Week 50: (7th November – 13th November) Go Speed Dating

Let me do some maths for you. According to the Bureau of Statistics, Melbourne has a population of 3.8 million people of which around 15% are single.  If we then filter for age, compatibility and let’s face it I’m not attracted to overweight chain smokers, then my eligible populations distils down to about 600 single eligble females in all of Melbourne. That is exactly a 1 in 6333 chance that any Melbourne person I talk to will be right for me.

That bites.

Speed dating is pretty much the industrialisation of dating.  The mass production of first impressions that could hopefully lead to something more than a distant smile. The concept is this: you get given exactly 4.5mins to sweet talk your way into a woman’s heart. Now let’s think about that for a second. 4.5mins is not even long enough to boil an egg. That is stuff all. So in speed dating it all comes down to looks. If someone is physically attracted to you, then basically you have 4.5mins to not say anything stupid like ‘I like babies with pin shaped heads’ or ‘I am so sick of talking to people right now’. Incidentally both those comments are what other guys said to girls that night! At least that’s what the girls told me.

So you walk into a room filled with hopeful singles all suitably spruced up and awkwardly looking across at each other.  My ever present friend for fun times Danielle joined me for this evening and we literally waltzed into the place like a pair of class clowns. I immediately turned to a couple who were quietly introducing themselves to each other and yelled ‘hey, we haven’t started yet’ before turning around and looking for the bar.  Now I will be honest here. Singles events are not filled with glamorous charismatic people chinking champagne glasses together and laughing at the joy of life. Let’s just leave it at that! My natural defence mechanism soon kicked in and all I could do was joke around. I took no one and nothing seriously.  “Do I get my clothes off now or shall we talk for a bit first?” or my favourite conversation to a Japanese girl:

Me “So what do you do for a living”?

Her: “I enterriotter”

Me: “Sorry, what was that?”

Her: “I interrieter”

Me: “I’m really sorry,  I missed that again.”

Her: (getting frustrated) “I am interpreter”

Me: “Oh” (pause) “how’s that working out?”

16 girls later and 4 beers later we made our final decisions. Everyone huddled around their scraps of paper to tick ‘friend’, ‘relationship’ or ‘no’. It felt like a primary school exam with everyone trying to cover their answers with their hand. I joked to the girl next to me ’psst, what did you get for number 5?’. She looked at me blankly. I could only assume her joke bone had been surgically removed.

Then, everyone files off home. I must admit I couldn’t wait to get the results. I had ticked ‘friend’ to about 6 girls. If they did the same then you get a ‘match’ and each other’s contact details are immediately exchanged. The next day the results were through. I scored a 13 out of 16. 13 girls wanted to meet me again. Booyakka!! I still got it!  But what the hell happened to the other 3! I bet that damn ‘enterriotter’  was one.

I never did follow any of those numbers up. A couple email pleasantries were exchanged but alas I had already met someone special and I can confidently say one chick is more than I can handle! Anyway as far as I’m concerned based on a sample population of single girls the results are now in.

I got game.