On October 15, I posted on my Facebook wall a reminder to myself that I should write about how I met my husband.

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But life got busy, and I never had a moment to sit down and write.

In this age of ChatGPT, I still prefer to write organically. Most especially about my journey, and particularly about my love story.

Mine is such a unique one. I don’t think there is a story quite like ours. So unique that I think I should have a chapter dedicated to it in the book I’m writing, Beyond Virtual Assistance.

Yep! I have a book. And I have started writing already. It might take a few months… a year… maybe more. But it’s happening. And I can’t delay it any longer. I just have to write a paragraph everyday.

So back to our love story.

I have intimated about the uniqueness of our love in a previous post, My Reason for Being: Why I’m Rocking the WAHM Life. <<< Yes, that’s a link, so go ahead and click it so you can read about that, too.

But if you’re too lazy to read a 2,566-word post, here’s an excerpt:

My husband and I started out as buddies.  We just sort of hit it off right from the get-go.  In a place where we were both strangers, we found ourselves sharing some fondness on topics that were nowhere near the telenovelas people around us were living, sharing music that you wouldn’t find in a karaoke songbook, and spending weekends together just quietly reading side by side, each lost in the world created for us by those who have imaginations richer than ours.  Ours was never what romance stories are made of.  We’re more on the friendship genre.  I’ve lost my faith in romance a long time before I met him.  Our friendship was made more precious by the chemistry that was effortlessly there.  And I’ve lost count of the number of times we were approached by strangers and were asked if we were siblings.

We were buddies, alright. We were both brought to Ibaan by our respective positions with the then Digital Telecommunications, Phils. I was, at the time, the Assistant Manager for Recovery Management, and he was a Switching Supervisor. I hail from Mindoro, and he’s from Southern Leyte.

But here’s the thing…

He became my boyfriend even before I personally met him.

Now I know you’re hooked, and you want to know more. 🙂

Our story started when I was still the District Credit and Collection In-Charge, and I was assigned in my hometown in Occidental Mindoro. My job was to manage the accounts receivable portfolio of San Jose and Mamburao Exchanges. Part of that management was to prepare the disconnection request for delinquent accounts, and reconnection request once the account is current again. Those requests get submitted to the Switching Department. They then execute the disconnection, and once the account gets settled, they also execute the reconnection.

You know how Filipinos always wait for the last minute to act on a deadline, right?

Digitel subscribers are Filipinos, indeed!

And on that particular month, I think 250 or so of the 1,500 subscribers decided to pay on the last day, so the cashier was late in finishing his collection report. That meant I would also be late in updating the A/R sheet.

At that time, I had the highest collection rating company-wide. And that was due to my timely disconnection schedule. You don’t pay, I disconnect. So they pay, albeit on the very last day.

So staying in the office late was the norm for me, just so I could finish the job.

And because I knew I was going to be late submitting my disconnection request, I had the mind to call the Switching Department and give them a heads up. It was around 7:00 pm.

And the call went like this:

Phone ringing…

Someone answered: Switching.

Me: Hello… Sweetheart, pwede pakihintay ako? Meron akong for disconnection.

Voice: Ano’ng tawag mo sa ‘kin?

Me: Sweetheart, may masama ba don?

Voice: Pang mag boyfriend lang ‘yon.

Me: Walang problema… mula ngayon boyfriend na kita.

See… I’m that person who follows protocol. If someone answers the phone on a switching number, then that person should be a switching personnel, because the switching room is for switching personnel only. No other employees were allowed in there. Well… supposedly.

So when he answered my call on the second ring, I just knew he’s a switch tech, and that he was the person I needed to talk to. Didn’t care what his name was. And in that era of my life, I would call people whose name I don’t know “sweetheart.”

But he would not just roll with that. We haven’t met, no. And I think he took offense. He didn’t like being called sweetheart. But he also did not say that he could not be my boyfriend, so he must have been single, yes?

So, stubborn that I was, when the disconnected subscribers came to the office to pay the following morning, I just had to rile him some more.

Phone ringing…

Someone answered: Switching. (Uh-oh… not his voice!)

Me: Hello… pwede sa boyfriend ko? I have three for reconnection. San Jose.

Voice: Sino ga po ang boyfriend n’yo?

Me: ‘Yong naka-duty kagabi, around 7:00.

Voice: (shouting) Sir Jojo! Girlfriend n’yo daw from Mindoro.

And that was how I learned of his name. He was such a gentleman, he took the call.

And from then on, I would just ask for Jojo whenever I have a business with the Switching Department.

Until an opportunity arose for us to personally meet, in San Jose.

But that is another story for another time.

If you want to know how that first meeting went, just leave me a comment below. 🙂