SMS Text News goes Speed Dating

I intended writing this and publishing it right away but when I got home and found the electricity cut out for half the street, it was a little difficult.

Come with me, into the mysterious world that is Speed Dating…

Mr X, my colleague, mentioned to me last week that a friend was running a Speed Dating evening and he asked if I’d be up for coming along. She’d clearly asked him to bring along a few eligible good looking batchelors, and obviously, I was near the top in his fit-male-friends category on Outlook. He also invited along two other chaps, Mr A and Mr B.

Mr X was a little bit challenged on account of Mr B coming along because apparently he spent years clearing mines from Afghanistan only to recently become a Tax Lawyer. This, again, according to Mr X, made Mr B ‘prime girl bait.’ I wasn’t that bothered myself.

Mr X also mentioned, by the way, that there are quite a few people threatening to out him here on the blog. Heh. We should definitely keep his identity secret, especially after some of the revelations you’re about to read.

So despite a massively busy week, I agreed to go along to the speed dating evening to support his friend and to have a look.

I’m not hunting at the moment you see. I have just too much to do at the moment. I actually thought it would probably be wrong to go along since I am simply not open to relationships. Mr X reckoned this was rubbish and then, conveniently, I happened upon the idea of blogging the mobile trends at the evening. I had a passing idea of what was involved and thought that, if all else failed, I could definitely take a note of what mobile everyone was using and see if I could craft a potentially interesting blog opst from it.

Alas, I didn’t quite appreciate that everyone would have their mobiles stowed away in their handbags and jacket pockets.

We arrived at Club Bonzai. It’s on Fulham Road and underground — the sort of place that you notice when you’re walking home from work late and wonder why there’s a doorway with a red carpet outside, together with a rope and a huge bouncer in a warm looking black coat standing next to it.

We were greeted as we attempted to walk down the stairs by Verity. Verity runs 20days.co.uk. which, as well as arranging speed dating evenings, also offers holidays and other associated events for cash-rich, time-poor city dwellers. Verity stopped us stone dead on the stairs and insisted we don our badges. She had’em all ready.

I was given a “15) EWAN” badge. 15 was my number for the evening. With the badge on my chest, I began to descend the stairs into the bowels of the club. Not before I spotted Verity holding a Nokia E61.

“Ooooh, could be an exciting time,” I thought to myself (from a mobile perspective). I was surprised to see she was sporting the E61. It’s not necessarily a handset that I’d have associated with her. I’d have thought an LG Chocolate or some sort of fancier looking Nokia.

I accosted her.

“Do you use that for email then?” I asked, nodding to the device.

“Yeah, Mobile Email,” she replied — and as she did so, I spied the ‘Three’ logo on the back of the device.

The plot thickens. Interesting. I always like to see how well a mobile operator has performed in terms of delivering service to normobs (‘normal mobile users’) such as Verity. She was, I gathered, OK with the Mobile Email service they provide. The only arse is that you have to leave your computer on all the time so it can receive email via Outlook then it transmits a copy of the message to your handset.

Impressive, impressive.

I went down stairs and walked into the Bonzai place. It was heaving already with lots of people all sporting labels and numbers. Good. Right.

Mr X and the other chaps and I immediately noticed the distinct lack of shockers 😉 Everyone looked calm, collected, attractive and approachable.

We headed to the bar whereupon I purchased a coke and talked to some nice girls (numbers 11 and 12, if memory serves), who were also standing nearby. It’s at this point that my whole blogging concept began to screw up. You see the music is going. Reasonably loud. So conversation is limited to that special type of ‘I’m interested in you, enough to scream into your ear and thus mix our personal space and, when we’re both suitably inebriated, drop into a slobbery embrace’ conversation.

Music is required, of course. If I had it my way, there’d be no music. I like to talk to people without raising my voice. But everyone else on the planet doesn’t, ergo there was music.

Since the music is banging away, it’s not really appropriate to say, show-me-your-mobile-phone, is it? I mean, that’s a little bit weird. Highly weird. Especially to someone you’ve just met. It’s tantamount to saying, ‘show-us-yer-underwear-luv’. That’s because handbags are stowed away in the cloakroom, phones too. One or two girls had a purse containing a phone, but the handsets were generally well and truly hidden.

The club was under ground too. Which limits the signal quality of course.

This didn’t stop people all of a sudden grabbing their handset and making a call ‘to see what Piers is up to’. One girl flopped out her RAZR right in front of me, much to my annoyance. I think the RAZRs are really ‘Basildon’. You can’t go about using a bog standard 1.5 year old RAZR without having mobile bloggers like me sneer at you OPENLY.

