MODEL COUPLE

The couple: Models Rafaela Scienza and Max Malchartzeck, both 20

Relationship status: Dating for 11/2 years

Theirs is a story that shows the perks of living in a globalised world. The two models - Scienza is from Fortaleza, Brazil, while Malchartzeck comes from Berlin, Germany - met at a party in September 2007 when they were both working in Seoul, South Korea.

But sparks did not fly at their first meeting - they were then 18 - and the two good-lookers parted ways without intending to keep in touch.

About a month after they met, Malchartzeck, who was then in Hong Kong for an assignment, ran into a mutual friend who told him Scienza was having trouble adapting to life in South Korea.

As a half-Korean - his mother is Korean and father is German - he thought he would show her around. So, when he returned to the South Korean capital, he rang her up and the rest, as they say, is history.

For the last 11/2 years, the pair have been travelling around the world, counting four cities - Bangkok, Seoul, Shanghai and Singapore - as bases.

But the party may be about to end: When Urban met them on Jan 21 for this photoshoot, the couple let on that it was their last day in Singapore.

They were leaving the next day for a two-week vacation in Bangkok, possibly their final trip together.

Both are toying with the idea of going back to school in their home countries.

'I have been doing nothing for my brain for two years (since I started modelling),' says Malchartzeck, who intends to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering.

'I know I need a back-up plan, because I can't model forever.'

Similarly, Scienza has plans to return to Brazil by April to decide if she wants to further her studies. She may embark on a career as a journalist or start her own business.

Until then, however, they seem content to make the most of their time together.

Neither wanted to speculate on what would become of their relationship.

Malchartzeck waxes philosophical: 'You meet somebody from the other side of the world, you fall in love, and you enjoy it. We will see what happens when it's time to decide.'

Who is the vainer of the two?

Scienza: We both are vain in different ways. I take longer to get ready - about 45 minutes - in the morning because I have to take a shower.

Malchartzeck: But I spend more time looking at myself in the mirror.

Is it difficult to be in a relationship when both of you are in an industry filled with beautiful people?

Scienza: Actually, it's not that difficult because guys are the ones hitting on Max.

Malchartzeck: What is important is that we are focused on what's inside the person rather than just looks. If you just go for what's on the outside, you will end up being disappointed.

So neither of you has ever been jealous?

Scienza: Once, a girl kept trying to dance with Max while we were at a club in Hong Kong. She even stepped on my foot as she tried to cut in. I got really angry because she was not showing any respect for me. I nearly got into a fight with her.

Malchartzeck: I eventually got rid of the girl by telling her it was not cool to step on my girlfriend's foot. I don't get jealous because I trust her.

Has either of you ever posed in your underwear?

Scienza: I have done catalogue shoots wearing lingerie. I have also done a shoot for T3 Magazine wearing just socks. It's just a job for me and it pays about double the usual rates.

Malchartzeck: No, I'm too lazy to work out. Well, I don't want to stand around in my boxers. I hear such jobs pay more but I'm not interested.

What do you think about that, Max?

Malchartzeck: It sucks when my friends come up to me and say they have seen my girlfriend in her underwear in a magazine and say: 'She looks great'.

The pictures do look great and I understand that it is for her career, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.

What do you like best about each other?

Scienza: He always tries to understand what's going on when other people are losing their tempers. Maybe it's a German thing that he always keeps his cool.

Malchartzeck: She, on the other hand, is always open and buzzing with energy. Maybe it's a Brazilian thing.

What is the most annoying quality about your partner?

Malchartzeck: When she gets nervous, she bites her fingernails. When she is nervous, I get nervous.

Scienza: When I talk to him sometimes, he doesn't answer me at once because he's doing something else like watching TV or being on the computer. I have to repeat everything twice to get him to respond.

DOCTORS TOUCH

The couple: Low Chai Ling, 35, and Kenneth Lee, 38, medical directors, The Sloane Clinic at 03-01 Chevron House and 01-66 Chip Bee Gardens

Relationship status: Married for nine years

The couple that laughs together stays together. That could very well be the maxim that sums up the relationship between Dr Low Chai Ling and her husband of nine years, Dr Kenneth Lee. Throughout the interview and photoshoot, the pair were good-naturedly ribbing each other and having a laugh at the other's expense.

'As long as I look good in the photo, can already,' Dr Low jokes.

'Feel free to airbrush any of her flaws out,' Dr Lee chips in.

Not that either needs the assistance of digital cover-up.

The photogenic pair met in December 1998 while they were both working at the National University Hospital - she was doing her housemanship and he was a medical officer.

He proposed three months later, in March 1999, just before she left Singapore for a three-week holiday in Prague.

'Maybe he was worried I would fall in love with a handsome European. But I quickly said yes to his proposal,' she recalls with a laugh. ' I didn't keep him in suspense.'

The pair tied the knot that June.

Today, they have a 41/2-year-old daughter and a three-year-old son, and co-run The Sloane Clinic, an aesthetic practice, which counts tai tai and local celebrities among its clientele.

