Where We Met

Under the Hoover tower, in Stanford University.

It was my first year in the US. I was working three jobs, after my mom lost her job at Hoover, and my brother just arrived with no English and no identity. A professor that couldn't find employment in this new country and a banker turned dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant. I had a full time job as a customer service clerk at a Chinese PC distributor. On Saturdays I went to various flee markets with my mom to sell her beaded jewelry and assorted Chinese crafts. A Chinese woman working for Thomas Sowell at Hoover needed someone to pick up some odds and ends office work for her, and I was the lucky one. She even let me work in her office on weekends. So every Sunday I went to work in one of the Hoover buildings, behind those trees on the left hand side of the tower in the picture.

On the day we met, I came out of the office, Bill was waiting on a bench on the right hand side of the tower. Although we talked on the phone a few times, enough for him to be interested in me, I had no idea what to expect. It was July and he was wearing a gray suit jacket. If it's anywhere else in the valley he'd look totally out of place, but on Stanford campus, under the Hoover tower, in the orange sunset, he looked perfectly proper, and ... gentlemanly. There was something very foreign and yet vaguely familiar about this man; and somewhere deep in my mind, I know he was the one.