Scary Moment

I heard a scary story the other day at a pot-luck lunch at work. Several consultants joined us unexpectedly, and, while we were eating and making small talks (one of the uncomfortable things you do when you have to eat with people you are not necessarily that familiar with), one of the consultants started talking about how she met her fiancé. Turns out she met him through online dating.

What’s remarkable about it is while most people try to hide the fact that they are doing this (the thought of ‘loser’ still prevails when it comes to online dating, and she said it herself that she would never have done it if not encouraged by her friend) she had no problem sharing this with people she mostly had not met before that day. More remarkably, she’s Asian. I couldn’t help but noticing the difference between Asian-born Asians and American-born Asians, and I must say the openness about one’s personal live was refreshing to me.

I was raised to hide my emotions, thoughts and personal affairs to myself since that was the "proper” behavior. Sometimes I just want to scream, “What’s the freaking big deal?!” I think it just shows how judgmental and oppressive the society was. Her openness, however, was not the scary part.

What’s scary is after she submitted her profile, which consisted of 500 or so questions (enough to make me stop before I start) she received a list of names of good matches, and her ex-husband was one of them! So what it did to me was (others were laughing because it was kind of funny) confirming my reasoning of not dating.

Some people are willing to kiss all the toads before they find a prince. I think the odds are really crap shoot no matter how scientifically the process is designed. You could end up with a guy for 10 years and supposedly a perfect match for you, and still end up divorced and starting anew. Too much work for not that rewarding of an endeavour to me. At least that's how I feel at this moment.