Yes, I'm still here

Have you been wondering why I don't write much here anymore? No? Oh! I'll proceed anyway...

Well, I've been more busy than usual lately and I have not chatted much, except for a little catching up with a few school friends of mine who are living abroad now and a few "hi how are you-s" here and there for just a few minutes, nothing much. Well in the mean time I've been meeting quite a few people online but by other means and I've managed to maintain a minimum of correspondence with my e-friends so they can know that I'm still alive, but that's about it.

Maybe this blog has served its purpose and needs.... a change of focus... I don't really know. But before I do that, I'll write a little about all the ways I've met people online, the ones I have not talked about yet.

TV shows in Yahoo Chat

Is Yahoo! affiliated with certain TV stations/networks?

I went into the "Entertainment & Arts-> Television" Yahoo! Rooms list. I wanted to chat about a TV show I've seen recently, it's called Dateline: To catch a Predator.

Interestingly enough, since I'm using the US version of Yahoo messenger, when I go into the Televison Category there is an impressive list of Television shows many having gone through their final season already. But, strangely enough I did not find a few very popular shows I've watched sometimes like Lost or the more recent Heroes. Just so you would know, until the series go wrong, I am a Heroes fan. I used to enjoy watching Lost but I lost track of the story because I'm not a regular viewer. So I ended up in the TV Lobby. When I tried to ask people about the Dateline: To catch a Predator, the only response I had was one of the chatters asking me if I was one of those "predators".

I'll be writing about this show again, soon.

Related Entries
Meeting People Online II - To Catch a Predator
They are preying on your kids
Meeting People Online can be dangerous


Technorati Tags: Yahoo Chat, Television

More spam via Yahoo! Messenger

I've been receiving a message from an ID (chat_software.downloads_rb) that I don't recognize . It's really odd since those messages are sent to an ID that I don't even use to go in chat rooms. Nevertheless I received spam on it.

Here's the message I was sent:
chat_software.downloads_rb: Want to read the conversations your husband, wife and kids are having on Yahoo Instant Messenger and MSN? http://chat-detectives.com

I'll advise you not to visit those websites and to report the ID as spam and if you do visit the websites out of curiosity DO NOT BUY the product they are selling you. You should never buy anything from spammers.

When you visit the url you are redirected to http://chat.samarah.net/? or http://lucinayjuancarlos.com/ or http://darksoulmedia.com/. They seem to use more than one address therefore, the one you are sent to may vary.

I don't know if you'll catch any viruses from their site but I did not get any... Still be careful if your computer is not protected by an antivirus, you never know...


Need to call your friends abroad? ComFi.com is Your international pre-paid phone cards provider.


Technorati Tags: Darksoulmedia, Yahoo! Messenger, chat-detectives

On nice people

I've met a young man named Vishal (Delhi, 23), he is overwhelmingly nice to me. It's amazing! Since the very first time we chatted until this day, he has always been so very nice. I was musing, thinking about questions on my lifestyle, and I shared those questions with him, not that he knew anything about me, it was the first time we had ever chatted. Well, the amazing part is that he actually took the time to answer each one of them when I finally gave him a chance to write something. If someone had done that to me I would probably start by saying, "well..." and without giving any answers I would probably ask more questions myself. Although Vicky is only 23 you do feel the fact that he had many responsibilities early on in life. He talks like a person who has had a very long life experience. Every time I meet someone as nice as Vishal the question I ask myself is how can someone be so nice?

You can Meet nice people online at Wordfriends.

Tags: chat, nice people

On married men

The time when I did not care about a person marital status seems to be over. Though it will take some time before I remember to ask all the men I meet whether they are married or not....

Did you say mytermex? Or nls-school?

For those of you who were unfortunate enough to be contaminated I've come across a few interesting web pages that might be very helpful.

First, there's a NewsFacter article on how to remove it.
Then there are those two very informative blog posts, one by Abhishek Tripathi and the other one by lobbyshake - at least I think that's how he calls himself -.
I also recommend you read what mariush had to write about what you can do to prevent at least some people from being infected.
And, finally you can read my previous post on the subject, it also has a handful of useful links at the end.

So, whether you said mytermex or nls-school, it's like saying 50 cents or half a dollar - get it? No? Ok... Doesn't matter I was just trying to be funny -.

Technorati Tags:nsl-school.org, mytermex, yahoo messenger

Poetic friend

This is Mahmoud, an Egyptian friend I met recently. He said about Egyptian girls, "they are like the breeze which carry the smell of flowers" . Beautiful, don't you think. Would you believe he asked me to forgive his bad English after saying that....





