Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Obligatory

I don't believe in obligatory blog posts, such as end-of-year entries. But some experiences simply incite you to blog. These are the obligatory blog posts that I would honor, and this entry is one such post.

I had a most interesting experience during the Christmas break. I was at an Internet cafe programming something, and I was at my usual spot which was inside a private room with five computers in it. I was at the fifth computer, the one nearest the door, and there was one other woman at the opposite end of the room.

This woman, she has been at this Internet cafe for three days now, as I was, and I'd always hear her talking, in her perfectly broken English, to some man she met on the Internet. She was using a webcam to communicate, and she always giggled every now and then. I gathered that the man was Irish or at least European in descent, based on her loud conversations with him for the past few days.

Today, however, was different. She seemed very ready to do the cybernaughty. She wasn't particularly attractive. Actually, she wasn't attractive at the very least. But while I was furiously typing lines and lines of code, I was alone in the room with this girl, who suddenly cried out to her screen "Oh yu know yer so hunsum, yu know dat?" with a strong 'd' sound on the "dat". I snorted so loudly and lost my focus.

The next thing that happened was a boy, not older than 7 or 8, entering the room and taking the computer beside mine. He seemed to be happily playing his anime fighting Flash game while I was typing furiously. Then I noticed that he obnoxiously glanced at my computer screen every few minutes or so, and in a not-so-covert manner at that. I was both annoyed and intrigued at this gesture, so I stole a peek at his screen.

Imagine my horror (and slight delight) at seeing that his Flash game was tucked away in another tab, and that two other tabs were open with the titles "Naked Sexy Lesbians Kissing" and "Hillary Duff Real Sex Video!!!", with the kid staring intently at the screen. My vision went downwards in order to verify that these weren't just parody or joke videos. I was right. They weren't.

I didn't report him or anything; I just let him be while I was back to coding. But every time he peeked at my computer I peeked back. Hence, "Hot Dark Latinas -- Real!!!" and other similar, albeit more exotic, titles.

There's another funny story about an old woman who needed help with Facebook, but I think I'll save it for another time.