August 11, 2004

• Speed Dating: He Said (15 dates in 90 minutes)

  
  

  

  
  

  Last night I went to my first-ever speed dating event.  I had no idea what to expect, except for an ominous comment on lcshih’s post about how brutal the women could be.  “No problem,” I thought. “I can handle mercenaries.”

  
  

  Prior to the event, marmite and I conspired to go together and write a He-Said-She-Said xanga post.  So her version is here.  Fatfreemayo (she of the well-formed clavicle) also wrote up a report here.

  
  

  Weirdness: the number of women I knew who were going (5 Highrockers and 1 friend) vs. the number of men (0).  Highrock guys lost out by not coming, since there wasn’t much competition there in the studliness department.  Jesusfreakyi himself could have raised the average by a good 15%.

  
  

  So we came in to Vox Populi as a pretty imbalanced group.  The first half-hour was just a few appetizers and random socializing.  After a few minutes, the Highrock women kicked me out of the nest to make me meet other women.  That turned out to be surprisingly hard, as most of the women clumped into close huddles of 2 and 3, which was beyond my mojo to break into.  And I was saving it for the main event.

  
  

  Soon it started.  Every girl had a number from 1-27, and every guy did also.  Both the guy and girl sat down at the table marked with their number.  After 4 minutes, a whistle was blown to indicate a 1-minute warning.  After 1 more minute, a double-whistle indicated the time to switch.  Then all of the guys got up to do a mating dance — no, I’m kidding.  Then all of the guys got up to move to the next table.  I was guy #4, so I started off with girl #4, and 5 minutes later I moved to girl #5.  By the end of the evening I had finished talking to girl #18.  Unfortunately I never had a chance to talk to girls 19-27, nor 1-3.

  
  

  But during the intermission, girls #1 and #2 came up to me and said, “Are you friends with kaykai?”  They recognized me from K’s giveaway party.  So we chatted a bit, and I invited them to Highrock since one of the girls was amazed at how many friends kaykai and jkoolayd had.

  
  

  During the speed dates, both men and women used a scorecard to keep track of the people they had talked to, and whether they wanted to keep in contact.  At the end of the event, we were to go home and email the organizers the name and ID# of the people we wanted to contact again.  The organizers will sort through the emails and let us know if there are any matches.

  
  

  In summary, I had a great time and met some women I’d like to stay in touch with and get to know better.  The process seems odd but efficient at forcing people a bit out of their comfort zones to break the ice and meet each other.  I like Lance’s suggestion on an earlier comment that we should do this to make Highrockers from different life stage groups (college / young adult / family) meet each other.  Maybe at an upcoming retreat or even Soul Food.

  
  

  Epilogue: Afterwards, some of the Highrock women left early, but I took fatfreemayo and marmite to Marche’s, and convinced three of the women I’d dated (haha) to join us.  It was a great time comparing notes about the event and hanging out.  One of the women is a friend of bostonmisslee’s and has actually visited Highrock a few times!  But she always left before Soul Food so I’d never met her.

  
  

  

  • 1:46 pm
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