Tag: Egyptian poet

Is ICQ dead ?

UK-US flight in emergency divert
A London Washington United Airlines flight diverts to Boston after what the pilot describes as a "passenger disturbance"

No, it's not braking news, but the headline ICQ shows me every time I sign in... The "news" actually dates back to mid-August.


Technorati tag: ICQ

An epidemic

I've been receiving the following messages from a few people on my messenger list. They send you to webpages which sole purpose is to propagate worms/trojans/viruses or whatever they are called...


friendID (10/4/2006 9:13:14 PM): oh my god , i've won a 20000 usd lottery :O http://nsl-school.org/?id=winning_list . Come to my house tonight for a party !! >:D<

friendID (10/4/2006 9:27:55 PM): Download free MP3s : http://--nsl-school.org?id=music <<

friendID (10/4/2006 9:26:38 PM): have you ever seen such a silly man like this ? http:/--/nsl-school.org?id=stories =))

friendID (10/4/2006 9:24:31 PM): Let's vote for Vietnam's beauty - Mai Phuong Thuy - for the upcoming Miss World competition : http://nsl-school.org?id=vote :x !!

friendID (10/4/2006 9:21:13 PM): oh my god , i've won a 20000 usd lottery :O http://--nsl-school.org/?id=winning_list . Come to my house tonight for a party !! >:D<

friendID (10/4/2006 9:19:56 PM): Just check out my new personal website : :http://mytermex.com c0ol !!!

friendID (10/4/2006 9:14:33 PM): have you ever seen such a silly man like this ? http://nsl-school.org?id=stories =))

friendID (10/4/2006 9:13:14 PM): oh my god , i've won a 20000 usd lottery :O http://nsl-school.org/?id=winning_list . Come to my house tonight for a party !! >:D<

friendID (10/4/2006 9:11:07 PM): A new dangerous computer virus that can destroys all your data has just been released . Click here to know how to avoid it : :http://mytermex.com?id=pc_protector <<

friendID (10/4/2006 9:04:25 PM): you are virus infected . Use this tool to remove viruses from your PC : http://mytermex.com/?id=virus_shield <<

friendID (10/4/2006 9:01:07 PM): damn, she is so cute :x http://nsl-school.org?id=miss_world :x:x:x:x:x


In fact, the first time I received them I thought they were being sent by a bot that had found my ID somehow until I realized that the ID sending them to me was that of a contact I had no chatted with in a long time. Many Yahoo! messenger users are affected by this problem.

Since none of my friends have complained about me sending them plenty of messages with a link I'm supposing that my computer was not infected. First thing I'll say is that you need a good antivirus software on your computer, unless you're using some rare operating system. An up-to-date antivirus should protect you from those Trojans.

I'll give you a few links to websites that "might" (or might not...) help you "cure" your computer:

http://forums.sureshkumar.net/showthread.php?t=7790
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=850779#post850779
http://download.mcafee.com/eval/evaluate2.asp
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061003072801AASPvsp
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061004092418AAaTCba
http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061003052435AAie06n


Updated on October 28th, 2006

Another one of my contacts has been infected and he sent me links with another url, here are the messages below:

friendID: Screenshot of new windows version _ Windows Vista http://thecoolpics.com/vista.jpg so cool
friendID: oh my god , i've won a 20000 usd lottery http://thecoolpics.com/mylottery.jpg <<

I haven't verified that it's the same word but something tells me it is.

Update on November 27th, 2006

I received this message from yet another one of my contacts who's infected, and I think this is one of the most ingenious messages those people have come up with, it would look legitimate from almost anyone, see it below:

friendID: check this link for me : http://nsl-school.org/?id=forum . Why I cannot surf this site ???


Technorati Tags: nsl-school.org, mytermex, yahoo messenger

YahLover

- First of all, don't visit the url included in green in this post! Do visit this link for more information on this trojan called YahLover and get the latest Panda Antivirus + Firewall 2008 to protect your computer.

