Saturday, December 31, 2011

The Ninja Face














So whenever the only picture of a girl available is kinda covered like above, you should know its probably a bad sign.  I was early in the online date game... ok, I already knew I was asking for trouble... but I thought, whatevers.

When you use OKCupid, there's a little menu that shows who's visited your page.  It's always fun to click on their profile, you know, just out of curiosity, and also to return the courtesy of them having visited your profile.  Anyways, I started things off by asking if she was a ninja.  As we started corresponding, her "uniqueness" started to pique my interest.  For example, she said she'd never drank to the point of getting drunk... not even getting a little buzzed, but she would smoke every once in a while, but not an everyday smoker; only when she was really stressed.  She said she was a hippie at heart minus the drugs (which doesn't make any sense to me); she had broken her leg once and somehow through her rehab or something she came to love jogging.  She asked me what I was, I told her Korean, and I asked her the same, and she said Vietnamese, and she asked me if that was a problem, to which I responded, of course not, should it be?

Anyways, asked her out and we agreed to meet up at Ruby's in Anaheim for lunch.  I actually arrived at the place before her and waited outside.  About 5 minutes later, a young lady walks up and I ask "Hi, are you Kai?" (which I pronounced like "cape" minus the "pe" sound).  She answered "my name is actually Kai." (pronounced like "kite" minus the "te" sound.... and no, her real name isn't Kai;  this is just recreating the scene; I'm clever like that).  So after establishing this was the correct lady, we walk inside and sit down to have our lunch.

Looks wise, I'd give her a solid 5 from the 10 point scale; meaning she wasn't ugly by any stretch of the imagination, at the same time, nothing really stood out; like usually if there's that one thing, I can just latch onto that... and usually its not a tangible thing, or I can't really pin-point it, but there's got to be that something.  But going on a tangent, I'd say pretty much everyone uses the 10 point scale right?  Usually the disagreement is on how points are established but the scale itself is always 10.  Well in highschool, one of my closest friends would use a 20 point scale.  He'd just double the score.  I'd yell at him and berate him, telling him what an idiot he was, how no one uses his stupid 20 point non-sense... because you need people to conform; there's already enough debate without doubling the scale... i've tried to look for him on facebook, but he's nowhere to be found... but anyways, back to the story.

The lunch itself I think went pretty well....  I had gotten rid of some of the dating jitters with my first date anyways, so not as much pressure... I don't remember too much of the conversation; but I had done enough to get dessert.  Since this was her neighborhood, she offered to drive, which I accepted.  She drove a nice car... one of those high-end European cars... Saab, Audi, BMW... I don't remember which one... but thats how much I don't really give a crap about cars... I just remember there was leather seating.  Since she was a student, it meant that she came from at least an upper-middle class family right?  Anyways, had our frozen yogurt and she drove me back to my car afterwards and that was that.

The next day, she texts me... pretty much small talk.  We texted a few times, but I wasn't really interested.  I never asked her out again.  I'm no good with rejecting; its not like I've really done it that much... maybe I need more practice~!  If there's one girl I feel bad about, its her

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The Facebook Friend #1

Some of the girls I have online dated stayed just that, online... never crossing over to the real world.  So why even mention them?  Am I that desperate to pad my stats that I'm starting to count these online only "relationships"? (yes, I'm using that term very loosely)  Well, yes... but really, no... just more fun stories to tell.  Also, you get to see me in action... maybe you guys can help step up my game.

So the Tuesday I went out with The Fake Korean Girl, (you like that? linking to my own blog... my online dating universe is collapsing within itself) I received some message from this girl... I don't remember exactly what it said, but again was commenting on how adorable Swan is.  Maybe this message made it easier to move on from the somewhat disappointing first date I had just experienced, but whatevers.  After a few back and forth messages, she gave me her facebook and told me to add, which I did, and below are the correspondence along with my own little comments in red italics:



Friday, December 23, 2011

The Double Date

While browsing, I came upon this one profile.  I looked through her pictures, and noticed that she also had a maltese, which I knew was my in.  The obvious way to get her attention was to immediately talk smack about her dog.  So I sent the message: "cute dog, but mine's way cuter~~!"  She was Korean, lived in Irvine, brand new teacher, I think it was ESL, but that's not really that important.  Anyways, after a few back and forth messages, I asked "Would you like to meet in person?  I was thinking early evening during the week, or maybe during the day on the weekend, we could meet at a park and walk our dogs... kill 2 birds with 1 stone."

There's a man-made lake in Irvine (pictures courtesy of Google Maps) that we decided upon to meet during a saturday afternoon.  A friend of mine had first professed his love to his future wife at this place by proclaiming that he had missed her "thiiiiiiiss much" (measured by the length of his outstretched arms) and I thought maybe lightening could strike twice.















To add a bit of mystery and intrigue, I had told her we should meet over the bridge that connects the lake to a little plaza that has a $2 movie theater.  She commented about how "Korean Drama" that idea was, maybe thinking I was trying to be romantic... but it was more out of courtesy for her and looking out for her, so that she wouldn't have to give her number to a potential psycho that she just met over the internet.











