A Blogger in Reality

I was walking out of Ikea Tampines last Thursday when I heard a young mother asking her toddler not to run.

Instinctively, I glanced at the active toddler and felt that she bore a striking resemblance to a blogger's daughter I read about.

I looked at the mother, and I couldn't be certain about it. I turned and looked at the father, and I was rather sure. The father looked more like how he looked in the blog.

I asked,"Is she A?"
The mother was surprised,"Yes."
I said,"I read your multiply." hoping to break the ice.
The ice was not broken.
I continued,"I also have a two-year-old daughter."
"Oh ... " then more silence.

It was awkward to say the least, with me and them standing on the escalator.

The blogger was not as friendly as I had assumed and gathered from the blog.

The couple even looked a little offended, if I interpreted the expressions right, that some stranger was reading their multiply - a type of blog.

I had started reading the multiply since my singaporebrides days, which date back to more than five years ago, when the bride-to-be was eager to share the design of her wedding gown.

The episode left me feeling foolish to try speaking with a blogger whom I knew but who did not know me.

I wasn't exactly trying to strike up a sustained conversation. I thought we could at least chat a little since we are both mothers of a two-year-old. Unfortunately, the naive me had overestimated the supposedly invisible 'link' between a blogger and her readers.

I wonder if most bloggers are like that in real life: react coldly to someone who has been reading their blogs. It so happened that I chanced upon a blog right before I met the multiply-blogger at Ikea and in it, the blogger wrote that she met a blogger whose blog she frequently read in Kuala Lumpur. She wrote,"I went up to her and asked if she was P X and she said yes." With that, the encounter ended. I had thought it was strange that there was no other conversation. But it turned out that I had a similar experience.

The incident also leaves me wondering how I would react if I ever have a stranger telling me in my face that she's been reading my blog. I don't want to be caught offguard like the blogger I met and give cold shoulder to the reader, intentionally or unintentionally. That would be too awful!