Siting
Suddenly, in came this street girl trying to sell me some mints. She looked around 8 and was really pushy. The desk clerk looked at her in disapproval, but took no steps beyond that. Instead, he left me struggling to convince this young lady that I had left my wallet in my room and that I was not going to stop what I was doing, pack the computer, and go upstairs to pick up a couple of reais to buy some of her mints.
Anyway, realizing that my lassitude was greater than her strong will, she started a conversation that went more or less like this:
“Is this a laptop?”
“Yes, but it’s an old one,” said I, fearing that her older male friends waiting outside would rampage the lobby and take it from me.
“Then give it to me…”
“No way!”
“Then can I use it for a while?”
“Well, all right… here,” Said I, giving in to her tenacity. I opened a blank MS Word document and put the machine on her lap. “Write your name here.”
She took it and quickly wrote something that went more or less like ”nasetsa”.
“Natasha?” I asked pitying her difficulty in writing.”
“Yes!” she answered. “Do you have Orkut, sir?”
“ I do, but I’m not online.” I lied, trying to talk her out of any further attempts to interrupt my work.
My strategy worked temporarily, because she immediately stood up and approached some other hotel guest, offering him mints. Meanwhile I decided to look at my abandoned social network page, which Natasha saw me doing through the reflection on the window behind me. “That’s Orkut! That’s orkut!” she shouted. She ran back to me and commanded, “Open my page, open my page”, to which I candidly obeyed. She then grabbed my computer to write her password.
It so happened that street girl did have a