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http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/wo ... a-man.html
"That's when she said she might not be what I was looking for and that she was actually a transsexual. I just said, 'Oh' and blushed with embarrassment. But for some reason I wasn't put off.
"I'd never met a transsexual before and my instinct was that I liked Fatine. Even if it was just as friends, I wanted to meet her again."
Two days later Ian and Fatine, who was born Mohammed Fazdil Bin Min Bahari, met at a bar - and kissed at the end of the night.
Ian says: "It just felt right. My first impression in the coffee shop was that Fatine was a woman.
"If she happened to have male sex organs then that was some sort of birth defect. I never thought of her as a man."
Ian says: "Being a straight man I did have a few concerns about the way I was feeling.
"I wondered if it meant I was gay and I was scared what had happened wasn't right, but I couldn't ignore how I felt."
Fatine, who has taken female hormones since the age of 17, does not want gender reassignment surgery because of the risks involved and because she is happy with her body as it is.
"I began to understand that Fatine and her friends were not a freak show but ordinary people like you or me who just happened to have been born into the wrong body."
When Ian's contract finished five months later he returned to Derby, but he and Fatine realised they both felt strongly about each other. Ian arranged to return to Kuala Lumpur to work, but not before telling all to his mum Patricia.
On his second visit, in October 2007, Ian and Fatine felt ready for a physical relationship.
Ian says:
"I was scared about what would happen if sex didn't work. I needn't have worried and it only helped bring us closer. If you love someone, you accept their body no matter how it is."
"I started feeling incredibly proud to have Fatine on my arm."