A meet cute that happens on a dive holiday…enjoy!
Mia took a deep breath as she stepped into the jetway off her flight from Singapore to Manado, the last leg in a 24-hour in-air journey that left her home three days before. The fragrance of the humid tropical air brought into her conscience the best of her memories of her previous visits to Indonesia. Her shoulders dropped. She had reached her destination.
Immigration control in North Sulawesi, without the throngs in Bali waiting for permission to enter paradise, took less time to pass through than it took to reach it. At baggage claim after that, her trunk was already the last to be claimed rotating on the belt. No surprises there unlike her trips to major cities in Europe which seemed to lose her baggage more often with the latest in technology.
Mia pulled her bag off the belt and set it upright, pressing the button to release the handle on her trunk and lifting it until it popped into place. She pulled out the brochure from the outside pocket on her carry-on, reading the name of the resort she hadn’t bothered to look at in the day of travel she just had. The trunk glided along in front of her, through the sliding doors at the front of the building where a crowd awaited the just arrived passengers.
Outside the airport, with the sound of palm tree leaves tapping on each other in the breeze, Mia stopped to scan the crowd for the driver from the resort. Trust the system, she thought, as she looked for a man she didn’t know in a foreign land to take her away, in a van. Her eyes paused at the sign with her name on it, held high over the crowd, and then trailed down to the face of the person holding up the sign – a tall young man with long wavy dark hair, hidden behind a pair of aviator glasses. Mia looked down at what she was wearing, the oversized Lululemon pants, the ones with paint splatters on them, the ones she wore on long flights, the ones she thought no one she knew would see her in. She waved to him and felt herself moving toward something she didn’t expect on a dive trip.
The crowd parted for her to bring her suitcase through, and the man introduced himself, “I am Noah.”
A guy named Noah which wasn’t an Indonesian name, who looked Indonesian, but maybe not, Mia thought taking in his features. There was the sense of the majestic people of his region in his almond shaped eyes and his soft dark hair, but he was tall, not stocky like many of the men from the region. He had their smile, the smile filled with the most perfect of perfect teeth, the smile of his ancestors that was hard to believe served as no defense against the invaders from another time who destroyed villages just to coopt the international trade of vanilla and nutmeg.
“And you,” he had to confirm, “are Mia?”
“Oof, I think I left my brain somewhere back in San Francisco,” she said. “Yes, I forgot to introduce myself. Here are my papers.”
“Yes, I see, I’m kidnapping, I mean I’m picking up the right woman,” he said, as he handed her papers back to her.
Mia glanced up at him and watched as his grin spread across his face. The thought flashed through her mind that his smile was only for her. But the way the dive business worked, Noah would be back the next week gifting that smile to the next group of guests headed to the resort.
“To be honest, I’m glad I left my brain behind. If at any point during my trip I start to talk like a scientist, please shut me up.”
“You mean like e = mc2?”
“Ha, ha, ha. OK, no, but if I start talking too much molecular biology.”
“You mean like p53 is a tumor suppressor gene, that kind of molecular biology?”
“Huh?”
“Yes, I work at the resort, but one of the experiments I’ve done as a summer student is to run PCR reactions for the pathology department in the main hospital in North Sulawesi. It’s basic research, but p53 is the most frequently mutated gene in human cancer, right?”
“#$?&,” she whispered to herself.
“What did you say?” he said.
“I don’t think a taxi driver at home in San Francisco would know what p53 is,” she said. “That gene follows me everywhere. I can’t even escape it in North Sulawesi, which seems to be about as far away as I can get from the lab bench.”
“Indonesians are human like everywhere else.”
“Of, of, of course,” Mia said, feeling the sweat drip down her back now.
“My group found p53 mutations in all types of cancers collected from Indonesian patients, just as in the rest of the world. But we also sequence p53 in fish.”
“Fish?”
“Yes, as a way to monitor for toxins in the water.”
“Oh, right. I’m not sure I want to know the results of that work. I am about to cook myself in the strait for at least 30 hours over the next couple of weeks.”
“Don’t worry. You will be safe. The matahari, ah, the sun, is more of a threat,” he said.
He pointed to the van. “The van is parked over there. Just follow me.”
Noah loaded her two bags in the back of a van with the decal of the resort’s logo on the side. He brought her around to the right side of the vehicle, opened the sliding door behind the driver’s seat on the side opposite from the USA and motioned for Mia to step in. He pulled the door shut behind her, and then climbed into the driver’s seat in front of her.
“Got your seatbelt on?” he said, glancing into the rearview mirror.
“Ready.”
She wondered if he knew that she was Dr. Bianco, the one who worked on the team that discovered p53 mutations in cancer. She wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up.
Mia turned off airplane mode on her phone and texted her sister that she had arrived safely and had already talked about p53. Her sister answered even though it was the middle of the night her time, sending back the heart emoji along with the disappointed emoji. Mia laughed and when she looked up, Noah was peering at her through the rearview mirror.
“Just business.”
“Are you ready to go diving?”
“Yes, but I’m a bit nervous. I always am before the first dive and then it’s like I’ve never been away.”
“You will love the diving. Have you been here before?”
“No. It’s my first time in Lembeh Strait. I’m so up for searching for all the wonky critters here,” she said. “Um, you know, you speak English so well. I feel like I’m talking to someone from home.”
“Ah, yes. I’m the product of an international love story. My mamma is Indonesian, and my papa, um, my dad is American.”
His eyes glanced to the left in the rearview mirror to catch her eyes.
“I even went to high school and university in, in the bay area.”
“No. Way.”
“Yes, one of those fancy schools for high school,” he said, clearing his throat. “I went on the other side of the bay for university.”
“If I’d known, I would have brought something for you. You know, like a key chain with the Golden Gate Bridge on it.”
“Well, let’s count it as your first discovery on this trip.”
Mia sat back and smiled.
“Yes, let’s go diving.”
Books…
Norwegian Lessons in Indonesia (2023)
An Accidental Artist: Discovering Creativity through Scuba Diving (2018)
Art for sale at AnemoneWatch on Square
Janice Nigro 
Interesting story! Life imitates art which imitates life?
Ha ha ha…yes! Just mixing the parts together.
And thank you for taking the time to read it 🙂