My Egyptian friends (2 of them) sent me theses messages in what seemed to be Vietnamese, with the same link:

" Tha nguoi dung noi se yeu minh toi mai thoi thi gio day toi se vui hon. Gio nguoi lac loi buoc chan ve noi xa xoi, cay dang chi rieng minh toi... http://chendang.net/nguyen/"

" Nha'm chen dang an ti`nh nay ma lo`ng nguoi nao co hay !!! Van biet yeu thuong la` tro` dua` ma` minh van me say ;))... http://chendang.net/nguyen/ "

"Me kiep ghet nhat la thang nao` ma` choi con virut do' , ai bi vao day xoa no nhe'... http://chendang.net/nguyen/ "

"Bay gio` bu`n wa' chang biet lam gi` , gui? ta.ng ba kon trang nay vao choi... http://chendang.net/nguyen/ "

"Tha nguoi dung noi se yeu minh toi mai thoi thi gio day toi se vui hon. Gio nguoi lac loi buoc chan ve noi xa xoi, cay dang chi rieng minh toi... http://chendang.net/nguyen/ "

"Con gai nha ai ma` xinh the ko biet nua~ , dep ghe vao day di ... http://chendang.net/nguyen/"

I actually went into a Vietnamese chatroom to find someone to translate it for me... And guess what I did find someone and he did do his best to help me "understand" what it was all about. You don't need to know what the text says but all you need to know is not to click on this link since if your computer is not well enough protected you will get "infected" and you'll be the next one spreading this worm. Apparently, it's called Yahlover !

The sole purpose of the website you reach by clicking the link is to infect your computer and use your Yahoo messenger friends list to spread itself. It's very annoying, especially for your friends they might get sick of receiving all those phony messages from you and if you don't solve the problem quick enough... they might even be tempted to ignore you...

I've received those messages from two of my friends without them being aware of it, something like that happened to me briefly in the past but this one contact has been sending those messages to me over and over again even when I'm offline... He's thinking about reinstalling his OS... drastic measures!

I don't understand to point of such creation. I even less understand why yahoo has not done anything against it.

Tags: yahoo messenger , virus, worm, chendang.net

Crisscross Network

I've [finally] found another website to meet people online for free, Crisscross Network. It allows you to have a detailed profile with photos. You also can search their database to find people you'd be interested in. The "network" side of it allows you to add people as contacts/friends. It reminds me of Friendster except that it's much more sober and it's not designed to build a network with people you already know but to actually find new people. At the time of writing this, the service is 100% free and without any ads.

As for my own [unusual] experience with it. I joined, created my brief-not-well-thought-out-photoless profile and within minutes (or was it hours???) someone wrote me. On the very first day we wrote each other twice, promising isn't it?

What does the Crisscoss website have that the others don't? First of all, it's free, many website will offer you the exact same service only with a paid membership. It's not crowded with commercials like many other sites offering these services for free. It's coupled with a news site from which you can get news from the USA or Japan. You can write down your goals and check when you've achieved them. I'm only discovering the features since I've only been a member for a few days but the interaction among the members seems promising.


Tags: crisscross friends

Friendster, Hi5 and Orkut

Have you ever heard of Hi5? No? Maybe you've heard of Friendster? Neither? Orkut maybe? Nay? You're kidding right....

They are social networking websites. They typically allow you to have a profile, a photo album, an online journal etc... Their particularity lies in the fact that you can "connect" to your friends and your friends’ friends hence the networking part. As far as the networking part is concerned, those sites are very powerful, amazingly powerful. You're wondering what this old school buddy of yours you haven't seen in over 10 years have become? Chances are he kept in touch with someone who's a relative of a good friend of one of your friends’ friends and he's connected to him on Hi5 or Friendster and what do you know, while you're browsing your friend's friends' network you come across his profile and that's where you see he's grown a full beard and has married his long time girlfriend -or whatever it is that you find out that he's been up to-

I have a Friendster account and not one but two Hi5 accounts and also an Orkut account - thank you Dozy ;) -.

Most of my friends as in real life friends from Haiti are on Hi5. In fact there is a really large number of Haitians on Hi5, young, old, if they have an email that they actually use, it is very likely that they are also on Hi5 where they usually take the time to put a few pictures and write about themselves, it's amazing I've come across profiles of old classmates I had not seen in years.... If you are Haitian Hi5 is the social networking site for you.

Friendster? It’s more of the same but where are the Haitians? They’re all on Hi5 so you will find very few of them on Friendster. Of all the people located in Haiti that are on Friendster the vast majority is not Haitian.

