Fancy A Workout?

Well, I can’t say I’ve been doing particularly well on Tinder so far… I’ve had a few matches, but generally not really the sort of girl that I want to date (for any number of reasons)… Nonetheless, it does seem to be a game of patience, or at least in my case: so, having had some time to try it out, my chances of a match seem to boil down a single factor: Is she oriental? If so, then I have a decent chance; if she’s anything else, it’s quite rare to match!

Now that’s all fine, but one of the big problems you face if you want to date a very specific type of girl, British-born Chinese in my case, then you’d best be warming up your left-swipe finger, as it’ll be seeing more action than an Arnie flick. Just to figure out the numbers (ya know, for science...), I utilised my time well during my train home from a client meeting… By counting how many profiles I would have to look at to be able to see 5 oriental girls’ profiles… Ok so go!

• Profile no. 23
• Profile no. 79
• Profile no. 80
• Profile no. 178
• Profile no. 200-something (I lost count around 200-ish)

So let’s review that… I had to go through over 200 profiles just to view 5 oriental girls, of which I liked 2, and I’m not sure were actually Chinese. That’s a bit of a shit, really.

Still, at least I got a match from one of these 2, a couple of days later. And I’ve since soldiered on and come across other oriental girls, so not all bad.

It’s A Small World

Now then, I came across Sandy’s pic on Tinder, and she looked familiar… where had I seen her before? Oh yes that’s right, I’d seen her on the dating site I’m on. It’s not a particularly big pond when you’re niche-dating… For example, I’m gonna take a guess that there’s probably quite a lot of crossover between those on Daily Diapers and Diaper Mates!

Sandy seemed nice enough; I’d not chatted to her online, but we’d matched on here instead anyway. I did then pop back to the dating site to have a sneaky peak, which was a little underhand… Anyhow, she had a few interesting hobbies (dragon boating being one?!), designs older ladies’ fashion for a well-known older-ladies high-street fashion brand, BBC, lived only a few miles from me.

As it so happened, a client night-out was cancelled at short notice, leaving me with a little free time. I messaged Sandy to see if she wanted to meet up. She responded: “Well… I was going to go the gym tonight. So Maybe we can meet another night?”… Followed by “Oh wait which gym did you say you go to?”. She already knew the answer anyway, as we had already talked about this and she knew our gyms had shared memberships… You can see where this is going, right?

“I need a workout partner tonight, why don’t we go to the gym?"

Let's weigh this up then:

Pro:   Well… I know it’s only Monday, but haven’t exercised for a coupla days… Two birds, one stone?
Con:   But… when I exercise, I like to do it properly… Will she get in the way?
Pro:   I prob won’t get chance to meet Sandy for a few weeks if I don’t meet her tonight…
Con:   What’s the bloody etiquette for this? Do you work out with them? Or do your own thing?
Pro:   I look alright in gym gear… Is showing a bit of flesh a bad thing?
Con:   I’m not gonna have to do my hair and put in contact lenses and stuff am I? Scew that!
Pro:   I like girls in gym gear… I get to see her in gym gear.
Con:   … ?

Okayyyy… So the victory for the pro camp… Let’s do this thing.

Sweat, Chat, Sniff?

*buzz*…. “Hey, I’m running a little late, feel free to get started”

Not only had I arrived half an hour early because I got my times wrong, but now Sandy was gonna be another 20 min late. Oh well, I get a regular workout. So 50 min after I started, Sandy arrived looking fresh-faced. I on the other hand, looked ever-so-slightly dishevelled. A lot dishevelled…

Well… I’m sweaty… kiss on cheek would be in appropriate. Handshake??? But my hands are sweaty… Too late, my right hand had already instinctively shot out. Grrr. We exchanged small talk for a few min, then she decided she wanted to go on the cross-trainer… Oh you mean the very machine I just spent 45 min? Goody. We chatted for another 10 min or so whilst on the machines, but it was clearly difficult whilst trying to maintain one’s own workout rhythm.

Now, around the same time as us starting on the machine, this middle aged chap had also gotten on. He to my left, Sandy to my right. Middle Aged Chap was working up a bit of a sweat; good for him… And then his smell hit me… Full.on.BO… A really really vicious smell; like a thousand people’s armpits had been concentrated and sprayed around where I was. Bloody horrible. With Sandy on my right, I’m not sure she’d caught the whiff yet, so perhaps I could suggest we go on another piece of apparatus and she’d be spared?

