Project Sushi: A Plan for Love

Once upon a time...

Taubert fell madly in love with a Korean girl, named Sun. He'd only met her once, but he believed it was true love. I resolved to bring them together. The plan involved Sushi.


Background: 


During house-mates interviews (back in the day when we were young and innocent, unaware of the financial hardship and broken fridges that loomed on the horizon), we met a young Korean chick named Sun. We were feeling despondent, having just interviewed an expressionless freak, a lazy Tassie who advised she liked to do "nothing" on her weekends, and a football-player, respectively. Then Sun walked out from beyond a line of trees in the distance, sunlight framing her as she waved tentatively. Taubs' jaw fell open and his eyes glazed over (thinking about it, he kind of resembled a corpse).


I said hi, shook hands, smiled - did the whole meet and greet thing. Taubs just kind of stood there, twirling a piece of his hair and mumbling a hello. We started showing her through the house - she looked around in interest, nodding and smiling... then backed into a lamp, jumped in fright, hit the table it stood on and proceeded to awkwardly right it, but upside down.


I rolled my eyes; Taubs fell in love.


Anyway, the interview went well. She liked alcohol - a 'yay' in my books. Her English wasn't half bad. She thought Taubs looked "clean" (don't ask) - a 'yay' in his books.She left. We pondered. We liked her. We agreed. We messaged her, offering the room. She mused. For three days. She'd been offered another room in the time it took us to ponder and agree. She reluctantly took the other offer. And we found Sam.


Taubs had been unable to stop thinking about her since the rejection.


He wrote her an email that basically went: Sun, me and my house-mate were talking about how nice we thought you were, and pretty, and nice and...nice and pretty and polite, and we were talking some more and at the end of all this talking we thought maybe you'd want to hang out some time. With us. For dinner. Because you're so nice and polite. And pretty. 

I swooped to the grammatical rescue and edited his letter. Sun replied enthusiastically and they message-flirted for a bit, she added him to facebook, and then....nothing. He emailed again trying to organise a dinner. No response. He messaged. No response. He face-booked. No response. He sat outside her window and wrote 'I love you' on the glass, using the fog from his breath. No response.


Taubs was frustrated. A frustration exacerbated by the fact that everyone was getting it on in his room, other than him (Ooh, I went there). He felt he and Sun had something special. Or, would have something special. More importantly, he thought Sun held something special. On three, now: aww.

  

Her abrupt silence was strange, though - even I thought the to-and-fro text messaging and her initial enthusiasm about dinner were signs of a developing crush. After much musing, we decided her phone was broken and access to the net probably limited. That, or she was dead.

Comforted by the fact that she was probably hit by a bus or murdered in some ghastly way, Taubs decided to move on. Then, one quiet evening, the unexpected happened: Sun messaged.

"Hi Nick!! How are you?? Sorry it's taken me so long to reply - been super busy! Did you still want to meet for dinner??"

Huh.

Playing it cool, Taubs waited a day to nonchalantly reply that he was fine and dinner was still an option, meanwhile he was running in little circles around the house repeating "she replied, she replied, she replied". Then...nothing. Again! A week later he text-invited her to lunch and a few drinks with us - she replied with an enthusiastic 'yes' and again there was some text-flirting. But she canceled and didn't reply to a single text afterward. Talk about your mixed signals! Talk about your prolonged not-quite-there love affair! Talk about how sick I was of hearing about Sun!

Given how tired I was of analysing this Sun deal, and given Taubs happened to randomely glance Sun working at a sushi cafe as he was walking through the city (fate? Or a stalker's good fortune?), and given Taubs felt in his beer-gut that Sun was worth the pursuit, I concocted a plan....

The Plan:

I had planned to grab a few girlfriends and imitate a badly scripted Rom-Com by having lunch at the Sushi cafe in the city, where I would recognise Sun's face and exclaim: "Hey, you're that chick from our house-mate inspections, aren't you? What a coincidence!" Then we'd all order sushi, sit, eat it, and I'd casually strike up a conversation with Sun which would naturally, smoothly, and successfully lead to a dinner organised.

Yes, sushi was to act as love's arrow. Somehow....

The Unknown Factors:

 

How the hell do you entice Cupid out of sushi? How the hell do you cleverly manipulate a sushi waitress to have dinner with you and your love-struck house-mate without scaring her silly? How do you casually eat sushi with all this pressure resting on your shoulders? And how the hell did I manage to write 'sushi' so many times??

What Actually Happened:

Sun must have sensed something was up, as she resigned before we could put the plan into action. But, one night, while a neighbour-upsetting party raged in our backyard, Sun showed up. Unannounced and unexpected. All shy and Korean, and... in our backyard. I saw her walk through the gate and stopped  dancing to Britney Spears in shock. I grabbed Sam and pointed out Sun. He in turn shouted to Taubert who looked sucker-punched. Mouth agape, he walked towards her, while hearing birds and bells and all that romantic crap, I'm sure.

They met eyes, they smiled, they started talking....

And she turned out to be a massive weirdo. Strictly no dancing or laughing or having fun type - all about the cigarettes and black leather and crazy hairdos. Taubert had no choice but to let go of his boy-meets-innocent-foreigner dream. It was sweet while it lasted.

Project Sushi - a failed plan of failed love. Cue sad face emoticon.