The clinic, which offers non-invasive aesthetic treatments such as laser therapy, Botox injections and filler injections, was set up in 2003 at Chevron House in Raffles Place, where

Dr Low is stationed. Business was so good that they opened a second clinic in Chip Bee Gardens in 2005, where Dr Lee works.

What do you do to keep the romance alive?

Low: Because each of us is stationed at a different clinic, Friday and Saturday nights are our date nights. It's not something fancy though. We will dress down, go to Geylang to find the busiest food stall and queue up for the food because we know it will definitely be good. We put the kids to bed by 8pm and slip out.

Lee: Although we are in different clinics, we e-mail and Skype a lot, so we are constantly in contact for work purposes.

What was your biggest fight about?

Low: When he didn't turn up when our son was born. Instead, he was in the clinic doing laser treatment for a patient.

Lee: Actually, I was at Gleneagles hospital with her when the contractions began, but it was quite slow going, so after spending a night at the hospital, I decided to head back to the clinic in the morning as I had appointments lined up.

Low: What was worse was that since I'd already given birth, he decided to work for another six hours before going to the hospital.

How was it resolved?

Low: By the time he came to see me, I was already feeling fine and had had time to cool down.

Lee: I sneaked her out to Adam Road to have nasi lemak, because it was nearby and the food is good, so that was that.

Do you do aesthetic treatments on each other?

Low: For us, it's all very scientific. We'll say technical things like, 'I think your cheek will look better if it's 0.5cm higher'. I get Thermage done yearly to firm up my skin as well as fillers for my face.

Lee: Yes, whatever's necessary. I've had Botox and laser treatments done on my face. But we have to make appointments to see each other, just like other patients.

What do you like best about each other?

Low: I like the fact that he is down to earth, calm and practical. He is always clear-headed and I've learnt to rely on him over the years.

Lee: She is a go-getter and cannot sit still. She's very determined and that's the kind of trait that has made the clinic what it is today.

What is the most annoying quality about your partner?

Low: He can be an ultra-perfectionist, to the point where he will arrange books in a weird geometrical pattern, that sort of thing. Sometimes, I deliberately place my cup too close to the edge of the table because I know that will annoy him.

Lee: If she has an 'off' switch, that would be good. No matter where we are, she will be thinking about work and her thumbs will be on her Blackberry.

SAY IT WITH BLING

The couple: Florence Neo, 37, director, and Stephen Tan, 38, managing director of German jewellery brand Charlotte in Singapore; the brand has over 80 stores worldwide

Relationship status: Married for 14 years

Their romance is truly the stuff of fairytales. In fact, as they put it, 'you won't believe it'. Set up on a dinner date in March 1993 by their parents who were business associates-cum-friends, Neo and Tan went on to avoid one another for the next six months, save for 'occasional' phone calls and casual outings.

Says the petite and pretty Neo: 'I didn't think it'd come to anything. We also refused to give in to our parents.'

But when Tan, then a marketing manager at his father's electronics company, learnt that he would be posted to work in Germany for nine months in January 1994, he decided to take action.

He confesses that he was smitten by Neo's beauty at first sight and had been hoping that the affection was mutual. He waited because he was not sure if she was seeing someone else.

For their first date, he asked her out to a gym.

'I don't know what in the world I was doing asking a girl out to a gym,' he recalls, laughing.

He also found 'excuses' to see her daily.

Neo says: 'For example, he would ask me to leave my lipstick in his car so that I need not carry too many things when we went out clubbing. He would then 'forget' to pass it back to me so that he could visit me again the next day.'

Thirteen days later, he proposed.

'I was very happy he proposed,' she says. 'We were at the same stage in our lives when we had just graduated from university. We both wanted to start something on our own. I could really see myself spending the rest of my life with him.'

Apart from starting their own family - they have a boy, 13, and two girls, aged nine and three - they also set up the local arm of German jewellery brand Charlotte by Ehinger-Schwarz in 2000.

They had come across the brand, which is known for its interchangeable jewellery parts when Tan, then a business manager with personal hygiene products company Gillette, was posted to Germany in 1996, family in tow.

Says Neo, who discovered the brand first: 'Not many husbands go with their wives to a jewellery store. He, however, decided to quit his job and bring the business into Singapore and in that sense brought the entire store home to me.'

How do you juggle work and your personal life?

Neo: We don't separate it. We involve our kids in the business. At age seven, my son could tell a normal diamond from a Gabrielle diamond, which we sell. It has greater brilliance than all other cuts because of its number of facets.

Who wears the pants?

Tan: It depends. If it is something that she is better at, I go along with her and vice versa. She is strong in areas such as people management and public relations, which I'm weak in. I'm better with computers, finances and heavy lifting.

What was your biggest fight about?

Tan: There has really been nothing earth shattering. We have two rules when it comes to arguments - to keep them short and to never go to bed angry with each another.

