A Cyber Space Friendship

I thought i'd share with you something i have been getting into during this Christmas/New year break and something which seems to happen frequently every Christmas/New Year. I think it has something to do with the boredom that gets the better of me.

I have been chatting with all sorts of strange and wonderful people. Both through typing in chat rooms, to the audible voice-chatting, which is just like having a telephone conversation which is extremely odd for me because of my phonaphobia.

Nonetheless, i have met some very interesting people and it is always worth my while. I want to tell you about some of them. This could be another long blog.

I'll start with Andrea because she is the only female i have chatted to this break. Andrea or Drea (pronounced Dray-a) as she likes to be called is the most sweetest girl in the world. I'm not sure how old she is but she's an American gal i stumbled across one time when i was chatting in a room. We look out for each other in the room and if one person is being verbally attacked or attacked via typing, we automatically side with eachother, it's great. She also has a brother called Gary who apparently says i have a sweet voice. If ever she is to come to Sydney, she's going to let me know!

This brings me to Mr M240. He's a great Wog-sounding guy, who's very sweet. Apparently Drea is married to him....i think this might be a weird internet thing but you know. He usually hits my ignore list for playing excessive music in a room (which Drea encourages!) but there is the rare occasion when he's fine. He likes to talk about his cars and and motorbikes and things. He's currently having one of his cars done up, it looks very flash, says he gets pulled over by cops alot because of it, which i can imgaine!!!

Then there is Mesa, also a wog. Mesa is tough. But underneath his toughness he is a puppy!!! When i first chatted with him, he told me i was too giggley and too chirpy so i told him that you have to be positive in such a negative world, that broke the ice, dinnit?! He now considers me friend....awwww....Mesa in his tough moments, like's to harrass his fellow chatter Slappy. Slappy is one of my all-time favourites!!! When i first met Slappy, at the same time as Mesa, he was a little bit intoxicated and was dipping in his neighbours pool, without them even knowing. It was a dare from us. Slappy is an islander with an african american accent. Every once in a while, you can hear his african american slip to reveal his true aussie islander accent. Mesa and Slappy have history. Mesa likes to push slappy's buttons. Slappy is very sensitive about brotha's and nigga's. He says that unless you are black, you are not entitled to call someone a nigga and unless you are blood related, you are not allowed to call someone a brotha. So natually Mesa likes to call every dog and his owner either nigga or brotha, just to get on Slappy's nerves, and that he does!!! Slappy gets very distressed which you can hear in the tone of his voice. But we love Mesa and Slappy and in return they love us!

Up until this point, everyone is a regular in the Yahoo Sydney Chat Room: 2. Some other people i have met are:

Eddie
Eddie's an Asian sweetheart but he's 39 years old, first telling me that he was 31 (why do i always attract lies???). I'm not usually phased by age when we're just chatting but i think that's all we might leave it at, although he does want to do the whole meeting thing, so we'll see what happens. He says he's very young at heart and looks young. He's also been good to me by giving me advice on all sorts of multi-cultural issues. He's truly an absolute gem to chat to!!!

Arizona Jim
This guy....now, wow?!....we had a voice conversation for 3 whole hours?! And didn't we chat just about everything under the sun?!?! He is a very confident American from California (if i remember right) with a Bachelor in Film and going on to study literature to be a school teacher. That's right folks unintelligent me chatted to a mr intellent!!! Also if i rmember correctly his name was Ed - two Ed's in one summer break, wow! Our conversation ranged from politics to jobs to age to risk-taking to cultures to riots to phobias to compliments and ended with sex before marriage, but i got frustrated and annoyed at him for not seeing it from my point of view and not understanding me so the last half hour was just annoying. When he said goodbye i was so annoyed that i didn't even say goodbye and then he went offline. So we didn't exactly finish on a good note, but the rest of the conversation was jolly!

Chichh1 aka f.sirone
And last but definately not least (we always save the best things til last) Franky. Franky (aka f.sirone or chichh1) wasn't really a new acquaintance for the new year or even for christmas as we'd been chatting online for a few months or so beforehand but we got to know each other really well and had fun doing it. I introduced Franky to the yahoo chat rooms one time when he was bored and i think he digs it. We talk over the mic all the time and until a couple of days ago, we were chatting every single day. It's kind of bizarre to think that we haven't chatted for a couple of days actually!!! One night after karaoke and some other frivolty, he rang my house phone at 2:30am and we were chatting on the phone until 4am - i had to work the next morning!!! I can't believe i even took the call, but he's becoming more of a good friend rather than an acquiantance so it could be that which is making it easier to accept phone calls. He's a lot of fun and also lives within the area, he's also one who'd like to eventually meet me face to face, so we'll see how that pans out too.

All in all though, the internet is quite a dangerous place kiddies, and you just need to be careful how you play the game. Here are some tips on making buddies online....

• Never give out your full name. Your first name is a-ok or a made up name. (you can find me on yahoo messenger at abbey192000)
• Never tell anyone where you live. Pick a suburb 3 or 4 suburbs away and tell them you live there or politely just tell them that you don't generally give out those kind of details, if they complain, or a. tell them to respect your wishes or b. put them on ignore, they're not worth the trouble!.
• Always put people on ignore if they quote 'asl'. These people have the rudeness to ask you instead of looking at your profile which you took the time to put your 'asl' on!!!!!
• Don't talk to 'bots' (robots). Recognise who they are?!
• As a general rule of thumb, look out for the 'chatty' ones who are fun to talk to. Ignore the rest....hahaha....

Well i think that's enough for now. I'd just like to say that not all people on the internet are scary and it's not a nerd thing to do to make friends off the net. You just need to be extremely careful who you chat with and thoghourly screen the people you return messages or start messages to. Let me assure you that i have had the most amazing and totally exhilirating experience of praying with people over the net and also sharing my faith with them, it can be used as a great witnessing tool and as you've seen, you make awesome friends in the process.

Thanks for reading!

Tink xoxo