But just before I opened my gob, a thought suddenly hit me… What if the smell was coming from Sandy? Sh*t, I hadn’t even considered this. I’d have to be a bit more considered in my approach so as to not embarrass the lady… But then another thought hit me… What if it wasn’t Sandy, and she could smell it too… and thought it was me?!?! F*ccckkkkkk! These are the social situations that nobody teaches you how to deal with… and since common sense apparently deserted me during this momentary panic, I did absolutely nothing… I just continued on that stupid cross-trainer, wearing my stupid shit-eating grin, whilst continuing to inhale these stupid noxious fumes.

So, about 10 min later, enough time had passed for me to suggest we should do some other exercise without it being too obvious that I was trying to get away from this specific area of the gym. The funny thing that I only realised as we were moving on, is that Sandy appeared to also be wearing her best shit-eating grin… Nonetheless, I’m pleased to report that the smell vanished the moment we went elsewhere, so at least we can guess the smell wasn’t emanating from Sandy! Still best not risk things by mentioning it.

Always Eat After Working Out

The rest of the “date” wasn’t particularly eventful…We tried to do our own thing with occasional and deliberate stops for short exchanges of conversation. However, in the course of a 75 min, I have to say, we probably spoke for about 10-15 min in total, and I found out very little about Sandy, that I didn’t already know from chatting beforehand!

Ah well, so at least we could grab a bite now and engage in some proper conversation. Maybe a posh eatery wouldn’t be appropriate, but at least we could get a post-gym Nandos or something… To be honest, I didn’t really care what we ate, it was just a chance to make things a bit more date-y.

“Oh… sorry… My Mum will have cooked something for me at home”

Oh… So that’s the end of that, I walked her to Sandy to her car, and said my goodbyes.

Let’s (Not) Do This Again

So a gym date... What a rubbish idea. In theory it could be good, but I think that depends largely on how well you know the girl (and how many dates in it is), as well as what exercises you plan on doing. In my case, as it turned out, I ended up having a pretty rubbish workout and also a pretty rubbish date; I wasn’t able to give my time properly to either activity, and so as a result achieved nothing that night (except eating solo Nandos on the way home… Gotta love a bit of solo Nandos!)

I do however think that physical activity-based dates are excellent ideas though; the obvious point being that you can continue to have interaction with your date and have something to talk about! Some exercise/sport dates that I’ve done in the past that worked out ok:

• Badminton: as long as ability is broadly the same. Also, it seems that all Chinese girls play Badminton… I didn’t know this until recently.

• Squash: Good fun if they’re any good. Otherwise, just a chance for you to make a girl run around. A lot!

• Climbing: I did this once, and that element of the date didn’t work because they were auto-belays, so it meant that our involvement with each other was limited. I do however reckon that a climbing date where one belays for the other would be great… whilst conversation opportunities are limited, you can build up a lot more trust in each other doing that.

• Bowling: everyone’s done this, right?

• Pool: Is this a sport? I think this is great date/couples activity as it very chilled out, quite intimate, appropriately fills any silences during conversation without being too much, but also remains competitive.

• Crazy golf: Awesome.

• Exercise class: Not so much date interaction, but you do get a common “foe” in the trainer, and something to talk about afterward. Plus the mirrors allow you to regularly check your date out during the lesson… No? Oh ok, forget I said that!

• Swimming: No, sorry that was a joke. I didn't realise, but apparently almost all Chinese kids (or just Chinese girls) in Britain cannot swim for sh*t... it's embarrassing. Even worst than a gym date.

Suffice to say, Sandy and I have recognised that that was such a terrible idea that we have not met since... Should you ever attempt a gym date in future, just make sure you steer clear of sweaty middle-aged blokes!

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The Game of Death... AKA: Chinese Speed Dating

In a recent conversation with a friend, she suggested that I also look into speed dating… which isn’t a bad idea really. Except I had to guiltily admit that I had already been to a couple of them… specifically CHINESE speed dating. “Well in that case, maybe you should write about that too”, she added. 


So in order do that, let us rewind to quite a while back… to one of my first conversations with French-speaking Josh about dating, he had made a very good point: “You’re looking for a Chinese girl? How about getting off the internet and actually getting yourself some Chinese friends, you bellend!… Or how about Chinese Speed Dating or something”. There is such thing as Chinese Speed Dating??? A quick search on Google confirmed such a thing existed in London… And there were events coming up!

