When We Finally Met

What do you do when you get the chance to meet IRL someone you’ve known online?

Last week, I went to Singapore (by myself, for the first time!) to attend HubSpot’s GROW 2018.

I stayed in a capsule hostel for the first time.

My ‘pod’ at Capsule Pod Boutique Hostel, Chinatown, Singapore.

I went to the conference by myself (for the first time), met amazing people from Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Sheryl (Singapore), Pam (Philippines), and me (Indonesia)

But the best part is this: I get to meet my Medium friends, Joshua Poh and Charing Kam!

After dinner + desserts 😋

(They’re taller than I thought, way taller than me.)

We’ve had several conversations before this, on Medium and Twitter. After I got my (free) HubSpot ticket and booked my flight and hostel, I reached out to them through Twitter DM.

They’re not coming to the event, but we agreed to meet for dinner.

We had a great time talking about work and career and freelancing. I also attempted to explain blockchain to them in 60 seconds. But mostly we compared how it’s like living in Singapore to living in Indonesia.

Reading what people write on Medium (or the Internet) is a great way to know them and how they think.

But meeting up with them in real life is better. You can hear their laugh, you can see them unfiltered.

Behind all those words, there are real, ordinary people just like the ones you meet in your daily life.

It’s a unique way of making friends, enabled by the Internet. It’s not like meeting people via Tinder (although I’ve never used Tinder, I can imagine what it would be like).

There are friends you meet in real life and keep in touch using IM/social media.

But then there are friends you ‘meet’ first on the Internet, and meet for the first time in real life.

Thank you Joshua Poh and Charing Kam! See you in Jakarta!

Thanks for reading! I’m happy to connect with fellow writers/freelancers, you can find me on my website, Pinterest, and Twitter.