Week 2

Sunny (25) lives in Mumbai, he is still a student, very involved in social-economical movements, he also reads a lot of philosophy and had me read some of the articles and writings he has read like those of a woman named Arundhati Roy and those of Swami Vivekananda. We would have really long conversations; he is so enthusiastic and passionate about some issues like what multinationals do to third world countries or the evil of the American policy around the world. All was going pretty well –pretty out of hand also- until it happened. I told him that the fact of not allowing people who have more than three children to compete in elections is not democratic, of course he did not agree, he told me about the overpopulation of his country etc. We discussed the matter a while and I don’t know how but we even came to talk about religion and beliefs until he finally told me, I made no point. I know that I don’t always understand all he says to me, and it’s probably the same for him but that statement just left me wondering. How can I make no point? It sounded absurd. What I did understand though was his disappointment. As if the dream were dead, killed by my lack of logic. He said that I am unable to submit my beliefs to the scrutiny of logic. Funny because I don’t remember we were discussing about religion. Since that day I was uncomfortable to even appear online to him. When I finally felt I could do it, he didn’t even send me a welcome smile as he used to, I’m the one who said hi first and we didn’t talk long because he was having problems with his computer, our chats have been pretty brief ever since.

Sunny warned me about people from Nigeria being not honest and looking to take money from you. I knew a Nigerian boy at the time, he seemed ok to me; we talked about the social and religious problems in his country. This week I met one of those Sunny was warning me about. He barely told me his asl and asked mine of course. He wanted to know things like what is my local currency and what is the exchange rate with US dollars, if my country was big or small and if it was a third world or first world country, if there were Nigerians living in Haiti. After concluding that I am beautiful –right after I refused to show him my picture- he told me he wanted to be my boyfriend –that guy’s incredible-. I had to find a way to send him away politely so I told him the simple truth, ”… I have a strict policy, “I have to know the guy in person [in order to become his girlfriend]”. He was gone after that right after he said ok.

I have about 40 contacts from four continents and still on one of these days when I absolutely needed to talk to someone –in an attempt to fight boredom- not a single one of them was online. I didn’t have many other options left. I went from chat room to chat room until I found someone I could have a sound conversation with. I met two actually, a 16-year-old Filipina (Gloria) and another Indian (Kumar, 25) living in Mumbai.

Before Claire told me about her age I thought she was an old lady. Earlier I was telling Pablo how I was afraid to meet teenagers because they are so crazy -about you know what!, especially the boys- . But Claire is a nice young woman, naïve as you would expect, I tried to warn her about the XXX guys out there, I suppose that’s the least I could do. She was doing research for a homework, she didn’t go to sleep until about 2 AM that night.

Kumar wants to improve his English –which in my opinion is not so bad even though not perfect either- and he thinks I’m nice! He is a programmer and told me he was black while asking me whether I was black also. Strange, I was not aware of the existence of black Indians. One thing is for sure he looks nothing like sub-Sahara African people, I guess being black is only a matter of skin color to him –cool!-. After seeing my picture he even concluded that we have the same skin color –are you sure about that?-!

I’ve met a few girls this week which is quite unusual for me. I guess it’s probably due to the fact that I’ve gone into chat rooms where I don’t usually go like art rooms and other randomly chosen rooms.

I realized it just now, there are a large percentage of people that I meet who are 25 year olds –or so they claim to be-. I once met an Indian who told me he was 25 because he wanted me to believe he was older than me (24), he did confess later on. But you must admit that the coincidence is almost unbelievable. Among all the people with whom I’ve talk more than once the vast majority is 25. Pablo (Valencia,Venezuela), Antonio(CT, USA), Sunny (Mumbai, India), Ravi, Kumar (Mumbai, India), Benny (Philipines), Pavan (Bangalore, India). Either many of them have lied to me or there is something about 25 year olds that just keeps me talking to them.