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I was walking to work today and I saw this guy talking out loud and flapping his hands in motion. I thought to myself, oh well it's just another psycho walking the streets of Zagreb. But when he came closer I noticed he had head phones and a mike and was talking on his cell phone. So from your every day psycho he was transformed into your every day businessman. And just to think that some 6 years ago something like that was inconceivable in Croatia. It was "out" to have a cell phone, now communicating like that has become every day life.

I remember 10 years ago in Italy it was fashionable to have a car phone, so everyone started getting car phones.or so we thought, a car accident revealed that half of those hard core looking car phones were in fact plastic copies because when it was time to call the ambulance nobody could call them- imagine their embarrassment when they had to admit they had fakes! So these carbon copies were there for keeping up appearances.

But the situation we have on our hands today is beyond keeping up appearances, it has become a way of life - almost like breathing. If you don't have that vital element - a cell phone, you can not be part of the world we live in.

It's not just cell phones that have transformed our lives, the Internet has also brought on a new wave of communication. What used to be meeting people in bars, clubs, etc. has transcended into meeting people on line. So having that in mind I decided I should throw myself out there too!

The Maree Project - Iskrica

Iskrica is the on-line Croatian site for dating so I decided to check it out. I filled out a form about my interests, personal info and in just a few minutes I became this virtual babe called Maree. 

I started getting all kinds of notes and proposals sent to my profile. One started like this - I see you wearing sexy high heals and leather I want you to., another one was from a desperate woman who was looking for a partner for her husband and then there were the normal e-mails like - hi I like your profile, wanna chat! So as you can see there's a fair share of everything out there, it's just up to you to figure out where you want to go with it.

After a couple of weeks I ended up selecting  a few I could always talk to, without any hassle. And it would have all been fun and games if one of the guys hadn't desperately wanted to meet up with me (hmm but wasn't that the whole point?). At first I was hesitant and then I told myself it was for a higher cause (don't I like to lie to myself). So I decided I would find out just how much this guy appreciated creativity!

I told him to go to a bookstore in the center of town and meet me there. I asked him to give me a title of a book he liked. He said: A Ring of Ice and Fire by G. R. R. Martin - the Croatian version. I said: "OK, so at 4:30pm go and ask for that book and I'll do the same and then we'll meet." So, I got off work a little before 4:30pm and went straight to the bookstore. I was a little ahead of the game because I knew where the Croatian books were located at. So I hid behind the marketing section and awaited the moment for Mr. Max to show up. That was the most agonizing 10 minutes I had to go through (little did I know, there was more to come).

As every minute seemed like a year I kept thinking, this can't be good - Max is 30, what are the odds of him not being bold with a beer belly. Alarm bells were franticly ringing in my head, but it was too late to pull out.and then I saw him. He was tall, in shape - no beer belly, but with a definite bolding spot growing at the speed of lightning. But, it didn't bother me! What bothered me was that he walked passed me and the marketing section as if I didn't exist, he didn't consider me as a possible maybe at all! Ahhhhhh, poor Maree, you're thinking! Anyway he arrived to the right spot and it was my turn to make the next move.

So I bravely walked towards him, I noticed he had the book in his hands, so I decided to be playful about it. I grabbed another  book, walked around him like a shark circling his pray, then put the book down and got the right book in my hands and after browsing through it I put it down at the same time he was putting his down. We started laughing and decided to go out for a coffee somewhere.

What seemed like a fun beginning turned out to be  such a nightmare, his  eagerness to be interesting made me want to weep in dismay, so instead I kept inventing ways of looking at my wristwatch without getting caught, my neck was killing me, my whole body was screaming LET ME GO OUT!!! He was endlessly talking about who knows what. I was reminded of a scene from the film Singles when a client was telling Campbell Scott (CS) how he appreciated the way CS always listened to him attentively, the truth was that CS was thinking about a girl he had just met and he had no clue what his client was going on about - so I guess I was acting the same way! However, I was thinking about the best way to get out of the situation, a course in crisis management would have helped, in the end I did what any regular person would have done and I just said  I had to be somewhere in 5 minutes. So I made a run for it.

I went home, changed into some red clothes to boost my energy source and went straight back to town to buy a pair of red earrings. I'm a girl what can I say, we do stupid things!

Max in the mean time tried contacting me again, he said he had a great time (I bet he had) so since he didn't get the hint I told him I met someone special in the mean time! Ahhhhhh.

After that painful experience I decided to erase myself from that website and seize to exist in that sense. Enough is enough is enough, however, for the sake of research I did try other venues. The problem is that Maree doesn't want to be killed off, she says she's the main character and from now on she's taking over!

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