Some years ago, while conducting an English language workshop on a hot, dreary afternoon for a large group of students in Singapore, I suddenly felt sorry for them, and decided to tell them a story. It was a romantic love story calculated to make any sixteen-year-old sit up and listen with full attention. I told them about a young Singaporean girl who unexpectedly meets her dream man on a special day - 29 February 1988 - when a quaint old Leap Year custom allows women to make the first move in a romantic encounter. Our heroine does precisely that. Hereafter she and the dream man, both exceptionally attractive and brimming with life's hopes and dreams, are caught in a dizzying spin of events that Fate seems to like visiting upon young lovers. "You will come together at last. But not yet, not yet," says Fate mischievously.
The lovers meet every 29 February over 12 years, in breathless negotiations of the many pitfalls along the path of true love which has never run smooth anyway, before their hopes are finally fulfilled in a spectacular millennial culmination worthy of love's loftiest dreams.