So my plan worked really well, except for the part where she arrived first... the gentlemanly thing to have done was to arrive first so that she wouldn't have to wait.... but whatevers.  Fairly easy to spot... she was the girl on the bridge holding the leash with a maltese on the end.  We exchanged the polite "are you....", hellos, and quick hugs, and our dogs proceeded to sniff each other.  She looked exactly like her pictures.... pretty cute.

So we proceeded with our date by walking around the lake.  She was a pretty good talker.... she initiated a lot of the conversation by asking a lot of questions about me.  I answered the questions as best I could and usually ended with the very original question "and you?".  The combination of a warm summer afternoon plus physical activity (yes, I consider walking my dog a physical activity) plus being nervous being in the company of an attractive female plus my natural disposition of sweating at an above average rate led to a lot of wiping of the brow and the slow darkening and dampening around the collar of my shirt.

We ended up taking 2 laps around the lake. At the end, I asked if I could get her number.  I pressed the numbers she said and hit send.  Her phone rang and I told her "and now you have mine".  Overall, I felt it had gone fairly well.  A couple days later, I texted her "Hi, would you like to get dinner sometime?" and received the rejection of silence.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

The Fake Korean Girl

The very first interaction I had was someone actually messaging me.  It was short, simple, and to the point: Cute dog :) (I'm paraphrasing, which I will be doing a lot of.... i erased this first profile and a lot of the older messages; perhaps I'll expand on that some other time) I took a look at her profile pic... looked pretty cute... her profile had references to KPOP and Korean Dramas, so her screen name having "2PM" referenced her love for a band, and not her preferred time to take a nap (which coincidentally is my favorite time to snooze... one less thing we had in common I guess) I decided to message her back and the interaction began.

After a few back and forth email type messages, I saw that she was online and instant messaged her through the site.  I guess it was glitchy on her end, so she asked me if I had AIM so we could continue the conversation.  Yes, AIM, as in AOL instant message... as in America On-Line... who the hell still uses that?  I honestly had not logged on to that since college... but I gave her my "Eudork1984" screen-name and signed on using Meebo.  Everything was going going pretty well... I was being charming and funny; all the "Haha"s and "LOL"s are proof of that~!  Turned out that she wasn't Korean, but was actually Vietnamese... not that there's anything wrong with that... I had just assumed that she was Korean.  But anyways... after a few days of chatting, I mustered up enough courage and asked her if she's like to meet in person... hook her up with some boba, and to my surprise, she said yes.

The day of the meeting, I get a text from her asking if we could push back the date... I don't remember the excuse... but I didn't see any reason why not... so it got pushed back tentatively to Friday (the original day being Thursday); I think she said she'd let me know after work on Friday or something... but it got pushed back again to Monday... and then finally Tuesday....  all this pushing back got me a bit nervous... all the worse case scenarios played in my head... was she having second thoughts?  did I say something wrong?  was she actually a 50 year old man?

Tuesday did finally come; the venue had been upgraded from boba to sushi (Kabuki in Huntington for those of you keeping track at home).  In typical Korean fashion, I did arrive about 10 minutes late.  There was that awkward clearing of the throat and "Hi, are you ****?  I'm Eugene"... the sticking out of the hand for a friendly handshake... and the obligatory opening of the door to lead her into the restaurant.  Right off the bat, she was slightly... damn, no way to really sugar coat it.... slightly chubbier than her picture had let on... like I wouldn't say fat... I thought she still looked kinda cute. 

The date itself... some people are born with natural abilities... they are able to do things very adequately the very first time they try... I am definitely not one of those people.  I wish it would have been more of a disaster, because at least then there would be a story to tell.  The nervous part of me dominated and truly shined that night.  There were many awkward silences between disjointed conversations... to the point that I noticed she sometimes would stare into space while twirling her hair around her index finger.  After dinner, we chilled outside on a bench to talk some more, but it didn't go any smoother... she mercifully ended the evening with a "sorry, my classmate just texted me and we need to study..."  Not the best, but not a total disaster... for sure a solid baseline to judge any future dates... got some of the nerves out... and yes... I never contacted her again~!

Intro

So I want to say back in about February of 2011, I set up a profile on OKCupid.com.  Just a real basic one... no photo posted.  Over the next few months, I slowly started to complete it...and eventually put up a picture with me and my dog.

Eventually, I got a message, and the misadventures began...

Recently, I had been "seeing" this girl and was given the boot.  I think I'm gonna take a little time off from this online dating thing... take some time to reflect and come up with a better game-plan.... definitely get back in shape... This blog will be mostly anecdotes of my experiences...they will make you laugh, they will make you cringe; hopefully a lesson will be learned... they may not appear in chronological order (I haven't decided yet)... but the most recent girl I will definitely save for last... so buckle up and enjoy and be glad that I am so damn awkward and weird and awesome~!