Adventures in Speed Dating

First a few clarifying statements.  I know I’m married.  I was not trolling for guys.  I was doing anthropological research only. I did not get any contact information for any of the guys.  I do not want to contact any of those guys. And my husband is better than all the guys that were at the event.

Now I can move onto what I learned from my adventures in speed dating!

On Friday I visited a speed dating event in Hollywood for Asians (Click2Asia) with my brother and a friend.  You did not need to be Asian but most of the attendees were.  The event was scheduled to begin at 7:30 but didn’t actually start until 8:10 since they must be running on Asian Standard time.  We signed in and received our numbers which would determine where you would sit during the event (for women) or start (for men).

While we got our drinks and waited for the event to start, some of the guys started schmoozing early. The event itself is very simple, every five minutes a guy rotates to the next numbered seat.  So you have five minutes to talk to that person and decide if you would want to meet them again.  They give you a paper and you can take notes and mark yes or no accordingly.  At the end you turn in your paperwork and they’ll email you the contact info for people you said yes to and who also said yes back to you.

Tips:
1. Take notes on your dates.  You’re going to be meeting a lot of people very quickly and don’t count on your amazing memory to pull you through. They give you paper and pencil, use them.  Write their names down and something that will help you jog your memory of them.  Write legibly. If you only circle yes or no, and you end up contacting each other, you don’t necessarily want to be reasking them the same questions b/c then you’ll look like a douchebag who didn’t take notes.

2. Make eye contact and smile at people.  Ok, so you’re sitting next to someone you find deeply unattractive.  You don’t have to marry them. You don’t even have to see them again after, but for goodness sake, be nice for five minutes and make some meaningless small talk.  Certainly don’t read the paper in front of you when they’re asking questions. Don’t let your eyes wander all over the room b/c it looks like you’re tracking a fly around the room.  

3. Don’t just pick the good looking people.  Good looking people are probably going to have the most people picking them and some can be kinda DB-ish, so don’t just picked based on looks but how well you connected with them.  I think you can find out if you have a basic chemistry with someone in a few minutes so if the conversation sucked, skip them, if you’re bored after five minutes, how are you going to sustain a relationship?  But if when the bell rang you were trying to squeeze in a few more sentences, that’s probably a good sign and pick them, even if they aren’t the best looking guy or girl in the bunch, because I’ve said this before a lot, a good personality lasts a lot longer than good looks. 

4. Dress nice but comfortably.  If you don’t normally wear sexy clothes, don’t wear sexy clothes b/c you’ll spend the whole number making sure your dress isn’t riding up your ass.  If you’re not sure what to wear, do get a more stylish friend to help you out.  And no, matching is fine, you do not need to wear contrasting colors!  

5.  Don’t be a creeper.  Staring at a girl’s boobs does not make you endearing to her.  Telling her she’s amazingly beautiful is weird. (Uh, yeah this totally did not happen to me. Not even kidding.)  Complimenting someone is really different from scaring the crap out of them.  If you’re not sure what the line is between the two, maybe avoid the whole topic.  

6.  They will give you a list of “starter” questions to ask your date.  If you have to resort to these, that’s already a bad sign.  A good speed date conversation just flows naturally.  If you’re struggling, maybe you just don’t have good chemistry.

7. Don’t drink too much. I believe these events often take places at restaurants or bars and alcohol is a social lubricant so if you’re a little nervous maybe have a little of something is ok. If you don’t usually drink or are a bad drinker, avoid avoid.  If you turn Asian red, avoid. If you’re a lightweight, avoid.  And lastly avoid smelling like alcohol, b/c it’s nasty as all hell.  Do have some water with you b/c you are going to be talking for about an hour, so you don’t want to end up with dry spit mouth.  Also it gives you something to do while you’re thinking of answers to questions.  

Concluding thoughts, I think that if you have decent social skills, and aren’t bad looking you can meet people at speed dating.  It’s basically an exercise to see if you have chemistry with someone and I think you can find out if you’d at least want to talk to someone again in five minutes.  Save the ultimate compatibility questions for the actual date, this is just to see if there might be something.  It turns out the three guys I had the most fun talking to would have wanted to meet up again, so it can work.  But sometimes you will get a no for no fault of your own (they only want to date girls in their early 20s or they’re already married and are writing a blog about speed dating).  I don’t think that if you don’t get a match you should give it up.  If you had fun, try it again.  If you think about it, it’s actually more efficient to do speed dating and cancel out a bunch of schmucks in five minute increments instead of wasting an entire dinner or coffee with them!

The bad news:
For some nerds (especially girls b/c most guys are shallow bastards) if you aren’t quite average looking, speed dating will be very difficult.  This is an entire process built on first impressions.  So unless you have the BEST personality in the world, you have a big uphill battle.  If you are shy or have social skills that need work it will also be challenging.  People who are shy may have a hard time making conversation.  Geeks who lack social skills may not read cues to how the date is going and say really awkward things like, “They don’t have Latinas in Korea,” while staring at your boobs.  

So I think ultimately while it can be a good way to meet potential dates, it is something where you need to evaluate yourself and see if it’s a good fit for you.