Finding true love online

I know of about two online dating sites: match.com and eharmony.com. For the longest time, I was under the impression that eharmony was a more serious site because they had a detailed questionnaire that you have to fill in before they generate matches based on some complicated algorithm that takes into account the 29 or so aspects of your personality. I have, on several occasions, wondered what that questionnaire was like.

A couple of days ago, a friend told me about this friend of his who was deemed "undatable" by eharmony's quiz. Wow, that sounds pretty serious. I also learnt that one can take the quiz and sign up for a trial subscription (limit of 10 matches) on eharmony -- in other words, I can take that very informative quiz for free if I wanted to. eharmony's advertising campaign (it's scientifically proven online dating!) worked: I found myself spending about an hour, answering 12-15 pages of questions (I almost gave up), and getting several matches. But I jump ahead of myself. For those who have never tried online dating sites, I thought it would be interesting to give a few more details so that you can find out what you're missing out on. My roommate suggests that I try match.com, meet up with a couple of guys and write a comparative article on these dating sites and the results. It sounds like a little more trouble than I'm willing to go through. But I've done the first part of the research, and I present you here with the preliminary findings.

The first thing that struck me was that eharmony only allows you to be a "man seeking a woman" or a "woman seeking a man". No queers. I wonder if you can sue them for discrimination. I was next disappointed by 3 pages of words that may describe me, ranked on a scale of 1 through 7 (1 being not at all, and 7 being very). I should have kept better notes about what followed, but I didn't. There were a couple (or maybe 3) pages on activities that I may find interesting (ranked again from 1 through 7), some short questions on what I'm most passionate about, and who has been a big influence on me, and what I can't live without and am thankful for, what my strengths are and what my friends think of me. Of course, there needs to be a few pages on what I think is important in a partner (again ranked on a scale of 1 through 7), what I am willing to accept for religion, drinking habits, smoking, ethnicity, whether I want children, my height, age and all that mundane things (no, they didn't ask for my weight). And finally, there is the page where I say that I accept their terms and conditions and they give me my personality profile and find me some matches.

First thing about the personality profile -- they don't give you a report in 20 parts. No. Instead, you get a report that describes you on 5 different levels: agreeableness, openness, emotional stability, conscientiousness and extraversion. I basically found out that I am who I thought I was (what a relief!) -- rather moderate in all aspects except for extraversion (I'm reserved in case you didn't know). From those 12 pages of question and answer, I got out about as much information as I would have if I had taken some random online quizzes -- since you are described by 5 criteria, you probably need to take 5 quizzes. Of course, those short questions I had to answer were displayed on my profile page for my matches to read and find out more about me. The next thing to do was to see my matches to see how well the matching algorithm worked.

I came up with 6 matches -- 3 asian and 3 white guys. It seemed to me that the asian guys were very brief with their short answers (about 1-2 lines) while the white guys wrote short paragraphs that were more descriptive. If you're a guy reading my blog and you ever try these dating sites out, my advice to you is that more is better. Write freely, and make sure you write well. While everyone is going to sound like a SNAG (is this term still used these days?), at least you won't get thrown aside immediately based on the fact that there are other guys who seem more open and interesting. Enough said.

In general, my matches were people that I wouldn't mind meeting, although the asian guys weren't as interesting because they wrote very little, and very concisely. Perhaps if you had a different criteria, you would have a different opinion. There was an obvious mismatch, and he must have realized it to because he closed communication with me the next morning. I was not impressed with spelling mistakes (typos are fine, like putting in an extra letter somewhere) -- one guy claimed to have been a playwright, except he spelt "playwrite". I might have considered clicking the "start comunicating" button, except that spelling mistake put me off. I pretty much ended my eharmony session on that note.

This morning, I woke up to find 7 e-mails from eharmony.com: 6 telling me that there was a guy they wanted me to meet, and 1 telling me that a certain Mr T wanted to start communicating with me. I actually used a real e-mail address with eharmony.com because you communicate via server e-mails, and I didn't want to bother with checking a fake e-mail account.

