From Twitter to tying the knot
Twitter may have a 140-character limit, but that was enough to bring two lovebirds together.
For around five years, Ms Siti Aisyah tweeted with a Dutch stranger she had met online and they started a friendship that later blossomed into love and marriage.
And while Miss Cheryl Yap connected with her Romanian boyfriend Alexandru Donea over manga, this couple bonded over electronic dance music.
So when Ms Siti, 27, saw the news about Miss Yap's Romanian escapade, she was reminded of her relationship with her husband, Mr Marcel Zonderman, 26.
Says Ms Siti: "In 2007, we were both in a Twitter group that discussed dance music. I made a comment about a song and he commented on my comment.
"After that, we kept on tweeting each other about music."
She deleted her Twitter account in 2012 after her then-boyfriend got jealous over her tweets and direct message chats, even though she and Mr Zonderman discussed only music.
In 2013, she started a new account after breaking up with that boyfriend. Then, Ms Siti rediscovered Mr Zonderman's profile.
Says Ms Siti: "I was, like, 'Wow, that's the guy I spoke to for so long'. He tweeted to say that it had been so long since we last spoke. We decided to move the chat to Skype."
There, the couple caught up with each other's lives and this time, they started sharing personal information about themselves.
"At the time, I was going through a rough patch with my ex-boyfriend. Marcel was very caring and listened to my problems, and soon we (started a serious) relationship," she says.
For a long time, she kept Mr Zonderman a secret from her friends and family as she knew they would worry about it.
"When I finally told them, they thought that I would be taken advantage of. The most hurtful thing was when someone asked me, 'What if this person is completely fake?'"
It all led to the "critical point" of meeting each other for the first time in 2013. But instead of her going to the Netherlands, the couple decided that Mr Zonderman should come to Singapore.
"This must have been the stage where (Miss Yap) was at, meeting each other in person. It's the most important part of online relationships because it can go either way."
FIRST MEETING
Thankfully, it went well. Meeting Mr Zonderman in the flesh convinced her of his sincerity and they got married last year.
Today, their online relationship continues as he works in the broadcast industry in the Netherlands, while she is a patient relations assistant here. There are plans for him to move to Singapore so they can "close the gap further".
She says critics should not have blasted Miss Yap's online relationship because it is definitely possible to find genuine love with a stranger halfway across the globe.
But if she had been in Miss Yap's shoes, she would have arranged for the meet-up to be in Singapore.
Says Ms Siti: "Love can make you do things that are impractical and unconventional. If I had done the same as her and gone to the Netherlands, I think my parents would have called the police, too."
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