By and large I am Italian, blood, genes, the works. I grew up in a world where it was not uncommon for your marriage to be arranged by the family/ies. Both my sister and brother and I ran away from that as fast as we could. One day my cousin Sam, my sponsor, asked me if I had ever seen Rosa. I asked who Rosa was and he told me the girl next door to him. He told me she was stunning and to go and “check her out.” She worked as a receptionist at a prominent school in Perth. I was 21 at the time.

I thought, “why not?” So I popped into the school one day to “ask for directions.” She was, as he said stunning and perhaps 3 years younger than me. A few weeks later when I saw Sam, he asked me, “Well have you seen Rosa?’ I said “yes.” “What do you think? I said, “I think she is beautiful.” Sam said Ok let’s go and see her father together and you can state your intentions. I looked at Sam and said, “Sam if I state my intentions, he’s gonna shoot me!” That was the end of “arrangements.”