There are 2 options for comunicating on eharmony: guided communication, or open communication. The guided comunication process involves 2 rounds of mutual Q&A's, and sending a list of Must-Haves and Can't-Stands in between, before moving on to open communication. The fast track version is jumping straight to open communication. Mr T chose the guided communication track.

As far as the 1st round of Q&A's go, it seems that he selects 4 closed-ended questions from a list and sends them to me. If none of the above answers work, I can fill in a 4th blank answer. I think that the 2nd round of Q&A's probably involve selecting from a list of open-ended questions. It's quite like a beauty pageant, with different rounds and chances for elimination. So far, I like the guided communication track.

Since I wasn't aware of the option to close communication immediately last night, I now have to deal with my new cyber friend. I started using eharmony.com to see my personality profile (disappointing), and to see how it was possible for a guy to be "undatable" (seriously, ouch). Should I actually communicate with Mr T? There are several more layers of screening to go, and I could eliminate him, or he could eliminate me along the way. But what if we actually make it through the 2nd round of Q&A? I wasn't planning on looking for anyone, and it seems that people who sign up with eharmony.com are looking for more than just dating partners. Maybe I am over thinking this. It would be fun to try it out. I don't know.

So far, the online dating experience has been rather interesting -- I do think that it is a good way to meet a specific group of people with the same goals. In fact, it is efficient. I might actually try online dating someday, maybe someday soon if I decide to carry on communicating with Mr T (I'm using the word "communicate" a lot because it's eharmony jargon). But I've used up my 10 matches limit on the trial subscription, and that's about as far as I want to take it for now. Now what should I do with Mr T?

Addedum: It turns out that I can't start communicating unless I subscribe. I guess that's it with Mr T then. I closed communication, and I would like to tell him the truth, except I can't actually say more than check a box. I checked the box that said "Other" for reasons I'm closing communication since I can't write my own reply.

on completeness

It's funny how you can intuitively know when it's complete. "It" here refers to my room, but I could mean this in a more general way. The last piece falls in place, and you feel that whatever-it-is-we-may-be-talking-about is whole. I finally bought myself a chair yesterday, and my room is complete.

I've been resisting getting a chair for a while because I don't like chairs with wheels, and I don't like the sterile look of those office chairs that people usually get for their desks. So the last time I went shopping, I bought a white footstool to use as a stool. It was a little short, and I hardly sit at my desk as a result. Yesterday, I happened to find myself in Ikea again, and I was thinking of getting a chair but I changed my mind after seeing what was available. I couldn't get anything the first time, and things haven't changed so much in 5 months.

*pause* Well, you know it's untrue. A lot has changed in the past 5 months, and Ikea has changed a little.

Anyway, back to the story. We were getting ready to check out when there and then, I saw this red wooden chair, and I thought to check it out. I decided to get it even though I thought it wasn't quite right. I was going to run back to look for a cushion just in case, but there in the bin of red cushions right beside the aisle was one lone cream-colored cushion. And they all come together.

I finally assembled the chair today, and it strangely completes my room. I never thought of a desk chair as a crucial component of a bedroom, but it does have its role. I am now writing to you in my mostly-white room, sitting on the cream cushion on the red-stained chair, at my completely white and plain desk with a white iBook. I think it makes a lovely picture. I hope this is when other things start coming together for me as well.

One can never plan; things just happen. Does it really mean that we shouldn't bother to plan? It's not quite the koan about worrying -- if there is a solution, why worry? If there is no solution, what good does worrying do?

Water rushes into the heating pipes. Where there is space, it will flow.

Chasing Cars

I don't really like how I keep making references to pop culture in my entries. It makes my writing style so predictable, but that's what I like though, linking all the things around me up so that they look like one huge idea. It's true though, I think we are all one. One. I had my One Theory many years ago, and I haven't thought of it much. But it's not to say that I've forgotten it. It just seems so obvious, that we have a lot in common, all of us people, living things. Somehow, we just focus on the differences. It's for the same reason why we wonder why we are 99.99% similar to most animals on this planet, and we are obsessed with how that 0.01% difference translates into such a huge difference in body structure and brain functions. I agree that it is quite alarming how something so small becomes something so important. But it doesn't change the fact that we are built from a very similar blueprint.

