6 Degrees of Separation

I come home after a long day at work. I am about to start cooking dinner (i.e. turn into a fridge looter and eat anything that is left over) when I get a phone call from a number I don't know.

“Hello, can I speak to Dana, please?”

“Speaking.”

“It's XY from the blabla newspaper. I heard you won a prize and I would like to have an interview with you. We could do it now if you feel like it.”

My wet dream about food was interrupted so abruptly that it took me about 15 seconds to reply. I had won a prize and I was obviously flattered that people found out about it but...hang on! Who was this guy? And, most importantly, how did he get my mobile phone number? Slovene people in Trieste all know each other. If they don't know someone personally, they surely know his mother or his mother's friend or the friend's uncle who knows someone who knows the person we are talking about. Does this make sense? It doesn't to me...Anyway, this is how things work in the place where I grew up (and this is also why I ran away). Because of this “6 degrees of separation” mentality, which permeates our little world, it is almost normal to get calls from strangers. I obviously wasn't ready for an interview straight away. Thanks to interpreting I have become quite good at improvising, I have to say, but there's only so much I can do after a whole day at work. So I told the guy (who was by now talking to me like to an old friend) to call me the day after. When he did, I just couldn't believe my own ears! He knew where I studied before going to uni, he knew where I graduated, he knew I had translated a long and important document last autumn (I am not going to tell you what it was seeing as it's apparently not that difficult to find out!). He knew everything, probably even the colour of my knickers! And (listen to this!) when I asked him if he needed a photo of me (I have learned that journalists like adding visual material to their articles), he replied: “Oh no, I'll use the picture you have on Twitter if that's ok with you.” WTF?!

The sad thing is that it's all my fault. Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter...and me being a social butterfly and giving my number to (almost) random good looking guys! I dread to think how many pictures of me are out there. Pictures I have forgotten about or pictures I never even knew existed! Let alone all the random comments on Facebook...God knows how many things people can find out about me without me knowing. I'm sure some of you just went: “And keeping a blog certainly doesn't help, you numpty!” :) Scary stuff!

So here I am, ready to spend the Easter holidays with a lovely wee lassie and mountains of chocolate. No internet, no photos, no traces in cyber space. Instead, I'll make sure I hug you all properly when I see you again! ENJOY! :)