At some point I'll get in to talking about actual current events in my life. But before I get to that...at least what I want to get to first...some background is perhaps useful. So in this post, I will tell a story that I probably haven't told to anyone in complete form before now.
One, day long ago...Once upon a time...In a galaxy far, far away...It was a dark and stormy night...
It was one night in late January 1999. I was on my computer (a 300 MHz Pentium II from Gateway 2000), probably surfing the web (still a relatively new pursuit) or perhaps playing one of the X-Wing games. I was 23 years old and had graduated from college and started my career just a few months before. My girlfriend of two years had left me for someone else a few months previous. At any rate, I got a chat request from someone I didn't know.
Some technical background is probably useful here too for those who aren't familiar with the state of technology in 1999 or perhaps are a little fuzzy on the timeline. In late 1998 and early 1999 broadband was just becoming widely available in many places. In January I had only had broadband for a couple of months at the most and I was an early adopter, getting it as soon as it was available in my area. Also, while cell phones were widely available by this point, they were far from universal. There was no iPhone. There were no smartphones. Text messaging was available but still relatively expensive (generally charged on a per message basis still at this point in time I believe). I did not have a cell phone yet and would not until about 2003.
However, because the internet was nearly ubiquitous at this point even if broadband wasn't yet, text messaging was a very popular app on the PC. There were a number of messaging apps available. The most popular at the time were probably AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ. Incidentally, AOL Instant Messenger just recently shut down and ICQ is still around but quite a bit different than it used to be. While I used both of those programs, I mostly used ICQ for the same reason I use Facebook today. I had friends and family that used it and it was a great way to keep in touch.
ICQ had a unique feature. It allowed you to choose a random person to chat with. As I vaguely recall you would hit the random button and you would see the profile info of a random person...very basic stuff like username, and perhaps age, sex and location. I don't believe there were even any profile pics though you could send pictures to each other if you wanted. After viewing this basic profile info you could choose to send them a message. You could turn this feature on or off and I don't really recall what the default was. At any rate, this was my first contact with my future wife. A random chat I received on ICQ.
During that first chat it wasn't even just my future wife that was on the other end. She was with her cousin at the time and they were just playing around chatting with random people. I chatted with both of them and I think later just her late into the night. Then we chatted the next night...and the next...and the next. This went on for a couple of months. I don't remember much in the way of specifics but these chats started out in the typical way. Discussing things we liked, how our days were, etc. Gradually they grew more personal (and no, I don't mean sexting and dick pics).
It turned out that she lived in Ottawa, Canada. I lived in Florida. She was originally from the Philippines but had moved to Canada about 5 years previous (this will become relevant in a future post). She had some family in Canada including her Mother, Sister and two cousins. She was in the process of getting her Canadian citizenship at the time and I believe got it during those months we were chatting. Some time in April 1999 we decided to actually speak with each other on the phone. My phone bill ended up being $300-$400 that month. We talked almost every night. By early May we had decided that I would come visit which I did at the end of May/beginning of June. I stayed for a week. This was my first trip outside of my own country. I had no real expectations because I didn't know what to expect. I thought of it as an adventure and it was, ultimately leading to the biggest adventure of my life so far. After a long distance relationship that ultimately lasted almost two years she moved to Florida and we were married. This two years was at least 6 months longer than it should have been do to an unnecessarily difficult immigration process that included them losing our paperwork on two different occasions.
While no marriage is perfect, we had our happily ever after that includes four children...at least for 17 years, until... (see the next post).
The pictures above are all from that first trip to Canada in June, 1999.
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