This is the ring Blake used to propose:

Cute, hey. I loved the idea, as did my family. If he hadn't won them over already, he certainly did with this move.

My grandmother is in her late 80s and, bless her heart, her age has been showing in recent years. For as long as I can remember, our clan's matriarch is infamous for a near-pathological obsession with being "proper" and "polite". When Blake came to Singapore for Christmas in December 2012, my grandmother, in very her-like way, she apologised repeatedly to him for her "very poor English".

(This was the second time he'd met my grandmother; the first time was in September 2009 in Beijing.)

Let me make this perfectly clear: my grandmother speaks grammatically perfect English. She has pulled each of her grandchildren up on grammar errors at some stage or another, including those of us who speak it with native fluency. Her vocabulary and syntax are better than those of ACTUAL native speakers. And it's not her first language, either.

Anyway, she's basically apologising to be polite. It's a saving face thing that prevails in Chinese culture.

My mother recently showed my grandmother the above photo of the ring. Her response? To remark on how gorgeous the ring was, and how there were so many huge diamonds on the ring, and how extravagant it was!

I'm 99% sure this was a combination of failing eyesight as well as the aforementioned exceeding politeness. Either way, Blake finds this story hilarious.