Snowflake, Tae Kwon Do Male Whore, Myspace

SNOWFLAKE.

At the height of Myspace craze, a guy called “Snowflake”  requested me to be a friend. I didn’t accept him knowing that I  won’t ever chat to him again as this was yet another attempt of a desperate soul in search of “friends”. However, then he started pming me and wanted to know about the origin of my myspace picture which I temporarily uploaded showing me in a Tae Kwon Do outfit which I tried on at a friend’s house just for the fun of it. Once I could see his profile, I saw some 50 pictures of him in his Tae Kwon Do outfit in the most craziest poses. Ah, this guy was a maniac, I thought to myself. In fact, I was learning a martial art -Karate-  at the time but I was interested in starting Tae Kwon Do, so I started replying this time, asking him a few things about the art.

This went on for months and I wished I never started. He told me every story about him and Tae Kwon Do worth or not worth mentioning alike in 7,000 word letters at a time. I felt guilty for not replying to these long essays (which I could tell he wrote himself), so I did wiki research myself to be able to form a few coherent questions about Tae Kwon Do. Shortly afterwards, I’d feel impending doom when I heard the words Tae Kwon Do again and for this reason alone, I never started the art (damn him!).

Anyhow, here is what I extracted about him in his Tae Kwon Do talks:

Snowflake began learning Tae Kwon Do at the age of 3 and had continued doing so for 20 years. Tae Kwon Do was his life and thats all he did the whole day long. Tae Kwon Do was soooooooo coool and his eternal love.

Judging by the long essays he wrote on Tae Kwon Do, which would have taken anyone hours, I did wonder what he did for a living… was he studying? Tae Kwon Do perhaps? Or did he work somewhere…. I never had opportunity to ask him in between the Tae Kwon Do.

Then I started to read all the comments girls posted on his profile.  They all thanked him for “a wonderful time” and his “great services”, “hope we can bang it again soon”. WHO WAS THIS GUY?

Soon after, I sent him a message asking “Are you a prostitute?”.

He replied, “Yes, I thought you’d gathered that? I was waiting for you to request my services. Which service would you like (see my pictures)?”

FML.

I blocked him.

Filed under: Uncategorized, FML, Myspace, NaBloPoMo09

Avid, failed car mechanic/comp sci dropout, depression chat

AVID.

Today, I went on depression chat. I was frustrated about a friend’s constant complaints, the overflow of noise in the vicinity of my room, and other minor problems concerning my life. The chatroom promised to be supportive and friendly and was filled with people who had problems. And indeed, as I entered the room, I was greeted with “hi’s” here and there. I felt very much loved.

First it was there was the general chat, but I was never quite a fan of that. Although I did find out, that a lot of the people on depression chat, did have major problems (very major, compared with some people’s). So I quickly started to pm the person who had been most friendly and attentive. This one was Avid.

Avid was a wonderful listener. If listening applied to online messaging. He was attentive, considerate and offered straight-forward, sensible advice. It’s funny to imagine such a guy feeling “depressed”. – I really don’t know why I have this habit of putting apostrophes. In fact, a scene cropped up as soon as I arrived in the chatroom:

So, loopsie, how are you? – SomeOtherGuy

I am “depressed”. * – Me

What’s up with the “”? – SOG

Some like it for the “emphasis”. – Avid

*Personally I thought it was obviously sarcastic?? Given that this was the “depression” chatroom (and obviously labled so on the window), it was the first lame reply I could think of.

But I digress. Avid listened to my girl problems, and gave me a fresh outlook that was not angry or dejected, as you would expect from a “depressed” guy. But he was nice. Told me to think over it again. I didn’t want to “scream” my guts out on skype, kill a friendship just because I couldn’t cope with their whine anymore. “Think of it,” he said, ” as patience testing, a valuable life skill. And anyways, in ten years,  you’ll be laughing about this with your friend”. Ah, how wise. And how different I feel now, calm and I bet I would have regretted it if I did indeed “scream out”.

Now, as for Avid himself, he had bigger problems.

After graduating from a highschool in Texas with midrange grades, he went onto an obscure college for a computer science course. Of course, this was very difficult, but he held on for two years. Eventually, he failed a few times too many and dropped out and in the drain was thousands of dollars worth of fees which his mother’s hard earned hopes and money. So he came back to his hometown, found a low-paying job as a car mechanic and even got back in touch with his old high-school honey. Life was good. The two of them were very much in love and planned to settle down there and churchbells would soon be ringing to the oordinariness of a settled, pleibeian life. It always amazes me how young people in American towns could get married so young, and it reflects, not surprisingly, on a high divorce rate. How old did this guy say he was? 19?

Anyhow, things did not go as they planned. A week (!) before the wedding, he found his fiancée cheating on him with another guy, kissing on a bench in the shopping mall (inconspicuous, much?). Apparently, she was willing to go on with the wedding while clutching the hand of her lover. Her excuse/reason to sway? Apparently, this was what she said upon being asked:

You are a failure, but I love you! You cannot buy me any lavish gifts, so how am I supposed to get spoilt from? I’m still young and pretty. You’ve got to understand that. I’ll always come back for you.

But he didn’t take it. Canceled the wedding, again the money for the preparations all gone. What’s worse, he lost his job as a car mechanic as well, because his ex-father-in-law was his boss. If this continues, he’s not far from moving onto the streets, and other than trying to find just any job he can get, he plays WoW and guild wars online.

Nice guy.

Filed under: Uncategorized, Failure, NaBloPoMo09, Nice guy

Lek, Thai technician working in Taipei, MSN messenger

THANAR LEK.

This was perhaps the first person I met in my weblife around 2003. Back then, I was a kid, doodling away my time by adding made up names in my contact list in msn messenger (back when it was the thing to have). This is how I stumbled across Thanar Lek. I cannot remember if this was his username, email address, name or something else. But it’s the name I associate him with when I think about him (which I haven’t, not since a few years).

Lek was in his late twenties, a computer technician working in Taipei. He wasn’t Taiwanese though, or Chinese for that matter. He was Thai. This was and incredible coincidence because at the time, I myself was living in Bangkok. That gave us a headstart and lots of things to talk about, particularly, as I found out later, his home was in Bangkok.

With Lek I remember having in-depth Harry Potter discussions – we both loved Book Four – and chats about Thai food, places in Thailand where we had traveled to (when I said I, it was of course with my parents, but I didn’t tell him that). In fact, I think it was Lek who told me about the shopping malls, and restaurants, where you could get the most authentic and cheapest deals, that I, as a foreign kid would have never known (but of course, my parents aversion to buying travel guides were also to blame), including the underground water tunnels at the end of the road of our house which served as a stop to “water busses”. I would tell my parents about these places later and when they turned out to be chic, I would feel smug, because it was through my “adult” acquaintance (I never told my parents, of course).

One thing in particular I remember about this display name was that it said “hihi”. I thought this was very cool. I later adopted it for a while when I deleted and blocked him as a contact.

Sadly, eventually we ran out to talk about. I won’t tell you my age but I was very young back then so what can you expect? But I had practiced my English with him back then and adopted many adult words because I wanted to sound mature (like any other kid). Back then, you had an unspoken obligation to message every contact on your list so later on, our talks became lame and awkward.

Eventually, I think he blocked me. I blocked him back in return.

Filed under: MSN, First time, NaBloPoMo09, People

The people we meet online

More and more aquaintances are made online. This blog is about the people I meet online. Their stories and quirks and what they rarely say or show in real life. What kind of people are they?

And what kind of people do you meet online?

Filed under: Uncategorized, NaBloPoMo09