I've come to Friendster completely by "accident" and if you go on my profile now you'll see that I don't even have a single friend but and it's a major BUT, somehow I managed to meet one person on there. Actually I probably should say, somehow someone managed to find me... I've only been contacted by a few people on Friendster, a hand is too much to count them but only one actually was interested in staying in touch with me and ultimately meeting me! He's from Sri Lanka and he's working here in Haiti. We communicate mostly via email. We're supposed to meet in the weeks to come. - Don’t get any ideas now…-

Nevertheless, those websites are not for meeting people - even if they claim otherwise-, yes it might happen since they allow you not only to view the profiles of other members but also to contact them and all this absolutely free. The only "problem" is that most of those members are not there to meet new people. No, they are there to keep in touch with their friends, people they already know. Therefore, if you try initiating contact with a person you do not know he/she will most likely not answer you or respond negatively. On Hi5 I never accept requests or answer messages from people I don't recognize unless it's a woman.

As for Orkut, it's a quite "closed" environment and I've not seem advertisement so it's rather sober. I've not been an Orkut member for long but I have one friend and as you've guessed it, it's Dozy. Also I've come across Sudhu's profile -how? I don't remember- but he is distantly connected to me via Dozy's network, which means he knows people who know people who know people [...] who know Dozy, at least that's what Orkut says.

Of the people I've mentioned on this blog, you can spot Nick on Friendster, Sudhu on Orkut, Dozy on Orkut and Hi5 , Basam on Hi5, Ravi on Hi5.

Saying goodbye

One of the people I met online 'and' in person has leaft the country. I've mentioned him once (briefly) in my meeting people offline post. He lived in Haiti for about two years. We met on a travel site and somehow, since we live in the same small city we just came accross each other, more than once, without even planning too. Though, we mostly kept in touch via Yahoo! messenger.

So, he has left the country to go work in Africa. Without the Internet, my world would probably have never crossed his. He's living proof that you can meet nice, decent, "normal" people on the internet. Now I'm not saying he's the only nice and decent person I've met on the internet but so far, no, not at all but, of all of them, he's the only one I've had the chance to meet in person, yes, and I mean it.

As I think of it, He is not really a "net friend" eventhough we initially met on the net, he's more like a real life aquaintance.

Hello Dozy are you still in Delhi =)

I've talked to Dozy on the phone and after that conversation I told him while chatting that he materialized. Yes I know he did not quite get me. As I said, it was like one more dimension was added to the knowledge I had of him. I knew the sound of his voice, somewhat.. because I know phone voice is a bit different from actual voice but it's close enough. It was fun(ny) he did not recognize me even though I told him my name... He really did sound very different from what I had anticipated, me and my anticipations...


Update

I talked to Dozy once more that time he was expecting my call so he did recognize me and, well...it was nice. He sounded more like the Dozy I chat with, really!!!!

YSN Messenger II

Read YSN Messenger I

I'm using the latest version 8 Beta of Yahoo! Messenger. No! not me! A few days ago I was still using version 6 knowing that the only reason I did not stay with version 5.5 was because it did not have stealth settings; and also that I only used the version 7 for a few minutes before going back to version 6. So one might wonder, how come I'm using the latest Beta?
Well... that's what net friends are for *smiles*.

Greeny has encouraged me to do the switch; did you know that it allows you to add contacts who are using the Windows Live Messenger? Yes it does. The fact that I don't really go in chat rooms anymore and that I even hardly chat [...] explains why I don't really feel the switch, but as I wrote earlier, Yahoo is really trying hard to look exactly like Msn Messenger but it's so much heavier, in appearance at least, and it feels unintuitive for an ex-version 5 user like me, but hey you can't stop the evolution can you?

Even I have things that I like about Msn Messenger, like the fact that you can invite other people to join a conversation you are having with someone without having to open a "conference" window, now that's useful! Oh yes and they do have archive search. It does not seem like the people at Yahoo! Messenger are interested in imitating any of that, no, they seem to be content with imitating the look and feel only... too bad for us users...

Tags: yahoo messenger, msn messenger

YSN messenger I

I've always had a problem with Yahoo messenger looking more and more like Msn messenger with every new version. On the other hand I never had a problem with msn messenger looking more and more like Yahoo! messenger because I've always thought Y! messenger was easier to use, more intuitive and simple (remember the version 5...) and also the msn people seem to be smart enough to copy positive aspects from Yahoo!. Unfortunately the Yahoo! messenger people well, I don't really understand them it feels as though at some point they hired a bunch of people from msn to work on the recent Y! messengers so it came as not such a big surprise when they announced that the two messengers would be able to communicate, at this point, they are almost twins.

Of all the things that I hate -I mean dislike- about the new Yahoo! messenger 8 beta (8.0.0.508) the worst is probably the commercials at the bottom. I know, I'm using up their servers and bandwidth but weren't they making a living without the commercials in the previous version?

