To all Mandarin Chinese learners, what's your reason for wanting to learn Mandarin Chinese?

Just curious of the different reasons out there. For myself, I've just recently started learning as I've always told myself that I would learn eventually, mostly because of the fascinating foreignness of the Chinese culture, economic reasons, Chinese influence in the region and in other languages like Japanese and Korean that made it practical to learn when I want to take up those languages. The ultimate motivation though came in the form of a very attractive Taiwanese girl who doesn't speak much English (plus, Taiwan looks pretty cool in general!). Call it what you like, but that's all the extra reason I needed to start up! ;D