Anyway, she flops out her RAZR, flicks it open and proceeds to dial Piers. Geez. Poor Piers. He’s going to get a shocker when he answers. You know when you’re sat at home in a quiet environment and your mobile rings? You look and you see it’s your friend calling, you involuntarily smile and hit the ‘accept call’ button, yes? Mistake: Because your friend is in a really loud club and you’ve made the grevious error of putting the handset to your ear ready to commence the call. You’re deaf for minute.

This girl happilly carried on a conversation without a care, screaming into the handset making arrangements with Piers. If I wanted to make a call, I’d have gone up the stairs and outside.

Anyway. Back to the action.

All around the club are numbers stuck on the wall underneath sofas, seats and what not. Verity wolf-whistles to get everyone’s attention and explains that if you’re number 15 — that’s me — you have to go to ‘table 15’.

Girl 15 sits down and Boy 15 (that’s me) joins her for 3 minutes.

You get 180 seconds of interaction then the guy moves to the next table — in my case, 16…. through to 18… then to table 1 and so on all the way round to table 14.

So by the end of the procedure, I will have sat down and chatted to 18 different girls. Quite exciting. Everyone was, understandably, a little apprehensive. It’s not a very natural situation. Well, it’s half natural and half totally weird.

What do you say when you sit down?

Well, luckily, Verity had knocked up a list of questions on the back of the forms we were given. Boys got one set of questions, girls another set. They featured conversation starters, like….

Gosh let me try and remember.

Things like, ‘If you were on a desert island, would you rather have X, Y or Y?’ Useful if you’re struggling for questions.

Everyone is very nice. I’m not going to openly describe everyone. However I did refer to my question sheet now and again to keep things moving. You know when you get to a pause in the conversation? That’s when I jumped in with my, ‘Well Miss X, if you were swimming a mile, would you rather..’

I sat down to one girl…

‘What do you do then?’ I asked.
‘Private equity,’ she replied.
‘Ahh, very cool, what areas,’ I asked.
‘All areas really, but for example, we’ve just done a big WIMAX deal,’ she explains.
‘Oh, have you heard what BT are about to do?’ I ask her, conversationally.

We immediately swap out of speed-dating mode as she barks, ‘What?’

‘Well, I have it on good authority that they’re going to blah blah blah.’ I continued, ‘That would nail the WIMAX offering, I reckon,’ I finished.
She looked at me for a few moments then told me I’d just ruined her evening.

It’s always interesting the people you meet, isn’t it? By the way, the BT rumours which, apparently are FAR from rumours, are shit-hot. White shit hot. If they actually do it. I’ve spoken to three people who’ve confirmed it. Anyway it’s so hot I couldn’t possibly publish it here lest folk be outed.

Still, moved on. That was quite interesting. I took her card. Gave her mine. You never know, she might be reading. If you are, do say hi?

Next up was the bar-girl. One of the numerical positions was conveniently at the Bar so I was able to order another coke and have a chat with number 18 I think it was. She was heavily into politics. Political lobbying. I wondered aloud with her if her firm could do anything about mobile data costs. 6 months minimum she reckoned. Fair point.

The next girl was a media buyer. Then it very quickly became a blur of delightful solicitors, teachers, interior designers and various other experts. Fascinating.

I had an excellent time, I’m only disappointed that I wasn’t able to produce a roving commentary on what mobile phones people were using, why and how. For some reason I thought people would have their devices out on tables. In fact, I pictured everyone sat at tables with phones out on display. Not the case at this speed dating event since it was far less structured (for the better, I think, actually).

At the end you had to give in your forms to Verity. On the form you had to tick ‘yes’ to the girls you liked. Verity would then go through them and if you get any matches, she’d send you the relevant contact details and put you both in touch.

I didn’t. I deliberated a lot. Everyone was very nice. But then, again, put in the context of the ridiculous amount of work that I’m doing at the moment, I think it would be rather disingenuous to tick boxes, be sent contact details and to write back saying words to the effect of, ‘I’ve got 10 minutes on the 8th of September…’ Not good. What do you think? Good plan, or not?

Mr X, by the way, ticked every single girl. That way, he explained, he’d be able to see who liked him, then make his pick. I must ask him how he got on…

If you’re wondering what to do with your 20-days-holidays-a-year, I recommend you check out Verity’s company, 20days.co.uk. It’s far from simply speed dating. Think ski holidays, activities and os on.

And as for my hunt for Mrs MacLeod, stay tuned.