Oui, he’s the one
Former Channel 8 fixture Sharon Au breaks her silence on her French beau
By Kwok Kar Peng
February 06, 2010
WEDDING bells are set to ring in the near future for local celebrity Sharon Au.
‘ Yes in French
” No in French
In an interview with The New Paper, the 34-year-old former TV host and actress revealed that she is marrying her French beau, who is eight years her junior.
‘He is the one. My mum loves him too,’ she wrote in an e-mail.
The nuptials will be held in Tokyo, where she is now based, but she wants to keep it a very private affair.
Despite our prodding, Sharon was reluctant to divulge more information about her big day, only that it will not be held this year.
‘When the time is right to celebrate, I would definitely not be so sheepish about it. For now, I am very loved and I am happy,’ was all she would disclose.
She is also protective of her fiance, a good-looking young man as far as we can tell from pictures on her multilingual blog. She didn’t even want to tell us his name.
Sharon gave up a promising TV career in Singapore at the end of 2005 to enrol in Waseda University’s School of International Liberal Studies in Tokyo.
She will graduate next year with a Bachelor of Liberal Arts.
Sharon: This is chemistry
She is on a scholarship sponsored by MediaCorp, her former employer, but admits that she has to take on part-time jobs to pay for living expenses.
She declined to elaborate, only admitting: ‘I don’t splurge on shopping, except textbooks, which cost a bomb… But I do eat a lot!’
Sharon said she would very much like to have children. In particular, twins.
Though secretive about her man, photos of the lovey-dovey couple pop up often on Sharon’s blog.
In fact, the front page of the blog features a photo of them looking playfully at each other as they hold matching necklaces.
The pair met in September 2008 when Sharon was in France on a school exchange programme to study French and law.
She admitted to the relationship in a Shin Min Daily News interview in February last year.
More info can be gleaned from her blog.
Since September 2008, she has posted entries about how she is basking in love, her immense happiness and contentment.
She posted the most telling entry in January last year.
Along with photos of her and her boyfriend, including one with her arm around him, she wrote: ‘We laughed (hysterically) at the same gags and in the same hyena-like guffaws (way).
‘I don’t know if you do that but I have the tendency to take that as a very crucial gauge of the extent of the type… of humour two people have in common.
‘We belong to the same self-deprecating family. We are both crazy in the same goofy way. The way we lip-sync to a favourite song, dance like idiots when we are in high spirits and chuckle at the most inappropriate moments.
‘This is chemistry.’
It isn’t just love that has made Sharon so optimistic.
In one recent post, she wrote that she had many plans and wishes waiting to be fulfilled, and that her life was very romantic.
She explained that she tried to make every moment a work of art and that her current state of mind can best be described by German philosopher Nietzsche’s Latin phrase, amor fati, loosely translated as ‘love of one’s fate’.
She added that she could not be more contented than now because she had learnt to embrace everything that came her way, including her ‘despair and symptoms, like losing point of reference to the world, excessive desires, reckless abandonment, fervent (futile) search for essence and meanings, and balancing individuality with modern ethics’.
Mostly, Sharon said, she had stopped trying to find meaning when meaning could not be found.
But there have been times, like last May, when she ranted about being bullied and taken advantage of, and earlier in February about a ‘big, corporate bully’.
Mum’s the word
Sharon said she did not want to further discuss those incidents but let on that she has her mother, who’s in Singapore, to count on when things get too much for her to handle.
Though she can still be seen hawking Fragrance bah kwa (barbecued meat) in television commercials and her face is plastered on taxis during Chinese New Year, she said she no longer enjoys being in the limelight.
And she said she doesn’t miss the local showbiz industry, keep up with its developments or maintain contact with her former artiste colleagues.
She declined to comment whether acting and hosting are on the cards when she returns to Singapore for good next year or if she would venture into politics as she had once said she would.
But for someone who writes in English, Chinese, Japanese, French and Spanish on her blog, her options are plentiful.
Still, Sharon is hungry for more.
She said: ‘The more I learn, the more I know how inadequate I am. I have definitely come a long way from where I was four years ago. But I’m still not smart enough for me.’
The NewPaper