My Culture, The Single Life

23 Dates

Posted by Wynne Lock on

The Asian Speed Dating was a success on the organizers’ part by holding a sold-out event at Jupiter Cafe on Wednesday night. Behold here my note sheet – I hope it’s not legible by a combination of my deliberate chicken scratch and shorthand.

I anticipated feeling tired by the intense (3-minute) conversations but it was surprisingly easy to get on a roll and it felt rather like a party where you’re making the rounds speed-talking, rather than speed-dating. I felt like I was the glowing conversationalist and the brightest in the room. (Darned complimentary glass of wine can give me illusions of grandeur. =P)

The guys were much better than those (Asian ones) I met at Cupid’s Ball. I theorize that Cupid’s Ball boys are those who are still ensconced with the idea of meeting people based on looks in clubs while I met a whole level of other people in a lounge where we sit and the focus is on conversation. I can’t speak for the other girls but for the guys I met a host of engineers, IT guys, stock brokers, and entrepreneurs. Several dance on the side, too.

According to Shan., after this I’m not allowed to complain about not meeting Asian men in Vancouver and I’m not tempted to. Overwhelmingly, I found that nearly all of them were pleasant to talk to for three minutes (I’m a good conversationalist?) and several seemed the whole well-rounded package that is a prerequisite for me.

So what’s the strategy when one goes about making decisions on guys after a night of speed-talking? After three minutes you can pick off who you don’t care to see again but there were many that I could barely remember apart from others. So out of 23 guys, I crossed off 10 and said “Yes” to the rest. =P I realize that not all — and perhaps none – will say “Yes” to me.

I was the guinea pig for the fact it was a ethnicity-specific event and my “experimenters” joined me at Jupiter to check out the single girls and I had the satisfying chance to unwind and blow off steam over the events of the evening. And from them, I learned that a guy’s strategy would differ in that they would say “Yes” to only a handful of girls they really remembered; being gentlemanly guys, they expect to arrange a full-blown dinner date with their mutual matches and can’t afford to get matched with 10 girls if half of them were only lukewarm…..

But of course I saved the juicier, snarky notes for last…. =D No detailed rants because I hate karma despite introducing myself anonymously as “Winnie” all evening – spelling out my real name is a dent into three minutes as it is usually followed by discussion of the origin of my fascinatingly unique name….

I met a guy who used the word “conducive” in conversation. I think I need to increase my standards because that impressed me. He was one of the earlier guys but I can’t remember which.

One guy professed to being an emotional musician. He was difficult to talk to and the three minutes stretched out. Sorry, that’s just not for me as I’m sure to be anti-muse material.

One guy is nice and stable with a job and house in Surrey. He told me he ventures downtown once every three months. Hey, I’m looking for reasons to scratch off and pare down from a list of 23 basically decent guys.

Then there was the supremely childish one who told me his hobby is speed-dating. His other hobby? Wanking. I was 100% sure it was negative and 75% sure of what it exactly meant. If he thought he could underhandedly offend me I really wanted to tell him to f* off.

Edit : I got eight matches and you know what that means? They were able to read through my writing and disperse the correct email address. Apparently the finance-types don’t find me appealing — they were the ones I said “Yes” to but it wasn’t mutual. Oh well.

On this day..