Log on and find your lost friend

Expatriates who had lost contact with a friend 20 years ago in Dubai have finally traced him working for an aid agency in Afghanistan.

Another was found in Africa, and a third in Germany – all in the space of a few months, thanks to the World Wide Web network, and three people.

Alicia Morris, an Irish expatriate who has been living in Dubai for the past 25 years, says she and two of her Australian friends hit on the idea of an online search when they had lost touch with some of their friends. It all came about when she attended a wedding in Scotland and found people asking: "Where's Harry"? and "What happened to him"?

She told Gulf News that the website, www.theonlineexpat.com , was developed in Australia and was launched in July. "Already, expats have traced some of their long-lost friends," she said.

Alicia was showcasing her website at The Expat Show which ended yesterday at the Nad Al Sheba Club. "This new website intends to bring together some of the friends lost due to the nomadic nature of expats' life," she explained.

Registration is free for the website from where one can trace friends through a search engine. But for an additional annual fee of Dh60, members will be able to contact their expatriate friends who are registered on the site.

As Alicia keyed in a name and hit the enter button, full details of the person came up on the screen: where he was born, his expatriate life was traced through the countries he had been to and in which years.


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