And so when the time came, I dragged my friend, reluctant Ricky, along for the ride. I say reluctant not because he’s not Chinese (he is), not because he’s not single (he is), not because he lacks confidence with women (he does just fine), but because Ricky most definitely prefers English girls! It’s for another story, but he seems to actively avoid BBC Girls… claims they all afflicted with 公主病.

I’m sure if you’re reading this, you know exactly what Speed Dating is, but just in case... You get 3 minutes with each girl before moving on, and mark on your scorecard whether you liked them: Yes, No, or Friends (i.e. “not sure about this one, let’s stay in touch just in case”). Obviously mutual matching will result in contact details being passed on by the organisers… Got that? A small sampling of my experiences below:

Stage 1: Warm Up

A gentle introduction to Ying. Seemed happy and friendly, Cantonese-BBC, fine to talk to. That was exactly the introduction to speed dating I wanted and to be honest, the only thing stopping me from putting a Yes for was I didn’t really know what everybody else was like and didn’t want to end up putting yes for everyone, and looking very desperate. Want British-born Chinese girls? Well, here they are! Stage 1 defeated, with consummate ease. PERFECT!

Stage 2: The Brainbox

Another easy stage, I must’ve set the difficulty to Beginner or something. Brainbox was a lovely girl… not my cup of tea physically, but extremely easy and friendly to chat to. American-Chinese PhD lady, but not intellectually intimidating, easily one of the best short conversations I’d had in a while. That one did actually result in some dates… Pfft, this speed dating stuff's easy: A definite Yes… Another PERFECT,

Stage 3: A Challenger From Distant Lands

Meet Karen, who was… … …Hang on a sec... Something's not right!?!

We're at a Chinese speed dating event, in which most of the people were I’d guess aged 24 – 35. And Chinese… And this middle aged Caucasian woman had turned up. I have to say it took balls (not literally) for her to come to this event, though I couldn’t help enquiring: “Do you mind me asking? I’ve got no problem with it, but erm... How come you’ve come to a Chinese speed dating event?” To be honest, there was that much conversation I can’t remember the answer, but I did put F(riend) for her.

I found out a few days later when results came through, that she’d actually ticked Y(es) for me. And then even more bizarrely I got an email later that day along the lines of: “Hey there, Banana. Sorry about this, but I accidentally ticked Yes for you, but I didn’t mean it and there’s been a mix-up. Apologies, I'm not interested in you”…  What?!?

... Woah woah woah!!! Let me get this right… So I: a devastatingly handsome hunk of Yorkshire-Chinese steel, am being rejected by you: a middle-aged lady whose best years are clearly behind her??? Sheesh, definitely a dating low-point!

Stage 4: Another World Warrior

 
Did you know that Mauritius has a sizeable minority of Hakka-Chinese folk? I did not.
So folks speak Creole over in Mauritius, once described by a Mauritian friend as “French with attitude”… Add in the Chinese, and you get what I would describe as something of a hybrid accent, between French North-African, South Asian, and something else.


Meet Fong, she looked Chinese but whenever she spoke English, the bizarre accent meant words never seemed to come out the way I expected. So I thought that by switching to my broken-Hakka, maybe I could dazzle her with some of my skillz… Ah no, alas not. You see… I now know that Mauritian-Hakka is basically nothing like my brand of Hakka; it was pretty much a completely different dialect. Let’s just say that Fong was friendly but quite definitely unimpressed by my efforts, and I beat a hasty retreat with tail between legs.

Miserable fail. As affirmed by the No I got.

Stage 5: The Red Herring

“I have a boyfriend. I’m here to support my friend over there… have you met her?”

Well... Clearly, I hadn’t met her, since she was next in line. Her friend was also not someone I was particularly attracted to, but hey ho… As much as I just luuurrrvved hearing all about her boyfriend, there's 3 minutes of my life I won't be getting back!

Stage 6: Glamourpuss

Air hostess with Cathay Pacific, flies between Hong Kong and England; I gotta say, it would be pretty awesome getting out to HK on such a regular basis. Although I honestly think long-haul cabin crew have the patience of saints; some of the crap I’ve seen those guys put up with and still smile! Nonetheless, Jenny had her Air Hostess Smile™ well honed and she certainly looked the part… Just to clarify, what I’m saying here, is that she was fit.