I always have a problem with finding a way to conclude... so I'll say, I do understand why they do it but it's just annoying and it uses up space for nothing..

Read YSN Messenger II

Tags: yahoo messenger, msn messenger

81000306

Ironically enough 30% of people who came to this blog recently were searching for information on an Msn error code 81000306. Yes I know I do talk about Msn once in a while but... 30%! Wow. Those searching to meet people were merely 46%.

Technorati Tags:8100306,MSN

Why I rather avoid chatting with Haitians

I feel like the circle is closing around me, it's diameter has become smaller and smaller. I'm thinking that maybe in the days to come someone will send me a IM and say "..hey I know you and you know me but I wont tell you who I am..." Ok, I may be a wee bit paranoid... but

After meeting Desylf I met a Haitian who lives in Haiti, I tend to avoid Haitians online, unless it's a girl. With guys it's always the same : "...when do we meet?" NEVER!!!

[ Well they might not ask me that during the first conversation but they always do sooner or later. Am I completely against the idea of having a lice meeting with someone I first met on the net? No, actually, but Haitian guys don't invite Haitian girls they barely know to lunch or I don't know what other social activity just so they can see her face to face... Please! If you want to chat with me, it's ok, as long as I have free time for that, but if you want a date there is Yahoo Personals and other match making sites. - By the way I understand that what I just said about Haitian guys probably also applies to guys of other nationalities - ]

I've met another Haitian through Yahoo! Amazing the way it happened. I used to think I was the only person who ever took the time to browse the Yahoo! members' directory, once again I was wrong. Since he doesn't want me to write about him and since I really wanted to do it, I'm not mentioning his name I'll call him Pierre.

Pierre found my profile somehow and sent me an IM. I did not recognize the ID of that person who was writing in French and sending me a message while I hadn't been in any chat room. He told me he was searching for a cute girl. I wondered how he could tell I was cute if he hadn't even seen my picture. Well it's all in the power of attraction of my Yahoo! ID. After a few messages I thought he sounded Haitian and I was right. Once again I started to worry a little, "...oh no another Haitian! Could he be one of my colleagues or maybe someone from my university?..." I was telling him that I might be one of his female colleagues but the youngest woman at his office is 28!

He said I could ask him anything expect for the amount of money he has on his bank account -with all the kidnappings going on in the capital city here these days you can never be too careful-. In the end, I saw him on webcam and, no, he does not know me and I don't know him. He seems like an honest man with honorable motivations but frankly... I'm NOT AT ALL interested in meeting him. No? I did not mention he wanted to go out with me, of course he does! He is a Haitian living here right? You thought I was exaggerating when I said all those things before.......


Tags: meeting people online, Haitians

The new Sumit

Sumit has indeed changed, like I've said before. But I'm starting to like him... again though for different reasons now. What can I say? He's cool, in fact he's always been cool. Yes. And I think I've finally figured out what has changed in him, he's just grown. Yes, There is a girl involved in that change but that's not all there is to it. He's just not the same as a few years back.

It's over

It has been "officially" over between me and Dharmvir for a few months now. I know I did not say anything about it earlier because.... well.... Dharmvir seemed really hurt... ..... I guess I did not want to make a "headline" of it.....

We said farewell to each other. I know, we never had a relationship in the proper sense of the word but...... Even though I was not expecting him to ever want to talk to me anymore, I still kept him on my contact list because, you never know.

I suppose it's better for things to be this way between us at least I won'’t be able to break his heart again and he can make it available to love someone else. Well at least I did not tell him "let's just be friends". I have to admit that I do miss chatting with him.

Dharmvir sent me an offline message after our farewells, I was really surprised. It had been a while since I had seen him online and I didn't think he would want to talk to me again. But he came while I was away and by the time I got back he had already signed out. I did miss him quite a bit.

We were able to chat after those offline messages, his feelings had not changed. I still feel bad about this situation. I really messed up.....
Dharmvir believes that I stay invisible when he is online so he wont see me. He told me something about someone giving him a software to see who is sitting invisible etc.... I assured him that I was not hiding from him but he does not believe me.... I'm not going to argue about this. Like Dolores O' Riordan says, "There's no need to argue anymore...."

Why did the relationship end? Dharmvir says I never told him I did not want the relationship rather I said we could not have one, because of practical reasons. He assumed I wanted it but just didn't see how it would be possible. Like I've been saying, I really underestimated the seriousness of the situation... I took all this too lightly from the start and someone ended up being hurt....

I don't think I can ever make it right so I'll just try not to make any wrong anymore. I might be closing this chapter for now.

