I have a very good friend that I lost touch with over the years. It’s been tough not having her in my life because she’s just one of those friends–the type who made a difference in my life from the day I met her. Well, someone asked me if I’d ever googled myself before, so I did and was amazed to find stuff on myself–articles from my student newspaper, reviews for some playsI was in. So then I kind of went…hmmm…I wonder if I could find my friend. And I did!! I emailed her and she called me last night and we played catch up for a couple of hours. She’s doing so well and I’m so happy to be in touch with her again. Has that ever happened to any of you? I’d love to hear the happy!!
Totally cool!! I’m so glad you found her.
I haven’t had that luck. I thought I found an old boyfriend once. I did the obligatory “are you the same guy” e-mail. He politely told me he wasn’t.
Hmmmm . . . maybe he was! :eek: Maybe I’m the psycho ex-beast bitch from hell!
Remind me to start a thread one day detailing how I found my half-sister in Thailand through ICQ, an internet cafe, and some really amazing people who went literally out of their way (a 600 mile trip) to help me find her.
Hey, TellMeI’mNotCrazy, you should tell that story sometime soon! Like, in this thread. 
I found an old friend who lives halfway round the world on Google. He was from Tasmania, Australia. I’m from California. We met in 1991 in Germany when we were both foreign exchange students. We kept in touch through my college years, but you know how it can be post-graduation. I moved a lot, changed my telephone number and went through a couple email accounts, and lost touch. After about five years of occasional searches, I googled my heart out and came up with a couple of possible emails at various universities. I sent an email out, and lo and behold he replied! We hadn’t talked in at least five years. I hope to see him sometime soon.
I also found my host family again through google earlier this year. I hadn’t kept in touch very well, and in the time since I was living there, they reformed the zipcode system so I couldn’t send a letter and they reformed the phone system so the phone numbers I had were all old and couldn’t be traced. After much strenuous googling, I found a phone number for my host brother. He almost fell over when he heard my voice! I visited them again in May this year. It had been over 7 years.
I am a member of the cult of google.
I googled one college friend and sent him an e-mail. He only lives about 60 miles from me. His response was kind of frosty, and our reconciliation didn’t go anywhere. I guess I reminded him too much of his wild & crazy past, since he’s now an author with a wife and 3 daughters and probably thinks I’m still a bum.
TellMe, I totally want to hear this story!!! This sounds awesome.
OK. But it’s not a short story, so be warned
When I was about 13 years old, my step-mother accidentally let slip something I had never, ever known: I had a sister in Thailand. We were looking through a photo album, and there was a picture of a girl. I asked who it was, and my step-mother answered, “Your sister.” Both of my sisters (that I knew of then) were far younger than me, so I was dumbfounded. I looked at her, and could see on her face that she hadn’t had any idea that I didn’t already know about her. When I went back to my mom’s, I asked her about it, and she confirmed that she did have another daughter, 6 years older than me, who still lived in Thailand. She then made it very clear that she never wanted to discuss the matter again.
A few years after I found out, my brother and mother went to Thailand while I spent another summer with my dad. My brother got to meet our sister, but I still never did. Family being such an important thing to me, that was pretty hard for me to accept, but there was little I could do.
When I was about 23, and my own family was beginning to grow, the desire to contact my sister was even stronger. I asked my mother if she had any contact information, which she said she didn’t. She had no idea where she was living, what she was doing, nothing, and again made it clear that this was not something she wanted to discuss. So I decided to find her myself.
I was using ICQ a lot back then, so I decided to use to help my search. I did a member listing of all the people who listed my mother’s town as their home. It pulled up a fair number of users. Not being the patient type, I narrowed it down to anyone that was online at that moment. Finally I settled on a 16 year old girl, and sent her a message. I explained that I was looking for my sister, and that the last I had known, she had lived in that town. She apologized, and said she didn’t know anybody that fit the description, but if she heard something she’d let me know.
A few days later, I had a message waiting on my ICQ. The girl’s father said that his daughter (Punch was her screen name) had told him about my conversation with her, and that he worked for the Thai Royal Government. I was fully expecting him to chew me out for having approached his daughter. But the next message caught me by surprise: he was willing to use the facilities available to him to help me find my sister. He asked for a name of any family members I could think of, any information that might help him. I gave him my mother’s name and her sister’s name. He said he’d let me know if he found anything out.
