Modern romance - what's it all about? For some couples, it means meeting through a fibre optic cable transferring megabits of information through an ADSL line, perchance to fall in love.
For most of us, the internet is a tool for finding cheap flights, car insurance or silly videos - but not a lover. Dates need to be arranged in the flesh.
But things don't always go to plan. Two such people who met on the virtual jungle and had no intention of falling in love are Amandine and Ryan.
She was in Paris; he, in New York. Neither of them had ever met before until one day on social networking site Friendster, Ryan came across a girl who made him laugh and smile.
Without instant access to the sort of Dutch courage that fuels most pub chat lines, Ryan was left with no option but to email Amandine. So blossomed an epistolary relationship, with letters of love flying back and forth through transatlantic fibre optics.
"I had no intention of meeting someone on the internet," Amandine told me over the phone, clicking her lighter in the background, "because only losers meet people on the internet."
Call me a loser, then. French girls who can seductively light cigarettes can email me any day.
Amandine exhaled, and I imagined a cloud of smoke drifting down from her balcony into Greenwich Village.
"It's raining," she said in an incredibly sexy phone voice, from the apartment she shares with Ryan in New York.
But to understand why this sensual and funny Parisienne moved to New York to be with a man she met online, we have to go back down memory lane to Ryan's first email.
"It was the summer of my thesis and my friends forced me into joining this website," Amandine said.
"I uploaded a silly profile and spent my time googleing people from the past." She pauses to take another drag on her cigarette. "It's such a great procrastinating tool, the internet - especially when you're meant to be writing a thesis."
"I had just returned from a month in New York, and one thing that had stuck in my mind was the enormity of the people there," she said. "On my profile I, - I must light a cigarette - I wrote that I wanted to meet the fattest man in America."
Ryan claimed to be a stereotypical sumo-sized American, making himself out to be larger than life.
Therein lies the beauty, and the treachery, of online dating. Deception can masquerade as flirtation.
Even so, Amandine was tickled enough to reply, and so the chain began. In just a matter of weeks they were sending each other two page emails each day.
"I was disturbed if I didn't see an email in my inbox every day, " Amandine said.
Bu then came three days of radio silence. When an e-mail finally arrived explaining that Ryan had quit his job as a social entrepreneur, Amandine realised how much she cared for him although they'd never met.
"I was falling in love," she said. "I wanted to protect him."
From that point everything got more personal, albeit from thousands miles away. Home videos were made to introduce each other to their very separate worlds.
"Ryan had never been to Paris, so I made him videos of me on my way to the Sorbonne, my apartment, my thesis - I wanted to show him my world," said Amandine.
"I remember running to the shop to buy batteries when his video arrived and wondered what would happen when I heard his voice. What if it was squeaky?"
She squeaks a bit herself as she recalls their first real conversation. Did his voice betray him, I ask?
"I was absolutely seduced," she said.
Afterwards, it was inevitable that the next step - a meeting, with no computers to hide behind - would have to happen.
As Amandine had to finish her thesis, they planned to meet in New York at summer's end.
"The last few days before I left were impossible. I couldn't stand waiting, and it became an issue of anger." She paused, her voice sounding as though it was about to break under the weight of her passion.
"Well, I just realised I had shared all these things with a guy I'd never even met."
Three months after two complete strangers bumped into each other on the Internet, Amandine was standing on the runway at JFK.
Sadly, Ryan was in Florida - his grandfather had died the day before Amandine flew out.
"This adversity took some of the pressure off us," she told me.
A few days later, Amandine was standing outside on the pavement late one night when her phone rang. Though he arrived in New York after midnight, Ryan's first objective was to meet her.
"I told him to get over here. I must have smoked 500 cigarettes and brushed my teeth the same amount of times, because he doesn't smoke," she said.
"I remember watching him arrive, carrying a bottle of champagne and two glasses. It was so..." She paused, as if at a loss for words.
But we're just getting to the good part, and I want to know what's next.
"Well, I stood up, and it was really magic. I didn't know what to say so I went to hug him, but I kissed him on the neck, then on the lips. It felt like being on a different planet on a different world."
That first night, they shared champagne on the terrace, overlooking New York. Not bad for a first date.
In the morning, she saw a note from Ryan left on the table.
"I love you," it read. And it wasn't even typed.
Image:Sontra
Amandine and Ryan have been together one year. Amandine will soon have to return to Paris.