Hello from Haiti

I decided to call Eftha (23, Vishākhapatnam). He had been expecting my call for a few weeks now. I told him I would call him from my home one day. And I did just that.

I heard the phone ring the way it does when I call Eftha (yes it does ring in a particular way when I call him...). He answered after a few rings and the sound quality was miraculously good. I've tried to call that young man several times unsuccessfully, the call would get cut each time or we would not hear each other but that day/night everything went well.

Would you believe that without knowing it, I've called Eftha on his birthday! Needless to say he was really pleased.

I use calling cards like these to call abroad, each one costs 100 Gourdes (about US$2.5).

Hellooooo

I received another call from Iftequar. He lives in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia). He's called me at least half a dozen times... Most of the time for short conversations, asking how I am and where I am (?)
I've received phone calls from Nigeria, India, the USA, Tanzania, Pakistan, Hong Kong; those are the ones I had the chance to answer to.

The question is, why do I give my cell phone number to potentially dangerous or at least idiotic people I meet in chat rooms? Well, they live in far and distant countries, and of course I don't pay one cent when I receive international calls -stingy me-... It costs about US $0.30 a minute to call to the US and I'm pretty sure it's the cheapest place to call, from here, on my cell phone. It's supposed to cost about 25 cents if I buy the new calling cards they are selling these days. Just imagine how much it would cost to call people in far and distant places like India or Nigeria or Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or Egypt....

Now, can you guess why those people are calling me?

Meeting people offline - part II

My most interesting offline meeting was with Irfan (28,Pakistan). Finally I met face to face with a person I initially met on Yahoo! We did not meet in a chat room but rather through a friend of his I "found" while browsing the Yahoo! member directory...

I really enjoyed meeting Irfan. We had many laughs even though on that first day we were standing; we stood there for about 30 minutes.

I was amazed at how short the man actually was; he takes pride in not being as short as I am! I had never met a Pakistani person before I had so many things I wanted him to tell me. And yet I did not know I would meet him that day and I did not have a question list handy - kidding - .
I was in a familiar environment where a few people know me, as usual, many were staring at Irfan because he's a foreigner and looks nothing like a Haitian in spite of his claim of us being the same color, and of course he was in uniform accompanied by others also in uniform.

Hopefully, the people staring at us were behind my back, facing Irfan. I did not see them but I did hear the comments that Irfan did not understand because he does not speak our language (Creole). " Oh, she's talking to a blan ".... blan is the word Haitians use to refer to foreigners, it literally translates to "white" though it does not mean the person is white but just that he's not Haitian, Irfan for that matter is not white.

Irfan has this too-rich-for-me-English vocabulary, hopefully I have a dictionary to help me when we chat but during live talks I have to ask him to use simpler, more commonly known words. This being said, our different accents are not a big burden, we understand each other at least at 80%, most of the time. Initially we were supposed to go to a pizzeria and have cheese pizza but since it was Ramadan (Irfan is muslim) we had only two foodless meetings.

See, I did everything by the book, we met in public in a place where the people know me. Now what more can I say. Nothing. Anything more you would like to know?

The second meeting? Oh yes. RAS, Not much to say about it.

The second meeting was different. He came to my workplace. Not the ideal place to meet someone I can tell you. But he insisted so much on coming to meet me, he wanted to see where I work and usually when I allow a person to insist a lot I do ultimately give him/her what he/she's asking for, and I have to admit I was looking forward to meeting him again.

So he came one morning, after having him drive around a bit because I gave poor directions and he got lost. It was funny to hear about how far away they went before finally reaching me. Was it worth it? For me yes and no. For him, I don't know I never asked.

I felt a bit under pressure, stressed as if we were being observed. Unlike the first meeting, the people who were seeing us together this time are people I see daily, my coworkers and I was thinking about how they would talk about it behind my back. We weren't doing anything wrong we were only talking but I always worry about things like that. Other than that, Irfan looked the same if not just a little bit more excited to meet me this time. I looked worried, I think. I did appreciate him coming to visit me, it was nice of him.

Tags: meeting people online

Meeting people offline - part I

First of all, you should read this article about online meetings; when you're done -or if you have read it already or if you think you can handle online meetings very well- you may read on.

You've been chatting with your virtual friend for a while, days, months or years even and finally you have an opportunity to meet him/her in person. You've been enjoying your conversations so much, you've even talked on the phone and you're thinking this meeting is going to be great and you're already planning the next one. Then it happens, you two meet. **laughing** **laughing again** **can't help but laugh** ok ok...

Now first of all, you're surprised to see how different this person looks from his pictures or even from how he/she looked on web cam! You're discovering all the not so flattering details of his/her face or body. Still, it's the same great person, and you have a great time. Well... maybe not.

So far, I've "met" hundreds of people online, I've stayed in touch with dozens and I've met two in person, yes only two so far. -I don't count this one person I only exchanged greetings with-. If every thing had gone as planned, I should have met a total of six people, two Haitians, three Pakistanis, and one German.
Did they live up to my expectations? Not all of them. My expectations were probably too high!

I'll start with one meeting that didn't happen.
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I came across a website called SingleMe, I liked the look of the site, and the registration was free. I filled out my profile and that was it; they did suggest a few people they thought I would be interested in but frankly, no, I wasn't interested at all. Like most of those sites, you can't contact a person unless you have a premium membership which I didn't have. But you could show interest to someone but that's another story...

I was contacted by a total of three people, two Haitians, one living in California (USA), one living in Port-au-Prince (Haiti) and a Canadian living in somewhere in Canada. The first person sent me a simple message to which I answered. He's a Haitian physician who came back to the country after having spent many years abroad. We had this amazing e-correspondence. There were days when we wrote twice to each-other, and I'm not talking about four-lined messages no no no, I'm talking about long missives.

Email exchanges went on for some time until he gave me his phone number...he was having problems with his ISP and staying in touch through the internet was not easy. Some of the messages I sent him were even returned. So I did one thing that would determine the future of our "relationship", I called him. Just as he answered, I knew I did not want to talk to him for too long. Yes, it was that bad! There was something about his voice, about his tone, about his carelessness... He talked endlessly about himself telling details that had no importance and didn't even take the time to ask about me! Oh! I'm not kidding, he really did not ask me about myself, nothing, he was just too busy telling me the insignificant details of his evening, I was so bored.... I couldn't even cut him! I was trapped. Still, somehow he found me interesting (!) and wanted to meet me.

This happened over a year ago and until this day we have not met. He did suggest we took lunch together but I did not feel comfortable with the idea. He stopped writing me and I have "lost" his numbers.

I wrote the other Haitian once or maybe twice but I knew ever since I saw his pictures that I was not interested in writing him but I forced myself to do so thinking "no do not ignore him because his Haitian or because his hair is long or because you don't like his style ..." But eventually I stopped writing him and he did not insist.

As for the Canadian I don't remember whether I even wrote him once. His English was "funny", strange, and he looked really scary in his picture, he was standing looking straight at the camera with his arms spread apart at about ten centimeters from his body. He really looked scary like he was about to attack someone. His words did not help reassure me so I decided it was better not to answer him. I couldn't believe those people contacted me even though I did not put a picture in my profile. I ultimately closed my account on SingleMe, I really had no use for it.

Next time I'll tell you about one meeting that did happen.

Tags: meeting people online

Yahoo! Answers

I've been trying out Yahoo! Answers the past few days. In an ideal world this sort of service would be the most useful on the internet but hey our world is what it is.

So far I've asked two questions and answered two.
I've answered a girl's question about finding love through the internet -no surprise there-. But guess what? My answer was chosen as the best one among six! Hurray!!! Hey I was just giving my opinion and trying to share some "knowledge". The other question I answered was both serious and quite strange, I tried to answer it seriously though, hoping it will actually be of some use.

Now about my questions. I've been searching the web to know whether the light of a certain powerbook G4 can be fixed (question#1). I asked the question on Yahoo! answers, provided a few details and within minutes I had my first answer and about an hour later I had a second one, both were very relevant and useful.
My second question was more in tone with this blog, I asked whether I should go foward with 3 guys who supposedly want to meet me at HotorNot (question#2). Within seconds I had plenty of answers. From the wackiest to the really concerned. Some people answered as if they were talking to a ten year old, others were just out of their minds -I guess I contaminated them!!!-. As my question grew old -a few minutes- the enthusiasm had faded and I received no other answers.

I'm sure I will be spending some time over there in the very near future...

