About Me & The Test

As a matter of privacy and to ensure that we’re able to be as blunt and open in this blog as possible, we’ve come to the very logical (and only slightly odd) decision that my name shall never be revealed. Bing has decided to call me ‘Little K’ or ‘I’ interchangeably so feel free to address me as either .

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About Me

I’m a caucasian male from a middle-class family nearing my 30th birthday. Despite religious ties within the household growing up, I’ve never been Christian or member of any sort of congregation or sect. My politics skew somewhere in the middle so I guess I’m a moderate. Not one of those boring, ‘I don’t want to choose a side’ people. But I can’t find a side that properly represents my views in politics and certainly not in either of the dominant parties.

I’ve lived the majority of my life in the same city in which I was born, though I spent nearly a year in Japan during my mid-20s.

Somehow the necessity of finding a job landed me a spot at a local art museum. Which is where Bing and I actually met since she’s a student at a nearby university and a devout art lover.

The Test

Bing came into the museum dressed rather casually; I remember thinking she looked as if she’d just woken up or were under a lot of stress or something, ‘cause she had a wrinkled sweatshirt on and a pair of dark navy sweatpants. Her eyes looked tired but would brighten at the sight of certain paintings or objects like a little kid being shown a new toy.

Honestly? I can’t say that I felt any connection to her. I’m romantic but don’t like lying for sentiment, so lets just say I paid attention to her because it was my job. We chatted a bit about some of the art pieces and artists in general – she’s a massive fan of Vincent VanGogh – and we got along. I wasn’t really flirting with her per se, maybe an occasional joke to lighten the mood or make her laugh, but I certainly wasn’t disinterested. I liked how open she was with her opinions; it’s something a vast majority of foreign students from Asia don’t usually possess. It helped that her English was good enough to follow a conversation, but I thought maybe she was a very free person in general.

As she was leaving, I impulsively decided to give her a test. I’m not in the habit of testing people, but I couldn’t help it. I offered to give her my phone number and she, being Chinese and polite, programmed my name and cell number into her mobile. Which I knew she would do. Afterwards, she smiled, waved and then left.

I never expected to hear from her. Those immature hopes we hold onto whenever we give someone our number and pray they’ll call us? I didn’t have them. I knew enough about Asian attitudes and matters of social policy to understand that it was completely impossible for a Chinese girl to call me, to be bold. To essentially make a move. So I didn’t think about it.

I went to work, did menial tasks under the direction of my dictator boss, and basically went about my normal routine. Finished up and headed home for the day.

Then my cell phone rang as I was driving to my apartment.

It was Bing.

And she wanted us to have lunch.

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The ‘test’ I referred to was actually pretty simple: To learn more about her based on whether she did or did not call me. That I was more likely to never hear from her again only provided the fact that I did more emphasis.

There were some other assumptions I had made based on this that turned out to be true, but everyone has a lucky day, don’t they?

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