We heard this song in class the other day, about how everything was really the same thing in biology. I think that song was about cell signaling and gene regulation. It went by the name of "Little Phosphatases" or something. How true and how insightful. Yes, I'm a biologist. I mostly catalogue things, and realize that they are all the same. But that minute difference is the punchline of every paper that I will write. Something was slightly different. But of course! If it were all exactly the same, then it's the exact same thing.

I'm not making too much sense. But it's fine. I get into such a mood when I'm reading something by Murakami. We're just killing time until the next big thing happens. I don't know what the next big thing is, but it's really not the best way to live, thinking that this moment is being killed so that I can get to the next. No wonder they say that youth is wasted on the young. Who's they? I don't know. But I think I am one of them now.

Chasing cars, since I shouldn't make obscure references without explaining them, is the title of a song by Snow Patrol. The line I'm thinking of goes something like this "Let's waste time, chasing cars in our head." The rest is self explanatory.

Pardon the recent lack of humor. I blame the sunny skies of the approaching winter.

My Man of the Year

Have the words stopped flowing? Have my ideas all dried up? Not quite, but I am tired. Ocassionally, I feel sad. Sometimes I feel happy. Perhaps it is time for a break. It is all very well to dream of escaping, to say "Anywhere but here", but it is not enough. I feel that it is important to say what you want. Unfortunately, it means that you have to know what you want. What do I want?

I wonder where he is right now, the guy who left his suitcase with me. He said that he'll be sure to pick it up if and when he returns. I haven't heard a peep from him, and I am tempted to call him up. But I am afraid that I am imposing myself on him, like I've done so many times. He said that he may take the time off and travel and work a little in some place other than here. Every so often when I feel lost and want to escape, I think of him and wonder what he is doing, and wonder what if it had been me instead. But he is not me, and he may not even remember who I am. I am still here, and I cannot escape.

For the few seconds he was around, he made a difference. At the end of each year, I like to look back and ask myself who the most important person I met was. It's still a little early, but I think I've named my Man of the Year.

Sleep

What will you make of it if I told you that the best thing that's happened to me recently is that I managed to sleep 8 hours straight? Yes, I'm slightly insomniac these days. There is unfortunately nothing romantic about it. Thankfully I'm not worrying about it.

I wonder if it has anything to do with getting older. An older person explained how he didn't need as much sleep as he aged when we marvelled at how he seemed to always be working. I have a friend who ocassionally suffers from insomnia. She thinks that deep down inside, something is bothering me. While I am bothered by a few things recently, I doubt that they are keeping me up 4 days out of a week. I could of course be totally wrong about this. Perhaps I am truly disturbed by recent events.

It is tragic that I have to think about sleep these days. Clearly, it's not something one should think about. One could appreciate being able to fall asleep and waking up refreshed, but when you can't actually sleep well, good sleep becomes something akin to a gift, a miracle. Something beautiful, surreal, not totally unattainable but rare.

Intrigued by the title (and other things), I watched the Science of Sleep recently. It's a beautiful movie, best watched by the silly romantic who is incapable of living normally. Because I identify with the childish and adorable lead, I thought the movie was touching and poignant. A more pragmatic person thinks that the lead is crazy and needs to be locked up. If only I could solve my problems in my dreams, I would want to be a sleepwalker. The lead didn't manage to solve his problem, but at least he's more proactive than I am. We're both cowards really.

Is it a problem that I identify with people who suffer from the same character weaknesses and that I am drawn to them as a result? Not just anyone with the same weaknesses of course, but someone attractive who shares my weakness. A tragic hero. I love it when things are juxtaposed. Being able to accept a weakness and turn it into something attractive is probably the wrong way to go about it. But we need our flaws to make us more human, more loveable. A perfect person isn't real. And so I will carry on with my misguided ways. Because tonight I am a defensive insomniac.