Sunday, March 12, 2006

Speed dating... at least we had a good dinner

The three of us headed up to the city an hour before the start of the speed dating. We ran into a bit of snag about 5 miles away. It must have taken 15 minutes to drive 2 miles. Turns out a traffic signal was out and blinking yellow. ARGHHHh. Strange, I thought yellow meant proceed with caution, not stop at the intersection.

Anyhow, we arrived about 20 minutes late, but as I expected, they hadn't started the dating. People were still mingling (or being wallflowers). On the drive up, we wondered if we'd see anyone we knew. Sure enough, Sh and I recognized Gof immediately. He is a co-worker of a friend of ours. I actually first met him through speed dating more than a year and a half ago. Sh was set up to go to his company Xmas party. Nothing had really happened with either of us. He's a nice and friendly guy that we still see occasionally at parties.

There were almost 80 people there. We were split into four groups, A-D, based on age. Best guess is that A was under 27, B was 27-30, C was 31-33, and D was 34+. Yes, that's me the old crowd. The two young groups got to sit at the booths while us older folks sat at the bar. It was rather awkward with the women seated an barstools while the men had to stand during the conversations.

The bell rang and we were off...

Date #1: Coy shop owner
It was awkward from the start. He wasn't my type and when we talked about his occupation he was not very forthcoming. He implied he ran his own business but when I ask about what he sells he would only say health and beauty products with an embarrassed smile. At one point, he looked at his watch and commented that the 5 minutes seemed to be lasting really long. Real smooth buddy.

Date #2: Mr. Martini
All I remember is the delivery of his watermelon martini because he spilled it on my notes sheet as he tried to drink from it. He toasted the woman from his first date. I guess they had hit it off and he had paid for her drink.

Date #3: Speed date Master
Now here's someone who sounds like a professional speed-dater. The minute he arrive, we shook hands and exchanged names. He immediately went into what he described as his 2-minute biography. As I sat there trying to mentally keep up, he rattled off his life like where he lived, that he was a native of... and that we worked as a data warehouse manager in his own consulting firm. [Phew, take a breath.] Then he said that he didn't expect me to provide him with a 2-minute biography of myself so he would ask a few questions of me. Man, this guy meant business. While I appreciate his efficiency, it just felt unnatural and it made it difficult to assess whether we had any chemistry.

Date #4: "Hi, my name is Gof"
Well yeah, this is the guy I already know. It was a cute and funny way to say "hello." We just took it easy and caught up on what the other person had been doing recently. He spent some time in SDO recently to celebrate his niece's first birthday. I mentioned my recent trip to Vegas. We both agreed that "Mystere" is probably the best of the current Cirque du Soleil shows. I couldn't help wonder if anything would have happened if we had dated more the first time around. Is he my type?

Date #5: Golf, golf, golf
The guy was okay, but I just couldn't get the conversation going. When I asked what else he like to do, he mentioned watching movies and golf. Somehow we spent most of the 5 minutes just talking about how he got more into golf with the success of Tiger Woods. He originally got into it because his colleagues dragged him out to play. Since I didn't feel any interest for the guy, I just kept letting him talk about it.

Date #6: Are you in the right age group?
Poor guy. All through the conversation I could only think about two things - 1) how old are you, and 2) my parking meter is about to expire. He was a bit fobbish and had a decent though child-like face with glasses. I was very distracted knowing my meter was about to expire and debated whether or not I needed to run out and feed the monster a couple more quarters. All I remember is that he lived downtown and had a parking space for his car.

10-minute break. Sh and I ran out to feed the meter. Our quick assessment was that neither of us was finding any gems in the group. Ho hum.

Date #7: Ponytail man
Can't say that look is usually my type. But he seemed cool and different which is always nice. He's a writer and teacher. I asked if he ever travels to research for his fiction writing. He mentioned that recently he made a trip to Germany for a conference. He visited places such as Berlin, but his favorite was a small town in the former East Germany.

Date #8: You seem familiar
As soon as he walked up he had this curious look on his face. He had a narrow face and wore a diagonally striped shirt. He barely had time to introduce himself before he asked if we knew each other from somewhere. I suggested that we met at another speed dating event. But considering I haven't been to one in almost two years, he didn't think it was that. We never figured it out.

Date #9: Gof's roommate
Well, yes this is weird. So competing with friends could potentially be awkward post-speed dating, but competing with a roommate is even weirder. Fortunately, I didn't feel much interest for this guy. He seemed nice, a little shy, but I just wasn't attracted to him. Let's face it, when you have 5 minutes to judge someone, if you can't make a decision based on the conversation, the tie-breaker often comes down to looks. Superficial yes, but give me a better option.

We the three of us compared notes afterwards, none of us felt strongly about anyone. In the past, Sh has been pretty open about getting in contact with a majority of the guys, even just to be friends. But this time, it seemed we just weren't that enthusiastic. Each of us only marked two of the 10 men we had a chance to meet (9 in my case). So I guess tomorrow we'll see if any matches come through. Sadly, I think the only conversation I truly felt at ease about was talking with Gof.

Driving home, one thought did come to mind. Thinking about speed dating and meeting new people helped me forget about KT. I'm still bummed about it, but it's nice to push that into the background. There are plenty of men out there. That's why it's all about searching the haystack for the needle... .

1 comment:

Anna May Won't said...

great write-up pandax! i'm all for ponytail/writer guy. ;)