Di has had a couple of posts recently about online dating. She personally doesn't like the idea. But she qualified her posts to note that she is not opposed to the idea of happening to meet people online, she just doesn't like the idea of pigeonholing people and thereby limiting the chances of finding love in an unexpected way.
I personally have never used an online dating agency (although I did browse through a Christian one once). Partly I didn't want to spend the money, partly I think it seems a little "desparate", partly meeting people is rather a tedious business - there's all the boring small talk of "where do you live" and "what do you do" which I hate having to go through over and over again. I can see their uses - it'd make it easier to find people that have similar interests and goals in life, but I'd still want to meet the person in real life pretty early on before taking anything too far.
So over the last couple of years I've been semi-actively looking for blogs of people that I could conceivably have an interest in. Mind you this wasn't a terribly effective method - I don't actually read any blogs of single guys in Sydney! heh. But blogging suits my style of meeting people. I can read all about what they have to say, without having to say anything myself. Sometimes I will respond to a post, and people may come and read my blog. Or vice versa, people start reading my blog. I figure if anyone is interested enough in my life to read my blog and comment on it, then what they say in their blogs must also have an interest to me. And so I read the blogs of quite a few students, and other people that I wouldn't necessarily have gone looking for. And I end up reading a very ecclectic collection of world views.
In April, a guy named Aurelius began leaving comments in my blog. I went over to have a look at his, and was intrigued by the location tag that said he was in Rome. But in the early posts I began reading he said he had just moved to Jerusalem. It didn't take me long to realise he was actually an Australian living in Brisbane, but his blog intrigued me enough to read it from the very beginning, something I rarely do. I also began to read the blogs of Pinky (his girlfriend at the time) and Stu (his best friend).
A few weeks later, my parents were planning a trip to Queensland and I was to tag along. So I left a message on Stu's blog that it would be cool to meet him and Aurelius. Several emails went back and forth, and on the way up a few smses. I thought for a while that I could end up meeting them without a word being spoken on the phone, but Aurelius called me from a landline because he had no credit on his phone, and plans were finalised for a Sunday night dinner at a cafe. And so we met. As the evening was drawing to a close, the plan was that Aurelius was to take me back to where I was staying, but Stu said "awwww". And I knew there was something there. Something that had potential. Not only did it tell me that he was interested in me, but it kindled a similar reaction in myself. I wanted to spend more time with Stu too. A couple of days later, when were staying on the Gold Coast, I wanted to go to Infinity, and was wondering whether my mum would want to come along. And then I had a thought - I wonder if Stu would be interested in coming down. So I smsed him, and he was. Several smses back and forth later and plans were finalised. And so we had a lovely night. I was starting to like this gentle man, but in my head I thought no, don't do it, bad idea, he lives a thousand kilometres away! But even as I was travelling home over the next couple of days, I was smsing him, and once home we began to spend a lot of time online chatting.
And so that's how it began. Completely and utterly unexpected. Something that would never have happened without the internet. Without Vic telling me I should write a blog two and a half years ago. Without Aurelius happening to find me and post here. And at a point in our lives where the both of us had resigned ourselves to being single forever. As Stu would say "it's a funny old life".