A week later, he sends me a message; he’s located my great-aunt, who lives just down the road from him. Every day for the preceding week, he’d gone over there and talked to the 85 year old woman, finding out what he could. He gave me the names of my brother, and my cousins (although he had switched the boys around, naming my male cousin as my brother, and vice versa. Completely understandable since their names are the same but for one letter). He then gave me the names of all of my mother’s siblings, and explained which of my grandmother’s four marriages each came from. Already he had told me much more of my family history than I had ever known. Then he told me that my sister was working for a department store, but that she had transferred from a city nearby to somewhere else (but wasn’t sure where exactly). Armed with this new information, his wife (also working for the government) took a trip to Bangkok (the 600 mile trip), to the company headquarters, and investigated further. She returned with the name of the town and mall where my sister worked. At that point, they had helped me all they could (and far, far more than I could ever have expected) and wished me luck in tracking her down further.
Now my major obstacle was getting in touch with her. The big problem: I don’t speak Thai, and she doesn’t speak English. A rather sizable challenge, I’d say. So, again I turned to ICQ, and looked for users in the new city (Pattaya). I found a screenname that clearly belonged to an internet cafe. I did my best to decipher the username (something like BchCyCfePort1) to search for its website. I came up with a hit, went to the website, and found its message board. I left a message saying something along the lines of:
“Hi, I don’t know if anyone can help me, but I’m trying to contact my sister. I know that she works at Department Store X, at Mike’s Shopping Center, which I think is right around the corner from this internet cafe. If anyone who speaks Thai would be willing to contact her, her first name is Orratai, and my name is Julie. Just tell her that I love her, and hope to see her soon. My email address is… blah blah blah”
And I left it at that. At first, I checked every day for new messages, but didn’t find anything, and started to lose hope.
Then, about 2 months later, I got an email. “Hi, I saw your message on the internet cafe’s message board. I go by that shopping center all the time, so if you are still interested, I’d be more than happy to deliver your message.” Of course, I took him up on it, and waited for days on pins and needles.
Then I got another email. He’d been to the store, and met my sister. Not only did he deliver my message, he took her picture, and then a picture of him with her, and a picture of her writing a note. His wife, who is Thai, then translated the note, which said: “Sister, I am so glad you contacted me. I would like to meet you one day, and I think about you and brother all the time. I miss you, and I love you.” It was an amazing feeling, to have finally connected with my sister, even if in such a bizarre way. I can’t even begin to describe the emotion, or the gratitude I felt towards these total strangers who had done so much to help me.
I got back in touch with the first family, and told them of my success. They were thrilled for me, and told me that whenever I came to meet my sister, they had access to some empty dorm rooms at the building they worked in that I could stay in.
At first, I was nervous about telling my mother about my success, given her reactions to my bringing it up before. But finally, I decided this was just too important a tale not to share with her, so I told her about it the next time I saw her.
Was she happy? Was she pissed? Indifferent? Did she rant and rave? Break down in tears of joy?
Nope.
She said, oh, I knew where she was already, I just didn’t feel like telling you.
Talk about not being able to describe an emotion.
Oh and, no I haven’t met her yet 
But I have talked to her, which was amusing considering the language barrier, and the whole incident has made my mother deal with the situation a lot better.
And the last letter my sister sent me thanked me again for having looked for her 
TellMeI’mNotCrazy, what a wonderful story! When you do meet her, you have to post pictures and a travelog (sp?).
Did you ever find out why your mother didn’t want to discuss your sister? There must be some contact if she (mom) knew where she (sister) was even after she (sister) had moved and stuff.
(OK, I’m being nosy, and I’ll go quietly away if you don’t want to talk about it, too. But me and the cat have a lot in common.)
She was dealing with a lot of guilt because she had left my sister with my grandparents instead of bringing her here to the US. But she’s doing much, much better with that, and now stays in regular contact with her, and saw her just this past July when she went to Thailand.
Oh my gosh, your mother’s lack of help notwithstanding, this story made me cry. Congratulations on having found your sister. I hope you get to see her soon.
That’s such a great story, TellMeI’mNotCrazy. I did a little internal cheer when I got to the part where you got in touch.
I just recently re-found friends we had in Germany. I googled on the last e-mail I had for them, found a post they had made a couple of years ago in someone’s guestbook, and from that linked back to their homepage. That had the town they lived in on it (which I had forgotten), so I found Deutshe Telecom’s phonebook online, entered his name and the town, and got their number. It was quite thrilling all around.
See and I just didn’t know how cool google could be. That’s great that you got in touch with your friends Lucretia.
TellmeI’mnotcrazy that is one amazing story. It has Reader’s Digest all over it.
If you continue on this path you run the risk of becoming one of my favorite dopers.
When it all first happened I had these visions of getting on the Oprah show, where she’d unveil a jumbo jet that she had bought just for me, and put us up in the ritziest hotel
You’re probably right though, it could make for a glurgeriffic Reader’s Digest story, couldn’t it?
As to this:
well I’m just speechless. :eek: