THE COFFEE SHOP: Dr Michael and Dr Jade chose the ordinary coffeeshop for one of their pre-wedding shoots.
SIBU: Dr Michael Jiew, 38, and Dr Jade Yu, 26, grew up in a place called ‘Sibu’ but they never met.
After finishing their secondary education in Sibu, they both went overseas to further their studies and eked out their own plans to start a career.
They left because they felt they needed to.
Dr Jade was in the United Kingdom and Dr Michael in Australia, but they had one thing in common – they love Sibu very much.
Who would have thought that the timber town would turn out to be the most unassuming of places for a rendezvous in life, to slowly become a foundation of love for these two souls?
But it did, and the incredible happened two years ago during Chinese New Year in Dr Michael’s mom’s flower shop.
Dr Michael said he left Sibu for further education after Form 5, and had been around the world for 15 years before settling in Australia two years ago.
“I met a lot of people, but it is still in Sibu where I found my special partner and it happened to be at my mom’s flower shop,” he recalled, adding that he always helped his mother in the flower shop every time he comes back.
In 2011, when Dr Jade and her mother went to the flower shop, it was Dr Jade’s English accent that caught the attention of Dr Michael.
It was instant connection. It was his love-nest!
“She said she might move to Australia to work someday too, and for me, that was the best opportunity to get contact details,” he said.
Both exchanged emails, and since it was Chinese New Year, both also exchanged phone numbers for CNY visits in Sibu.
After CNY, Dr Jade went back to UK, and Dr Michael to Australia and thought that was that.
“Out of curiosity, I asked her when will she come back to Sibu again, she said ‘April for Ching Ming’, and coincidently I was also coming back at that time,” he said, and that was when the relationship started.
Because they were thousands of miles apart, Sibu was their meeting place and when they did return, both walked down memory lane and making the most of their time enjoying the town as much as possible.
“It was a hot sunny day, but we went to the ferry, to the 1Malaysia clinic, we talked to the farmers, to the nurses, we just shared Sibu things together,” he pointed out.
For them, Sibu is part of their relationships, the root that strengthened their relationships although they were still miles apart.
He admitted that long distance was very hard, but both made an effort to make it happen.
They stayed in touch through Skype, emails, letters, phone calls, and made a concerted effort to meet six times a year to maintain their relationship.
However, he believed it could not work if both did not share common values together, which was ‘Sibu’.
“For me personally, a long distance relationship does not make sense, but because of our mutual love for Sibu, and she was so special, we gave our 100 per cent to make it happen,” he pointed out.
He also believed that Dr Jade’s presence was also part of the reason why he enjoyed Sibu so much.
He said Dr Jade opened up his eyes to see the beauty of Sibu in its simplicity.
“I’ve always love Sibu, I know I always do, but I think you have to be somewhere else to know how good your home town is.
“However, if I hadn’t met Jade, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to see how pretty and how blessed I am that I am from Sibu and I appreciate that more now,” he said.
Because of that, he would share things about Sibu, even the smallest of things.
They are not afraid to be seen sitting at one of the stalls in pasar malam and ate ‘Yu Chang Kueh’ for only 50 sen.
While people might think it a mundane life, he believed people needed to be reminded of the good things of Sibu and that makes life happier.
Dr Jade, who moved to Australia recently, works at the emergency department while Dr Michael is a General Practitioner at a clinic.
Because Sibu was so meaningful for them, they got married in Sibu on May 18, 2013 and also did their wedding photo-shoot around Sibu town.
Unlike the beautiful wedding gowns and elegant pre-wedding pictures that you see sold as commercial package, the lovebirds chose to capture the everyday life of Sibu town.
They went to the central market, to the taxi stand, the bus, the wharf, and so forth, for their wedding photcalls – a not-so-romantic backdrop that shocked their photographer.
“He was going like ‘are you sure?’, and we said ‘yes, this is what we really want, and what we believe in,” Dr Michael said.
It turned out to be a panoramic throwback in time, for a modern couple to have a wedding photo-shoot amidst the anachronistic backdrop of classic Sibu, in a mundane coffeeshop, on a barge that looks like a junk tucked away in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour.
He said since Dr Jade opened his eyes to the simplicity of life, he wanted the people to know and to realize how beautiful Sibu is.
He believed people should take a second look at Sibu again, harking back to the times when they were still young.
He said it is human nature to think that outside, or the grass overseas is always greener, but that is not always the case.
“We wanted to show the people the perspective of people who are already overseas. Sibu to us is still beautiful, so nice and so warm.
“Remember all the good
things and that would make us happier and make us feel proud of where we come from,” said Dr Michael.