Arnold, Martin, Chong, thanks for the warm moderator's welcome! Some of my posts will be getting right into topics you (and RobertBfrom aust- thanks as well!) are mentioning. I am glad to hear that my beginnings are entertaining at least
Last post I'd left off with my 3rd attempt at contact. Answering another admirer letter on Chnlove, I bravely tried again knowing that I may well be throwing money into a bottomless pit. That old saying goes "third time's the charm". Plus I still had unused credits
This third woman, in her mid 30s, had a very nice admirer letter. While not really specifically targeted at me, at least she sounded very sincere, and gave some details of her childhood, family, and what she was looking for. It grabbed my interest much better than a lot of the admirer mail I had received that simply regurgitated a few sentences pulled from their profile, and then said "tell me about yourself!".
I started writing to her. From that first day's EMF, I received a reply within the same day (not immediately of course, but a reasonable time later based on the time zone difference). The translation was good, not too fluffy, and attention paid to my questions, as well as asking some of her own. This continued with me writing and her replying, using 2 credits per day, every day. I sure was burning up the credits! But I was really enjoying communicating with her, and hoped the feeling was mutual.
A stumble occurred after the first week of this daily back-and-forth exchange. There was a request in a newly arrived EMF to be able to make an expensive "love call"... but I know this girl speaks almost no English. A small alarm bell goes off in my head! I wrote back, with a special preface for the translator. I told the translator that I appreciated the good work she had been doing with these letters, and that I really liked this girl a lot. Then told the translator I would be very sad if I found out that my girl didn't exist, if this was only a scam to make money. In that same EMF, I requested other forms of communication...
This is a good segue... I had been reading both the official Chnlove forums and had just begun reading these forums. I had learned a lot already about potential scams with some agencies. This forum also told me about the ubiquitous Chinese chat system, QQ. I signed up for QQ and got a user number. Maybe I'd never use it, but darn it I would be prepared if the opportunity arose!
Anyway, when requesting other forms of communication I politely asked if my QQ number could be given to the lady (and supplied it in the letter), so I could share additional photos with her (since the website only allows 3 per EMF). Basically we would still need to use EMFs for a long time due to lack of much common language ability. I told the translator she could share my "for the translator" section with my lady, because I had nothing to hide, and nothing but compliments for the lady in it.
Once I was satisfied with my letter to the lady and my "for the translator" section, I held my breath, crossed fingers, and hit send...
