From Around the World and Across the Internet: Happy Birthday, Kris Fricke!

This is a story about a foreign romance, the high seas and a series of unlikely coincidences. It's also about the Internet, and how it can pull similar people together from very different places.

Aliseo Gezen is a young, single woman in her 20s. She's from Bosnia, and she's a citizen of Turkey.

She's a sailor, too, in the merchant marine. Since she spends most of her year on the high seas, Aliseo says she's a "citizen of international waters."

Kris Fricke lives in Mission Viejo. By day, he's the head beekeeper for Bee Busters. He loves ships, too. especially tall ships. Oh, and today's his birthday. He's 29.

Aliseo stumbled upon Mission Viejo Patch while she searched for online deliveries in our town.

"The website is quite useful," she said. "The theme is refreshing!"

And then she got down to brass tacks. Earlier this week she stepped aboard a cargo ship headed for distant lands. And before she did, she wanted to leave a birthday message for "a precious friend."

But how did Kris and Aliseo meet?

She explains they met on Flickr, a photo hosting website, about three months ago.

They both love ships, so that got the conversation going. After talking awhile, they discovered both had been in the same coastal Turkish city, Izmir, at the same exact time in 2009.

Soon Kris and Aliseo were texting each other and writing back and forth every day.

One of their rituals is to send a text at bedtime and another after waking up. You see, it's morning in Turkey when it's evening here.

So they decided to inform the other of everything they had seen that day. They call it World Spinning Watch.

The two seem to be pretty close. Although they've never met in person, they talk almost every day.

And now Aliseo is aboard a ship, so it's harder for her to communicate. So this story is also a surprise birthday message. As Aliseo put it, "I want him to be suprised to the bones."