Thanks to PT Foundation, Marhalem and Jamaliah not only found a new lease of life after being diagnosed HIV-positive by volunteering at the organisation, but they also found each other.

Their condition didn't stop Marhalem Mansor and Jamaliah Sulaiman, both 42, from falling for each other during a sharing session with others who are HIV-positive, in 2005.

Jamaliah went blank during the sharing session and couldn't utter a word when it was her turn to talk about her experience.

"So I stood up and reassured her that it's all right and told others that she was probably just too shy and nervous. I caught her attention there and then," Marhalem relates with a mischievous grin.

Giggling like a schoolgirl, Jamaliah adds: "I was attracted to him right from the start."
But both were attached at the time. Jamaliah was still married, although relationships were strained at home; Marhalem was engaged to a girl in Singapore.

So they hid their feelings from each other, while Jamaliah concentrated on her volunteer work at PT, Marhalem left town to work with another NGO in Johor.

It was until last year, when Jamaliah had problems applying for an identity card for her adopted daughter that she got in touch with Marhalem again, who had broken off with his fiancee.

"I contacted him and found that he was free. I was also divorced at the time. So I told him to come back to Kuala Lumpur - that PT needed him, that I needed him," says Jamaliah with a shy smile.

Jamaliah, who was a full-time project co-ordinator at PT's positive living programme, suggested that Marhalem apply to be a project officer again, the post he held before he left town.

So he came back, was re-hired "on merit", Jamaliah points out, and they got to work side by side.

"That was when we finally admitted what we felt for each other and we've been together since," says Marhalem.

The couple will be getting married next Saturday.