We met at HEC Paris during our MBA, at one of those chaotic group dinners where half the class had squeezed into a 20 sqm room in Jouy-en-Josas where 3 improvised chefs were making pasta.

Amid all the noise, Claudio noticed Xinchen - and to be clear, it wasn't her looks or her easy charm that got him. It was her love for carbonara. Truly, deeply, no notes. He knew right then this was an interesting girl. One with priorities.

So naturally, for their first proper date, Claudio offered to cook her dinner in his student dorm room - a bold move for someone who is, to put it kindly, not a natural in the kitchen.

He assumed it would be a one-time culinary disaster, and knew that would have been the first and last meal they would have shared together. Against all odds, she agreed to a second. And many more.

Paris gave us three years together, and then we decided to make things complicated. We spent a year living between Italy and China, splitting our time (and our hearts) across two very different corners of the world. For the past year, the Middle East has been "home." Where to next? We genuinely still have no idea!

A roman dish, a questionable first dinner, and three continents later, here we are. We still don't know where we're headed, but we've figured out the important part: we're going together.