He did not get down on one knee.

Neither did he put the ring in her champagne glass.

Instead, he put together a photo album of their eight-month courtship and presented it to her at a romantic candlelight dinner in Monaco in May last year.

There were pages after pages of snapshots of when they first met at the 2011 Formula 1 SingTel Singapore Grand Prix, dinners whenever he visited Singapore, and their holidays together in Australia and other parts of the world.

Then she flipped to the last page and written in Chinese were these words (pictured above): "Ni yuan yi jia gei wo ma?" (Will you marry me) .

"My first reaction was to laugh," says former TV actress Phyllis Quek.

Then she counter-proposed: "If you can say that in Mandarin, then I will consider marrying you."

And her Aussie beau did. "David's intonation was all wrong but he said it anyway and it was so sweet," she says, smiling from the memory. "How can I not say yes?"

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