Tags: yahoo answers

Brunda

I find it easier to write about the people I know very little about and the ones I have just met. It's easy for me to just say how I feel about the person, what are my impressions from what he/she tells me and what idea I have made up in my mind on that person. Once I get to the point where what I think is replaced by what I actually know it's just harder to find the right words. That's exactly what happened with Brunda. I don't know where to start or where to end, there is so much I could say and yet even if I tried to put all of it together it still wouldn't say as much as it should. -This is none less than my third attempt to write about Brunda on this blog.-

From time to time I get the feeling that I just did something useful after chatting with Brunda.
Even though we are separated by two oceans and one(two) continent(s), Brunda and I have a lot in common.
I was expecting a Hindu, but Brunda is a Christian, I was expecting a catholic but Brunda is a member of the Salvation Army. I didn't know too much about India at the time to expect anything else but with Brunda I learned a lot. Actually I consider him to be one of my most unbiased and reliable sources of information on India and anything Indian -Ravi is also one though not as reliable he does a lot of information retention-. Of course he doesn't know every thing about his country but if I ask him a question I am most likely to get a straight and clear answer others often just give me diplomatic answers.
Brunda is one of the first people I met in a chat room, certainly the first Indian person I have chatted with. I started discovering India through Brunda. We ask each other for advice, and we keep each other informed of the happenings in our lives.

I think of Brunda as a friend or even more as a brother. We have been chatting for over a year now, and even though we might never meet face to face we don't only have casual, polite but aimless conversations like we used to in the beginning, we chat like friends and family do.

Technorati Tags:Brunda,Online friendship

How many profiles?

I created a sixth Yahoo! profile for the ID I use to chat. I have seven Yahoo! identities with this account, Yahoo! does not allow any more than that. To go to your profile type http://profiles.yahoo.com/yourID or go to the Yahoo! Member Directory and click on View My Profiles -You have to be singed in to do that-.

January 2005 - January 2006

One year of ... well it's not one year of blogging since I started my French language blog a few months before and it's not one year of meeting people online either since I also started that a few months before but it is this blog's anniversary. Though if you look carefully at my archives you will notice that I've not been a regular blogger, whole months without even a four line post... Even when I promised myself to blog at least once a week I just could not manage...

But all is not negative, when I first started this blog I just wanted a place to write about my net meetings, about the people, the things they said to me and how I'm living these experiences, my thoughts and... you know the usual things people blog about. It was suppose to prevent me from annoying my friends and family (!) with the stories of those strange strangers. It did serve that last purpose and I'm happy about that.

Like many bloggers, I also wanted lots of traffic on my blog, and I did add it to quite a few directories, I even joined a website that promises to explode your blog traffic (yes they can). But visits that last less than 1 second were just not enough for me anymore I wanted traffic from the major search engine, I wanted to be crawled by the Google bots. I was so excited the first time someone visited my blog from Google and so disappointed when the Google bots stopped crawling the homepage while I was expecting a deep crawl -argh!!!-. But I was (still am) getting regular traffic from Yahoo, and a few visits once in a while from Msn. It wasn't enough I felt my blog was not worthy of being listed in Google's search results....-poor me-.

In the mean time I started having regular visitors, most of them bloggers, an unexpected and quite intimidating phenomenon. I started worrying about my blog's content, I even went back to update some of my old posts because I was afraid my readers would actually read them. Though I must say it has helped to know others were reading and receiving feedback from them has been valuable. Though my worries made me write less non-sense (I hope), they also made me think more of what it is I should write about in the first place, though I still enjoy writing about my people I try to write for a broader humm readership(?)

This post would not be complete if I did not mention a few people: my very first net-friends, Brunda, Ravi, Anay, Prasad, Sumit; my most prolific net friend Dhruv, Basam on whom I wrote a trend setting post (?); Dozy who kindly sent me pictures of his hairs (!!!), my first blogger pals/readers, Rizal Farok (the greenyphunk), Apostle John, Meq, Sudhamshu Hebbar, and more recently Nick Tay who's blog -and friends' blogs too- have inspired me.... well, maybe not too much for this blog, mostly for my other French language personal blog; but that's another story.

One more reason why I hate MSN Messenger

I use a Powerbook once in a while and it's owner had installed an MSN Messenger for Mac that I also use once in a while. The last time I tried to used it one of those things I hate the most about using MSN Messenger happened. It told me that there is a new version available -yeah like I cared?- and that I needed to download it if I want to continue using MSN Messenger -what??- I JUST HATE IT WHEN MSN MESSENGER DOES THAT!!!! Yeah but most of my university friends only use MSN so I don't really have a choice but it does bug me. I mean there are still people using Yahoo! messenger version 5 I'm still using the version 6 (windows version) and I've been ignoring all the Update available messages from Yahoo!. But I guess MSN has its reason for not allowing people with non updated versions of MSN Messenger to use it to chat with their friends, yeah I'm sure they do.