I imagine there are few more fundamental changes in any human life than marriage. I just never thought that the internet would play such a significant role in the process.

I came into the technology only recently, around three years ago. When everybody else I knew was already exchanging e-mails, surfing the net, and chatting, I was still sending handwritten letters by post, getting references from the library, and dialing my friends’ telephone numbers.

This sort of behavior will sound strange when I point out that internet usage in the Philippines picked up during my years as a college student at Ateneo de Manila University. The school provided for student access, and many internet cafes sprouted along the road across us, so getting online wasn’t a problem. I was surrounded by net-savvy classmates, so I couldn't have avoided hearing about Hotmail and Yahoo, either.

But my real initiation into the technology occurred after graduation, when I began work as an assistant editor at a social research and advocacy institute. The nature of the job of course required an e-mail facility, but there I was without a clue where to begin attaching an article.

As in most things in life, however, I overcame "internet illiteracy" by simply confronting it, using the net regularly until tasks such as uploading photos no longer became intimidating.

The first indication that I had taken to the net was the letter-writing. Until then, I’d diligently hand-write letters only to keep from posting them, because in the time it took to find an envelope and stamps and mail the whole thing, the news I’d written had gotten too stale to bother sending. E-mail broke that pattern. I was on a roll.

It didn’t take long for my address book to fill out considerably, and all I could do each day was write and read e-mails. Since the office network would sometimes shut down (lightning storms tend to fry it pretty well), I opened a web-based e-mail account, so I could access my inbox somewhere else after work.

The search engine where I signed up also offered chat, so I went exploring. And that’s where the story gets exciting.

Being very talkative, it was a thrill for me to be able to chat with people from other countries. I hadn’t travelled out of the country before then, so it was fascinating to interact with all sorts of personalities of various nationalities. We would gossip about other chatters with as much fervour as we discussed global issues. Under the cover of anonymity, we freely spoke of personal life experiences, teased each other and created a general ruckus online. I learned to appreciate human contact. I learned that regardless of geography, the same things make people laugh, cry and curse.

A few months after my first foray into a chat room, my sister introduced me to IRC (Internet Relay Chat). There, in the middle of hundreds of channels under hundreds of servers, I met my husband in a room appropriately called "loonybin."

It didn’t start out as anything romantic. It was just a case of two gabbers enjoying each other’s company. So much so that it was getting somewhere pretty quick. As conversation, even virtual conversations on the internet, tends to provide basis for attraction, it naturally progressed from friendship to something deeper.

However, as much as the experience of falling in love is a wonderful thing, it presented a problem. I lived in Manila and he lived in Melbourne. We were approximately 3,000 kilometers apart. Ironically, while the internet provided the conditions for us to meet and interact, we could not be together in a real way. We were still bound by geographical limits. So he flew over.

That first week we spent within touching distance established the relationship as a genuine one, although it had its beginnings in the virtual realm. Rick proposed on his second visit, and celebrated my birthday with me on his third. Not too long afterwards, I finally obtained a visa to Australia, where we had our simple and lovely wedding nearly five months ago.

Through all this, the internet proved an invaluable communication tool. The very thing that allowed for that first contact helped us sustain the connection. A lot can be said about relationships like ours being unconventional, but we pretty much behaved like any other ordinary couple. We wrote love letters, bickered in the chat room, made up over the phone.

We have had a few discussions over the novel way we met, of course. There used to be a secret mortification whenever people asked how we met (which of course they were bound to ask when we obviously lived in different countries). I usually found myself couching the answer by saying, "Are you prepared for this?" Looking back, I could really have been asking myself that question.

My husband finally laid my worries to rest one night when he pointed out that the internet was the means, not the relationship. It was the environment in which our lifelong friendship developed. That is, strengthened by genuine dialogue and without the physical distractions that most couples undergo.

I¹ve since then come to consider it a blessing, that I live in a time where two entirely compatible people who would not likely have met otherwise, did.

Even now the internet continues to add to my life in delightful and surprising ways. I still drop by the chat room where my husband and I had met. I write to my sister in the Philippines and tell her about how I’m doing in my newly adopted country. I look for employment prospects through a job search engine. We've even created our own website.

Just recently, I was able to get in touch with an alumnus from my university when I found the alumni website while surfing the net. He lives in Sydney, and we hope to get together for coffee when I visit the city in September. That is, after I meet up with a Filipino writer who just got published in Australia. Maybe he can give me some tips.

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