I’m subscribed to this service called Dopplr. The idea is that you keep an online record of your trips that you share with friends and others. Since I travel quite a bit it’s nice that through this service I can keep a record of my travels myself and that others will be able to see where I’m heading as well.

Now more or less a week ago there was this Finnish guy that shared his trips with me. I don’t know the guy, he just shared his trips with me. Now, the profile looked legit and I also shared my profile with them. You know, you’ve got types who are picky about allowing people seeing what they do, which places they travel to and so on and you’ve got types that don’t care that much about privacy. Well, I’m one of the latter types, so I shared my trips with the guy.

Now, in the past few days, this Finnish guy showed an amazing amount of activity on Dopplr, which I noted just now.

In the next few months he’s traveling to Göteborg, Copenhagen, Cannes, Antwerp, Helsinki, Perloz (Italy, that’s where I spend a big amount of my time), Kostomuksha (wherever that is), Brussels, Vienna, Budapest, Prague and Zamoanga. The last place is a city in the South-West of the Philippines. I’m curious to know what the guy is going to do there. Generally, it’s a no-go area, because the South-West of the Philippines is quite active as far as kidnappings and anti-Western people are concerned (read: rebels, terrorist-like figures).

Now I can tell you, it’s quite a coincidence too that Matti is traveling to Antwerp, Perloz (of all places) too. Even better, he’ll be in all those places at the same time I’ll be there! On top of this: he’s in Manila… right now…!! I’m there too… right now…! It looks like I’ve got a new friend!! Hurray!

Friend, stalker, I don’t know which one it is. Now I don’t care all too much about this, as it’s only a Finnish guy that has a pretty intensive travel schedule (and apparently he hasn’t decided on some of his trips either, as he’s bound to be in both Prague and Zamboanga on July 3rd). His profile checks out, the guy is real and he seems to be in marketing, so maybe that’s got something to do with it. But this did lead me to think that with all these social networks, we’re going to have a lot more online stalkers running about and I’m curious to see when the first hectic stories about online stalkers are going to be in the news. Let’s just wait and see.

In the meantime, Matti (that’s the guys first name), if I run into you in one of these places, I’ll make sure to buy you a drink!

By the way, feel free to share your trips with me on Dopplr.com/traveller/alefarendsen