You Know You're Living in the Internet Age (and China) When...

Here's a riddle:

Q: American girl meets cute Australian boy while living in China. Girl and boy fall in love in China. Girl is very happy and wants boy to meet American parents. American parents are traveling in Germany. How does girl introduce boy to parents?

A: Via the Internet of course!

After nearly five months of dating the time had finally come for Special Friend to meet the parents. Ideally, we would go to their house, sit down to a lovely dinner and hope for no talk of milking cats or wayward grace saying ala Ben Stiller in the 'Meet the Parents' movie. But I live in China which doesn't afford such luxuries. And, like I've said many times before, when living in China one must get a little creative. Call it my mantra. SO, the ominous task was reduced to a Skype video call. Now most of you probably know that I talk to my parents nearly every day via video skype [My mom doesn't know how to delete emails but tell the woman that if she learns how to use skype she will be able to see me over the internet and she suddenly becomes a Google programmer].

Naturally, there have been many a skype calls when Special Friend has been over but it just seemed too ridiculous to introduce my new boyfriend over the Internet. Well try getting that logic past Dave and Andrea! With Dave being the self-appointed Skype spokesman (it is a rare occasion when the wonders of Skype don't somehow work its way into one of his conversations ;) and Andrea holding the patent on the Skype hug n' kiss there was no way of getting out of the Skype meet n greet.

So the time had finally come. No dates or times were set as with a normal parent intro, it just happened that SF came over and I was online with my Dad. There he sat with airplane-pilot headphones on and 8am bedhead and SF looking quite dapper in his shirt and tie coming from work. It was a beautiful site. But what is the first thing my Dad says?? "Hi [special friend]. Nice to FINALLY meet you. I was starting to wonder who wears the pants in that relationship!" Nice Dad. Of course it was a joke and Special Friend responded well and the conversation (mostly about sports) went on for about 10 glorious Skype minutes with nothing traditional about it.

Funnily enough, this article from the International Herald Tribune (NYT) was sent to me by a friend earlier this week:

Surveillance of Skype messages found in China

Ahh China. I hope my Dad provided a little entertainment to what must be the most mundane job on the planet.