I knew I loved you before I met you

I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with the song titled "I knew I love you before I met you" by Savage Garden, the possibility of this song might seem very far-fetched but let's change the context a little and look at it in the perspective of today's ever shrinking world which is rapidly being connected through Social Networking.

Social Networking sites like Facebook, MySpace or even LinkedIn, had made falling in love or starting a relationship with someone you have not actually met a possibility, thus giving new meaning to the sentence "I knew I love you before I met you", well physically at least.
Meet Serena (not her real name), a good friend of mine who has in recent years gone through the ups and downs of transcontinental dating via Social Networking.

After a of couple of disastrous experiences with local men, she decided to set her sights and venture further to the west and what better ways to do it than through Social Networking.
Her first escapade took her all the way to the United States, she never did travel there, but she met a guy hailing from Pennsylvania through Facebook; eventually they started a "Facebook Relationship" after a series of liberating and profound conversations on MSN, it seemed at that time they were destined to be together.

Serena said "for once I don't feel myself being judged, and the fact that he is so far away and his culture is so different from mine makes this relationship all the more intriguing, he even sent me flowers, omg!!!"

However sweet the relationship was, factors like personal commitments and time zone
differences became a big barrier to their relationship and eventually putting this romantic experience to an end, and all these happened when they had not actually met physically.

Not to be dismayed, Serena had decided to give long distance relationship another chance, one day through Facebook Serena received a message from a Swedish guy called Thomas (not his real name) and she realized they actually had a friend in common, and through further conversations she found out that the Swedish guy was actually an ex-housemate of that friend in common.

With this, it became the basis of their conversations, they eventually connected via Skype and went into more engaging conversations; when I asked Serena about Thomas; she went: "Thomas is so much like a Singaporean, and he uses terms like 'baobei', 'uncle' and ends his sentences with 'lor' "

Having a Singaporean housemate had probably given Thomas the understanding of Singapore's culture, thus enabling him to communicate with Serena on a much deeper level, needless to say they eventually got involved in a relationship and this time they even met in person, when Thomas actually came down and visited Serena.

Cases like Serena's is well becoming more and more common as locals seek to find their fairytale romance in places far beyond Singapore, and with Social Networking sites like Facebook and many others, this has made such dreams a convenient reality.