“We have a romance dating website? Interesting…” I showed the flyer to a friend.

Lillian laughed, “Don’t tell me you want to check it out?”

Instead of throwing away the flyer that I found in my pigeonhole, I asked Lillian, “Aren’t you curious?”

Lillian wasn’t but I was. I had never signed up for any dating or online matchmaking services. I rarely go on chat rooms and I haven’t even been to a speed-dating event.

I make friends easily so there’s no reason for me to try out such services - that’s the standard answer I gave to friends every time they suggested that I try finding Mr Right online.

God knows who you might meet online. I’ve often heard tales of creepy dates, cheaters who are out there to fleece you of your money (think enhanced Nigeria scam using the “I want to marry you but I need your help” ploy) and to a lesser extent some success stories.

So why now? Curiosity got the better of me.

After much reflection, I uploaded my profile and photo on the website using a pseudonym.

I somewhat felt comforted knowing that the website login is my university email address. I thought if I did meet ‘creepy crawlies’, I could always track them since they attend or had attended the same university.

As I navigated through the website, I was intrigued by the fact that the success of my university’s romance website had triggered other universities in the United Kingdom to adopt similar romance websites.

Among the comments by users of the website:

“Most of the users are students here, so I feel safer meeting people from the site than if I were to meet someone from, say, a newspaper equivalent (which I don't think I'd do for safety reasons).”

“Thanks for making one little half-soul's love-life a lot more interesting!"

"I have got someone in mind...early days though"

T writes that she "Met a really nice guy on here last week!"

Congratulations to Hockey Boy and Dr Shell! Hockey Boy writes: "I first logged onto Warwick Romance for a bit of a laugh. Instead I've ended up meeting a beautiful woman who I am lucky enough to be marrying in 2006. Thank You!”

And how about my own experience using the website?

Well, I did exchange messages with a couple of people these past few months. To my surprise, the experience hasn’t been catastrophic. It’s interesting to get to know people who are studying or working in other fields.

In fact, my conversations had ranged from mountaineering to medicine; from violin playing to community work in Kenya, from sports to favourite eating places in town. Did I meet some of these men? Hahaha…. (*nervous laughter). The same nervous laughter I made when I stood waiting in anticipation during our first meeting.

Ahh… the trepidation of that first meeting. I recall my nervousness when I had coffee and donuts in my college garden with a doctor whom I’ve been talking to for weeks before. I remember the dinner in college with a fellow graduate student I met online. He came to dinner with his 17 friends!

But what a sight, me surrounded with 18 men from the computer science department at the dinner table. It’s also quite amusing when you’re discussing work with a faculty mate only to realise later that he is ‘Rower dude’ from the romance website. Oh my, all those misadventures!

I recently communicated with another guy who was trying to guess the college I am from. Since my pseudonym starts with “R”, he guessed it to be ‘Rachel from Clare’ (Clare is a college whose architecture he fancies).

Since we’re not stalkers who could find each other’s true identity by searching the university directory, we decided to keep the mystery going. So every time I wrote to him, I will type my guesses to his name:

< Hello Gerald/Geoff/Graham/George/Gandalf (?)! This is Rachel from Clare…… >

I suppose romance website can be harmless if you join with an open mind (exercise cautious nonetheless) and with the aim of networking and making new friends so that you won’t be disappointed if love doesn’t happen.

But you never know; it all starts with a good friendship. And if love doesn’t come your way, hey, at least you’ve made more friends and have good memories of the days when you indulged in some online ‘teenagerish’ frivolous fun!

Related Links

- Author Anisa Hassan teaches you Six Ways to Maximise Your Fun when going on a date

- Check out SGK's review of dating website Lunch Actually

- Search for divine intervention here

* Picture of 'heart-shaped mouse' courtesy of Kanate.

blog comments powered by Disqus