Love Byte

I receive an email from Maria. She has not long returned back to Poland and writes that she is happy to be back in her family’s house in Zielona Gora. Since her return she has caught up with her friends and relatives. A suggestion is made in the email that we arrange to chat on ICQ tomorrow night at about 8pm GMT. A photo is attached to the email and it shows her sitting on a chair holding her 8 month old niece. Maria’s smile is once again beaming and she appears very happy, enjoying the moment.

In response I write an email to accept her invitation for chat on ICQ the following night. I would be working a little later than normal that day, but I should get home in time for our chat. I thank her for the email and I start ICQ to leave her a quick message.

“Hi Maria, I will be here to chat to you as arranged, but I might be up to 20 minutes late due to finishing work later than normal. Please forgive me!”

The next day I’m on ICQ and waiting. I’m 10 minutes early and there is no sign of Maria. While waiting, I decide I should try playing an ICQ game. I pick a multi-player game, Warsheep. The game itself looks kind of wacky and I opt to play it for this reason. This is the first time I’ve played an online game. I’ve never done so before and never played online against random people ever. I’m semi-confident I can win without knowing the rules or controls. 

Warsheep involves two opponents on a battlefield using a turn-based system. Rather than use human soldiers, sheep are used as soldiers controlling different vechiles. Well I get the impression I’m possibly playing against someone from Japan judging by what the player calls him/herself “Utimo”, although from my geographical knowledge this person could live anywhere.

Utimo has clearly played this ICQ game many-a-time. My army of sheep are being blasted out of the game almost at the end of every turn I have. As the game looks to be going in one direction I realise I should adopt a more all-or-nothing approach to end this misery. The inevitable happens and I find my army is no more. I’ll come back to this game another day and be better for this experience. Starting the game rather casually I end up wishing I tried harder. Maybe I cannot take defeat as well as I thought, even though it’s only a game after all.

Oops! Maria is on ICQ, how long has she been on there? I’m not sure but my defeat took a good 7 minutes I thought. Before I type, she writes “waht?”.

At first puzzled I then realise she is referring to my earlier message. I ask her to forget the earlier ICQ message I sent her and ask how she is. She writes that she is well and confesses she is starting to miss England a little. As our chat continues the subject evolves and I can’t help but ask if she thinks she will come back to England sometime soon.

Similar to what she has told me before she says that she will possibly come back the following summer to work during her summer break from university. However she is not sure, as she might try to do some work over the summer in Poland.

I feel bad I did not meet her this year. I guess I had a chance, but I missed out only to realise when it was too late. Will I see her again? I don’t know, but she did mention that she likes England and so I can only hope that this feeling will grow and possible desire to return will persuade her to come back next summer.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS