Adventure Travel El Salvador: Salvadorian Cyber-Chick
January 28, 2000
In my quest to solve some computer difficulties and to archive my digital photos, I was introduced to Karla. I had been told that she was a crazy girl who spent her days at work on a computer and her nights at home online. A GeekChick. A Techie! But she certainly didn’t look the part! In person she was very attractive and vivacious and talked a mile a minute. An unbelievably fast, nonstop cadence to her speech. “Stop and take a deep breath!” I would tell her so that I could understand more than one out of every seventeen words. It was no use though, she’d be back up to full speed within 15 seconds.
I told her about the programmers and tech people I knew at home and that they stayed up all night surviving on coffee, pepsi, and pizza. She nodded quickly with her eyes wide open to acknowledge that I was describing her lifestyle exactly.
I think that computers have an effect on the human nervous system. No matter what my posture is I get a sharp pain between my shoulder blades after a certain amount of time online. I think the nervous system gets amped on some level by the electronic interaction, hence the “wired” lifestyle of a lot of the technical types. Back to Krazy-Karla. At a coffee shop (wouldn’t ya know?) she described her numerous online liasons and program called ‘ICQ’. (Get it? ‘I seek you’-I didn’t!) It’s a sophisicated chat program that is very popular in El Salvador. Forgive me if this is old hat and I’m just a little behind the curve, but I was amazed at the functionality of the program and by the fact that the company says it has received requests for, and downloaded the program 80 million times! Obviously a little more widespread than just El Salvador. Again, back to KK and her international online lovers…Matus was the codename of her Honduran friend she knew only through her computer screen. They spent months getting to know each other online. Hours together every evening, then eventually at work, ICQ allowed them to be in touch ALL DAY LONG with an omni-present little dialogue box in the corner of her screen! Regardless of what she was doing or working on! A fairly intense relationship, electronic or not. After months of this, Matus finally decides that he must meet her in person and tells her he is coming to San Salvador for that purpose. She panics! She tells him that her real name is Ricky and that she’s actually a guy!! No response for two minutes-finally back across the sceen comes, “I LOVE YOU!” This real life story continues, but gets too complicated and convoluted for me to begin to describe. The happy ending (or beginning?) is that they actually did meet and they have been seeing each other regularly ever since. In person! And yes, my computer is up and running, and my photos are nicely stored on CD!
