Thought it would be fun to post my entry in Pei Wei’s Blog Asia Contest:

I love my wife. We’ve been married just short of 15 years and have 4 amazing children together. We did things right and have no regrets about our dating life and marriage — we followed some of the advice of our elders: “learn to become husband and wife before you learn to become mom and dad.” The sage wisdom was right, and we loved being a couple then and we love being parents now.

Just an aside: maybe space your kids out a bit, we had 4 kids age 4 and under for a little while there. Holy smokes.

My wife and I are the complete opposite in every way — she is introverted, I am extroverted. She loves one-on-one conversations, I love being in the middle of the crowd. She loves ready books alone in front of the fireplace — I love watching movies in the prime seat of a packed, noisy theater. I love LA and Vegas, she enjoys suburbia and the quiet side of life.

In that opposite world there’s one thing we agree on: Pad Thai at Pei Wei.

Every week or so we drop off the kids at school and ask each other where we should go for lunch together. We rattle off a few names of places to go, then during a pause in the brainstorming we realize the perfect place to eat: Pei Wei. Maybe it is the allure of the new Coke Freestyle machine cranking out 103 different soda flavors (Peach Sprite is incredible, by the way) or the laid-back style of the restaurant and menu. Either way, there is a moment where we just agree. The planets align and for all of our differences there is one moment of commonality.

We both love something, and that something is Pei Wei.

The conversation is familiar while we’re in line: will we try something new, or go with the old standby? Occasionally there’s a risky adventure into something that involves mango or a spicy glaze, but we usually land on Pad Thai as the classic cuisine of marital peace. She smiles … I smile … we eat. Life is perfect.

To top it off in our marital bliss we snag a fortune cookie from the bin of ample supply. I read mine — it says, “you need to be in touch with your feminine side this week” so I kiss her on the cheek and call it good. Then I grab a few extra fortune cookies, convince a server to give me a “to go” cup for more of the life-changing Peach Sprite and we make our way out into the world of opposites again.

She’ll go back to her books, I’ll enjoy movies and our wonderful dance in opposite world will continue again for another week. Then we’ll look at each other and begin the dance of where to eat — and we’ll probably be sitting in our booth at Pei Wei eating Pad Thai once again.

JG