipped me into her dad's office where I waited until she got her parents together. After about ten minutes of waiting, Polly got home and Rex was awake from his nap. Olvie gathered them outside of the office and told them that her special friend was here. She then called me to come out.
When I was emailing Olvie before the trip, I told her to tell her parents that a friend was coming over to visit, but it would be someone they wouldn't know. Olvie was going to school further north in a town not as populated with Chinese. So when she told her parents that a friend was coming, she described him as a "friend/potential boyfriend who could be black." (Olvie, sometimes you leave me speechless.) So when I came out of the office, both parents had scowls on their faces which quickly changed into smiles and hugs when they realized I wasn't the black boyfriend Olvie was talking about. In the office, the three of us talked for about a half hour about my plans to marry Olwen. We discussed everything from the wedding date to the where we were going to live as well as my career goals. At the end of the discussion, I was happily granted permission and received the blessing.
The rest of the day was spent hanging out with Olwen's family, but not all at once. Jeremy, Olga's husband, wanted to play ball that night, so I wanted to spend the afternoon with the parents. Rex needed to drop by the office while Polly and I had a lunch of curry beef tongue and chicken bacon gravy over spaghetti. Afterwards, we traveled to Belfountain which is west of Toronto to walk among the fall-colored trees. It felt really special to be walking and talking with Olwen's parents especially now that I had gained acceptance into the family. Her dad also got a kick out of Puddles and even made me take a lot of poses he made with the bear. Eventually, the day was getting late, and we headed back to their house where I went to Olwen's room and filled two suitcases full of all her stuffed animals. After eating a quick bite, we said our goodbyes and I was off to basketball.
The night concluded with basketball, a pho dinner, and crashing at Jeremy's parents place. During dinner, I managed to contact one of Olwen's Seattle friends, Kitty, who had moved back to Toronto to meet us up at the house for a photo op with Puddles. Olvie also dropped by the house to visit and take back some of her stuffed animals I had accidentally taken with me. While I was getting all my stuff together for tomorrow, Olga and Olvie decided to go to town with my camera and Puddles. I've posted a couple here to show you what I'm getting myself into:
My flight was scheduled for 8am, which meant I had to wake up at some ridiculous hour. It was so early that, when I checked my email after I woke up, my sister, Dara, in Oregon had not even gone to bed yet. Even though it was super early, everyone still woke up to see me off; Jeremy's brother Mike even made breakfast for everyone. I packed my bags, bid farewell, and headed off to the airport to catch my uneventful flight back home. The rest of the trip went pretty smooth except for that I had a basketball scheduled in the afternoon. I ran into some traffic at the border, but I managed to get to the game right at the tip-off. Oh, and we won our game by the way 
.
On a side note, Olga mentioned that a local charity was recently robbed of all its toys. And here was me carrying around two rolling suitcases of stuffed animals getting ready to go on an airplane. That would have been for an interesting story at the airport...
So the hard part was finished, but there was still a lot left to do. I had the stuffed animals, but most importantly, I had the blessing. Olwen was going to be back the following week which gave me some time to coordinate and plan a couple more items. The target date was going to be on her birthday on the 25th, the day before Thanksgiving, almost a month and a half away, a lot of time for a secret to get out. I trusted he people that I visited so far, hopefully they would keep their lips sealed until the proposal.
Or do they?
Puddles’ Weekend Adventure! Part 2
My flight was scheduled for 1:30pm in Vancouver (YVR). I didn't want to risk missing my plane, so I woke up that Friday morning at 6am to give me enough time to make the drive (2-3 hrs), get through the border (who knows), and check in my bags and going through security (2 hrs before my flight). As I was getting ready to leave, I decided to document my trip and snapped a couple photos starting with the alarm clock. Then I thought, what if I make a documentary of Puddles going to Toronto instead of me? So I started taking posing Puddles and taking pictures of him waking up, brushing his teeth, checking his email, etc.; making it seem like it was Puddles who was doing the traveling.
Olwen had left her car with me while she was gone. I had been without a car for a couple months since my car got totaled twice while parked on the side of the road (that's for another story). So being the responsible boyfriend that I was, I loaded up two empty suitcases and my bags, filled up the tank, and took her car north. (On a side note, I had a feeling she might get suspicious of the extra mileage on the car. There was a Jiffy Lube oil change sticker on her windshield, so I knew she's probably has that in the back of her mind. To cover my tracks, I got the oil changed right before I picked her up from the airport.) I anticipated fighting through traffic and rushing to get to the airport, but I overestimated on the travel time and ended up getting to Vancouver around 10:30am. No rain, no rush hour, no cars at the border. It was the fastest drive to Vancouver I have ever had.
I went over to Yaohan Market to kill some time and grab some snacks from the Asian grocery store. Since I was doing the whole documentary with Puddles, I had to bring him along with me wherever I went. I was pretty self-conscious carrying a stuffed animal around in public not to mention taking pictures of it like he was my firstborn child. Eventually, I stopped caring and took the pictures anyways, even as I was pretending to have Puddles pay the cashier. And considering location, it also wasn't that awkward since I was in an Asian mall where it's not out of place for a dude to be holding a stuffed bear. I was just glad I didn't draw him pink. I also checked out Aberdeen Mall where I visited Daiso, a Japanese general goods store and took pictures with the stuffed animals there. I managed to get a couple shots before the employees told me to stop shooting.
Since I didn't have any idea where else to go, I headed to the airport. I parked the car, took the shuttle, and checked in my bags. I was still carrying Puddles with me, but it felt even more awkward than before since there were a lot more people as well as security guards who were looking at me. I could almost feel all the staring eyes and weird looks from everyone as if I was having some serious issues (not that I didn't have any anyways). I was also getting bolder in my picture requests by going up to some of the shops and employees around the airport. Most of them turned me down, but I got a few that were nice enough to play along.
I stayed at my gates for a couple hours, checking my email while chatting with my bros and enjoying an ice-cap from Tim Horton's. I was pretty excited about the trip and even a little incredulous that I was even going through with this, but I relishing every second of it. The intercom then announced my flight, and I was on my way to Toronto.
The 6-hour flight didn't feel all that long. I spent part of the flight explaining to the gal sitting next to me why a grown man was carrying around a stuffed polar burtle like a security blanket. She was pretty cool in that she didn't try moving to another seat or avoid making eye contact with me, but she was pretty excited about the master plan. We had a good conversation for a good portion of the plane ride, and I told to check the website when it was all said and done. I forgot her name, but if you're reading this right now, let me know in the comments. On a side note, while I was working on the t-shirt, she was watching The Proposal, which, for you non-chick-flick fanatics, is a movie about a Canadian marrying an American. How ironic.
My phone had been turned off since I crossed the border in Vancouver, so whoever knew I was coming wasn't able to get a hold of me. Earlier, Waiki let me borrow his suitcase for the trip but needed me to drop off some stuff over to his mom's place in Toronto. The plan was for me to drop off the stuff at her place and then go meet Candy and another friend of Olwen's, Phil, at their worship practice at a sister church. I've been to the church before on my last visit, but I had no idea what Waiki's mom's place looked like even though Waiki had sent a detailed email to me with maps and the works (sorry, Waiki, but that's too many words for me to handle). After landing and getting my rental car, I followed the GPS to the designated address. The building I came to first kind of looked like an apartment, but there was a sign next to the building that read "Church." I thought that was kind of odd, so I thought she lived in the other apartment buildings in the back. Since I wanted to be cheap and not use my roaming minutes, I kept my phone off and tried to find her apartment in apartments behind. I went up to one of the apartments and found her last name in the directory. After making a couple calls to the name and getting yelled at in Chinese, I finally decided to turn on my phone again. After getting a call from Waiki's mom, I realized that she was the the first building I arrived at earlier. I dropped off the stuff, which turned out to be a bunch of board games, and was on my way to my destination.
The church wasn't too far away, and by that time, it was cold and wet, just like Seattle. I knew that there were still people there by a few cars left in the parking lot. I rang the doorbell and was greeted by Phil, who was pretty surprised when he saw me. Candy had only told a few people that someone was visiting Toronto but didn't say who it was. I was a little surprised that he was able to recognize me since I had a shorter haircut since the last time I saw him. We went into the church where we waited for Candy and several others, including her boyfriend Donny, to wrap up practice. Afterwards we headed over to her house where she called a few more of Olwen's friends, Darrin, Johan, and Theresa to come over. We hung out for a couple hours talking and taking pictures with Puddles before I had to get to bed. I was planning on meeting Olwen's parents late morning, early afternoon, but I still needed to get their presents before I came over and needed my sleep.
I stayed in the basement that night and I took a couple moments before I went to bed to think about what I was getting myself into tomorrow. Honestly, I didn't know what kind of response I would get from her parents. I heard from Olwen before that her parents liked me, but there was a tiny bit of anxiety that I was only 99% sure they would say "yes" as opposed to 100%. To calm myself, I opened my Bible and read James 1:5, a passage that my Mom had shown me when I was a kid. I don't know why I keep remembering it, but it has always proved timely for me for a lot of stressful or significant occasions. I said a short prayer, took another picture of Puddles, and went to bed. Tomorrow was going to be a big day.