Plus, she has a very good memory and will remind me of everything I have said so I usually end up going, 'Oh', and that's the end of the argument. I actually highly respect that. It shows that I married someone who doesn't just have looks but brains too.

Neo: Our fights are not so much arguments as they are just us throwing a few insults at one another. For example, if I'm not interested in what he's saying but he keeps going on, I'd tell him, 'Even if you were to give me a microscope, I wouldn't be able to find any interest in the matter'. It's a line from (American sitcom) Frasier, which we're big fans of, and it's funny because we're both aware of the original context.

What do you like best about each other?

Neo: I love how supportive he is as a husband. He shares my passion for jewellery and brought the Charlotte business idea to fruition by arranging for us to meet the designer Wolf-Peter Schwarz towards the end of his stint in Germany in 1997.

Before that, we had discussed the venture briefly but I thought it was just talk.

Tan: She is very good with people. She's able to read the interplay between two people and offer an alternative perspective that we work into all our decision-making.

What is the most annoying quality about your partner?

Neo: That he has no white hair at all. Most people at his age would start getting a couple of strands but he has none. It's probably because of his happy outlook on life.

Tan: Her super memory. It's a great thing but it also means I can never win in a fight.

STITCHED TOGETHER

The couple: Madeline Wong, 27, and Jay Quek, 29, founders and co-designers of home-grown womenswear label Posse, which is sold at Trixilini and Retail Therapy (03-13 Wheelock Place)

Relationship status: Dating for about six years

Sometime tomorrow on Valentine's Day, the designer duo will be having a picnic with their 'children' - three rabbits and a dog - at an undisclosed location.

The heartwarming image is a far cry from their relationship in the initial years, which they describe as 'choppy'.

Classmates at local design school Raffles Design Institute (RDI) in 2000 - where they are now also part-time lecturers - they started going out only 21/2 years later when Wong pursued Quek.

'People always said that there were sparks between us but I was attached to someone else then,' she says.

'It was only when I was sure that the feelings were mutual that we went for it. He would be making patterns in school and I'd be watching and drooling over him from behind.'

The relationship, however, ended when she returned to her former flame in 2005 - the year Posse was set up.

Says Quek: 'Of course, there were awkward moments working together then but it was a mutual breakup as we were arguing quite a lot.'

It was only in 2006, when both were single, that they reunited.

'We decided that it would be easier for us to run the label as a couple since we shared the same goal,' she says.

'Guess we had also always been in denial (about our feelings for each other). Before that, we were in a situation where we had feelings for each other but had to pretend to be fine if either of us was going out with someone else.'

Home is a studio-cum-private-nest in the northern part of Singapore.

Don't you ever get bored of seeing each other all day?

Quek: It's a good thing because an idea can hit us at 9pm and we can work on it together till 3am.

The finale gown for the Singapore Fashion Festival Blueprint show last April, for example. We only started work on it after midnight a few days before the show.

Wong: Being in the same industry also means that when we share our work problems, the other would be on the same wavelength.

Who wears the pants?

Wong: When it comes to the label, Jay will make the final decision. His ideas tend to be more creative whereas I come from a more commercial perspective.

I already wear the pants in the relationship, so if I had to deal with the label too, I'd go crazy.

Quek: She decides on things like what to eat, what to do in our free time and when our rest days are. If I were to wear the pants in the relationship, it'd be all work and no play.

Have there ever been instances when you thought your partner's design was ugly?

Quek: There would be times when we would go: 'I told you so.' But we have come to realise it's a learning process.

Now, we'll still make a sample of the design even if only one of us likes it because the actual product often looks very different from what's on paper.

Wong: There have also been times when we both agreed that an idea was nice but it ended up not selling.

What was your biggest fight about?

Quek: There was a shoe-throwing incident in 2005 over not being able to agree on the colour of a design. She was giving me a lot of attitude, so I stormed out of the studio and from the street below, you could hear this crazy woman screaming and throwing shoes - mine - at the door.

Wong: It was quite silly. Ater I had cooled down, I had to go pick everything up.

Honestly though, we are not the sort who will let anger fester in us. It usually just takes a stupid smile from Jay for my anger to go away.

Quek: We resolved the shoe-throwing fight by making the dress in both our versions. They sold equally well.

What do you like best about each other?

Quek: She makes me laugh and helps keep my temper in check. She's also a very good companion.

We don't even have to be doing anything, it's nice to just have her around.

And she cooks very well.

Wong: I have only one weak spot - this funny thing he does with his eyes, which makes me weak in the knees.

What is the most annoying trait about your partner?

Quek: I'll ask her where she wants to go and she'll say, 'Anything', but the truth is, she already has some place in mind and if I can't read her mind, that's it. She'll start sulking. I think it's a girl thing.

Wong: His toilet hogging. I don't know what he does in there, but it can get very inconvenient.

He also has this bad habit of not touching any drinks that have been sitting outside for a while. He'll just pour a new glass and leave the old one on the table.

This article was first published in Urban, The Straits Times.