Best Man Andy Rodriguez
Andy and I have been good friends for over ten years. We met while working in the same movie theater in Southern California. When we first met, I thought Andy was weird, and he thought I was weird. We still believe that, but maybe that’s what makes our friendship so strong. One evening after work, I asked Andy if he wanted to watch Halley’s Comet. I bought some beer, and the two of us went to find the Comet. We never saw the Comet that night, but it was the start of a great friendship.
Shortly after our search for the Comet, I moved to San Diego, then to Taiwan, then to Arizona, and finally to Northern California. Andy lived in San Francisco for most of our friendship, and returned to "The City" shortly after I moved here. Despite almost ten years of being separated by great distances, we remained the best of friends. We each live in the Bay Area for different reasons, but perhaps it’s fate that led us to live in the same area after so many years.
How We Met; Patrick’s Story
In 1991, I was a software engineer working for an American corporation in a small town in Taiwan. My employer lost a re-bid on the contract on which I was working, and I was laid off. Loving Taiwan as much as I did, I stayed longer in Taiwan traveling and teaching English. I met April at an English school, and we were platonic friends and coworkers. She invited me to dinner at her home, and we saw the movie "Hook". I wasn’t attracted to April back then; I believed she was too serious, her hair was too short, and she was an "older woman". A mutual friend suggested that I ask April out, and I told him that she "wasn’t my type".
April and I kept in touch through letters after I moved back to San Diego. A few years after returning to San Diego, I moved to Arizona and later to Northern California. In 1995, April wrote to me and asked if she could visit me in the San Francisco area during Chinese New Year. During that visit, I was deeply impressed by the other side of April – tenderness, independence, and attractiveness. Three days before she left for San Diego, we went to a movie about a couple that was in the same situation as us ("Before Sunrise"), and a dramatic verse "You don’t want to kiss me, do you?" changed our friendship forever.
The next summer April moved to Oklahoma City to receive her Master’s Degree. In March, 1996, a year after April’s first visit to the Bay Area, in a cozy setting on California’s North Coast, I asked April to be mine forever. The next week April picked out her ring from a jeweler in San Francisco. Six months later, April moved to California. When she returned, I told her that I was tired of taking her to the airport only to see her return to Oklahoma. I promised her that I would never let her leave again. "That’s the best promise I’ve ever had", she said with tears in her eyes. It was also the best promise I ever made.
April’s Love Story
I was an English teacher in a small town in eastern Taiwan in 1992. One day Patrick came to the school asking for a job as an English teacher. Being the CEO of my school, I was hesitant to hire him at first, since foreigners have a bad reputation in Taiwan for starting an English class and leaving the country soon afterwards. My ex-boss, however, convinced me to give him a try, because she believed Patrick was honest and responsible; more importantly, foreigners always attract English students in a small town. Our school later offered Patrick a full-time teaching job at a new school in a rural area, but Patrick decided to return to San Diego in the spring of 1992. Back then, Patrick and I were just casual friends; I thought he was goofy, had no sense of humor, and was a "short-term" traveler. We saw a movie together and I invited him over for a fish dinner. He loved the fish so much that he told his mother and even wrote to me after he returned to the States and asked for the recipe.
Patrick and I kept in touch through letters, and in 1995 I decided to visit the U.S. during the Chinese New Year’s holiday. I asked Patrick if I could stay with him for a few days. Patrick welcomed me through a letter and actually called me in Taiwan to find out my flight schedule. He was more worried than I was about my trip. While I was visiting Patrick, I noticed that he treated me really nice. He arranged all my transportation from Belmont to Yosemite, made the hotel reservations, gave me his own jackets to take on the trip, and even gave me hand-held video games and Chinese magazines to occupy my time on the train. He woke up at 4:30 a.m. (still a record!) to take me to the train station and even called me at the hotel in Yosemite to see if I was okay. After returning to Belmont from Yosemite, we went to dinner and a movie. It was our first "date", and that night, we realized that our friendship wasn’t the same.
After I returned to Taiwan, Patrick and I wrote love letters and called each other often. I had planned to receive a Master’s Degree from Oklahoma City University eventually, so I decided to come to school in the States earlier than planned to see if our relationship would succeed. While I was visiting Patrick on Spring Break in 1996, he proposed to me on a weekend trip to the coast. After my graduation last August, I moved to Belmont and ended the one year long distance relationship. Now, we are being married in beautiful Northern California, and I thought he was goofy!!!