Betina told me the most amazing story this morning. She said she was sitting in the Canadian embassy in Taiwan yesterday waiting to apply for her Canadian visa. As she was sitting there a young Taiwanese man walked up to her and asked her, “Do you know Bjorn?” It turns out that my Taiwanese cousin, Kirby, was also applying for a Canadian visa the same day and recognized Betina from some of the pictures I shared with him, whether it was MSN, my zooomr account or my tumblelog.

I just can’t help but marvel at how technology affects our daily lives in ways we could never have imagined. Here is a guy who is distantly related to me, with whom I have met only a handful of times face to face, who I know mostly from our chats online, applying for a Canadian visa, and he bumped into and even recognized my girlfriend. All of this made possible by e-mail, instant messaging, and websites. Had they crossed paths 10 years earlier, they would have never known that they knew the same person.

Here’s Betina’s account:

辦過美簽之後，覺得加拿大簽證根本就是隨便辦隨便過。 而且覺得辦事處理面有一種溫馨的感覺， 等待的時候發現我早餐居然還沒吃， 於是偷偷在裡面啃起我的三明治。 啃完的時候，有個台灣男生向我這邊走過來， 有點遲疑地問我說：請問你….是不是認識Bjorn? 我嚇了好大一跳。 原來他是不用的親戚耶， 他之前看過我照片，所以認出我了。