MELATI from Indonesia &  ISMAIL from Turkey

My name is Melati and I am from Jakarta, Indonesia. I met Ismail through the internet. I had my profile on the internet on a website for people seeking friends. I was browsing through the page when I saw the picture and read the profile of Ismail. Her profile read almost like mine. I was inquisitive and wanted to meet her. I contacted her. She replied and we developed a mail friendship. We realized that we have a lot in common and could be good friends. We made an appointment to meet. We met in Stuttgart, Germany and have been friends since then; since 2 years.

Life in Germany is okay but I do not like it so much. Germany is too cold for me and the typical German cuisine is not my favourite. The services offered and attitude towards customers are not at all the best. However there are also good and positive aspects of life in Germany. For example, the streets are very clean, everything seems to be perfectly organized and there is order everywhere.

I've tried dating on the internet for several years, with mixed results... I met the two loves of my life on here a few years back, and met a few real psychos in the process, too, so I can't really say if I recommend using this as a meeting tool or not. I thought you might be interested in the story of my worst meeting ever on the net.

About four years ago, I was travelling a lot for work. I found myself home alone in my rental apartment a few nights a week, and with nothing better to do I started chatting with people on ICQ. One woman I met seemed really interesting... same taste in music, well read, funny, flirtatious, and based on the photo she sent me, reasonably attractive. When she invited me to come visit her out in Baltimore over Labor Day weekend, I figured why not? I told her I was just coming out of a bad breakup (which was true) and I was only coming out as a friend (which was only semi-true), and that she could meet me at the airport Friday afternoon.

This was pre 9/11, so she should have been able to meet me at the gate, but when I got outside I didn't see any smiling faces. Since it was Labor Day, the airport was packed and very loud, so I couldn't hear any of the announcements (you know, "Please meet your party at the baggage claim"). I waited about 20 minutes, and then went and had HER paged. Still nothing.

By now, I was thinking I was being stood up, and obviously that put me in a pretty surly mood. I had her paged one more time, and went and stood in a relatively quiet area to think about what the hell I was going to do. As I stood there, I noticed something moving towards me. It was large... very large... so I was pretty sure this was not who I was waiting for. However, as it got closer, I realized that "it" was in fact a "she", and if I squinted reeeeeeeeally hard, I could sort of make out the features I had seen in the photos she sent me. Photos, it turned out, which were well over 10 years old.

The woman in the pictures was cute... short hair, nice eyes, nice smile. The woman who stood in front of me was easily 150 pounds heavier than the one I had seen. The hair was no longer short... it was now long and greasy, with a poodle puff in front and a stringy mullet in back. The NASCAR racing jacket, her best attempt at wearing something stylish. I put on a brave face and gave her a quick hug. Nothing to worry about, since I was here just as a "friend", right? God, was I glad I had added that caveat before I came out! We waddled out to her car and headed towards what I THOUGHT was Baltimore...

It turned out she lived in a "suburb", if you consider a small town over an hour outside of town in a completely different state a "suburb". My thoughts of us at least going downtown to hang out were shot, so I asked her what her plans were for the weekend. "Oh", she said, "I thought we'd just rent some movies." It was now 6:00 on Friday. My flight didn't leave until 6:00 the following Monday. Things were looking bleak.

We pulled in to her house, a shoddy little ranch in the middle of a white trash neighborhood. Old washers and dryers were piled up in the back yard. When I asked her about it, she just laughed and said, "Oh, those are nothing to worry about". I still worried. I worried even more when I opened the door and was hit with a wave of nauseating odor. I'm not a neat freak, not by any means, but to me, cleaning your house does not mean, "Open a Glade Plug-in and relax". She had plugged in six... count 'em, six... coconut Plug-Ins in the living room ALONE. Underneath that overpowering odor was something darker, and more sinister. I couldn't figure out what it was, but I knew it wasn't good.

After the stench, the next thing that struck me was the decorating of the house. Those of you who have dotty old great aunts still alive will probably recognize it. Picture faux wood panelling... shag carpet... and wedding pictures on the wall. Not of your friends or siblings, mind you... Wedding pictures of your parents and grand parents, all in that lovely, faded yellow with a tinge of blue and pink that all photos taken in the sixties and seventies seem to have. These photos were EVERYwhere. As freaky as the photos were, I thought the little figurines, tucked in amid the mini ceramic castles, and the occasional wooden soldier/nutcracker, were even worse. Many of them were cracked. All stared at me with this glazed, pleading look, as if they realized they were in hell. At least one was missing it's eyes. I was now getting scared.  continued>

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