I moved households a few times when I was younger: from my birthplace, Baguio, to the heart of Manila, the coastal part of Cavite, and to a suburb in Bacoor. While some homes felt more familiar than others, I had distinct memories of each. Most of them involved friends. I grew up with the thought that each time we’d move, I’d never see the same set of friends ever again. Sometimes the pangs of being free to visit each place would enter my mind, and I thought it would be a good idea-until the time that I actually attempted to do it. I realized that I could never really return to the homes I had lived in, because they will never be exactly the same as I left them, or vice versa.
I felt the same way when talking to strangers on the internet. It didn’t matter that we might not be able to talk again. It felt exciting to live in the ephemeral and the anonymous.
The first time I had a memorable conversation on the internet was on the official Eragon website circa 2006. As part of its promotional campaign, the fantasy novel series-turned-box-office-flop had this great idea of hosting a website where people who clicked on the same things would fall in the same chatroom, two people at a time. I never was a fan of Eragon , so I don’t remember the specific things I had to do to “match” with someone (the system had something to do with virtues and dragon eggs?), but after a few minutes, there I was, saying my first hello. “Hi,” the person on the other end said. So went a good 30 minutes of our talking about where we’re from (she was from Adelaide), how old we were (I was two years younger), a little bit about the books we’d read (she couldn’t believe I hadn’t read Eragon yet), and then on about how we lived and how it was where we are. Continue reading “What happened when I met my internet girlfriend in person”