Interestingly, Jenny was more than a pretty face: also a food blogger, had a degree in something clever-sounding, into current affairs and had an opinion on political matters (I know I’m being a geek, but that's a big plus in my books), and basically seemed cool. I did get a follow-up date from her although her constant flying schedules and my own ridiculous working pattern meant we never found time to meet again.

Stage 7: Bonus Stage

Next up was Lily: The first thing I noticed was her lovely smile and fringe. Another Cantonese-BBC, this time working in campaign management for the Vietnamese Tourism Board. We chatted mainly about her work and she was funny and easy-to-talk-to. We stayed in touch, and I’m happy to report that Lily is now a good friend, having become something of a dating confidante and adviser; a sister-on-the-inside giving me (mostly) solid dating advice… And generally reprimanding me for something or other (“You're too picky / too mean about that girl / too vain / too busy for dating / you haven't mentioned me in your blog etc etc etc”).




Final Boss: Megatron + Skeletor + Dr. Robotnik + A Really Hot Lady

Every once in a while you come across somebody who’s so damn hot, you kinda glance twice to make sure she isn’t some kind of photoshop creation, and then stare much longer than you should. Anyhow, so this girl, Red Dress, was absolutely stunning; she was by far and away the best looking woman I’d seen in a long time. Little red dress? Maybe a tad overdressed, but hey, I ain’t complaining! Come on then Banana, big smile, time for your A-game.


“Hello, my name’s Banana”.


I like to think that one of my strengths is my enthusiasm, and that most people I come across see that in me. It’s nice, because I often find that that helps to get others to open up more quickly too and facilitates all-round mutual niceness. Unfortunately Red Dress was totally immune to my charms.

The start of the conversation was just bloody rubbish… one-word answers, lack of eye contact, blank facial expression, general disinterest, that sort of thing. I did gather that Red Dress was from Shanghai, and did some big city finance gig. And seemingly in her own world. So that carried on for a while with me trying my best to carry the conversation… I reckon I could probably get more words from one of the Queen’s Guards, but what the hey, maybe she was just nervous. I can’t remember what I said exactly, but I mentioned one of my tenants hassling me earlier that day. Try and imagine the below exchange in as blunt and abrupt a tone as possible!


Red Dress: "Oh I see. So you are landlord?" 

Banana: "Yeah, it’s a bit of hassle to be honest, I get tenants hassling me about all sorts. Earlier one of them was complaining to me that another tenant had been stealing his milk!" 

Red Dress: "Do you drive?" 

Banana: "Yes, do you? I can’t imagine it’s easy to switch from driving on the left to driving to the right, I was thinking about…" 

Red Dress: "What car?"

Banana: "Umm… I… I drive an Audi. But as I was saying… urm… why do you ask? Are you into cars?" 

Red Dress: "I want to know. What did you say you worked?" 

Banana: "I work in sales, basically. Well, it’s not strictly speaking called that, but that’s in essence what I do." 

Red Dress: "Do you earn a lot of money? How much do you earn?" 

*About 5 seconds of silence whilst she started intently at me* 

Banana: "… Umm... I do ok, thanks..."

*Pfeeeeeeee, went the whistle to move on*


I can’t really blame her for such a direct approach in finding the right man for her. But I can blame her for coming across as a bit of a money-grabbing, self-centred Princess… The only time she made prolonged eye contact was when she asked about my salary! I can’t understand somebody coming to a dating event only to be actively hostile to people… I actually came out of that more than a little unnerved. No more of that please!



And the Competition?


At this point I’d also take the opportunity to take a look at my fellow competitors… almost all Chinese dudes, a pretty good representation of the male Chinese spectrum. But the one that really got everyone’s attention… the Yang to the middle-aged Caucasian lady’s Yin… Was this ginormous Indian chap! He had curly hair, was easily a good 6’4, and strode about the place with the confidence of someone who fitted right in. This in itself was an odd sight, however the most ridiculous thing about it all was told to me later by Lily and another girl: our Indian friend had gone making some pretty mad claims about his line of work. Essentially telling everybody that his job was at the zoo… And that he had a very important and special role... ... ... caring for the baby Pandas?!?! There is the very slight possibility that he wasn’t bullshitting everyone, but it seems highly unlikely (baby Pandas in Britain usually make the news, right?)… And thus, I can only stand and admire that Indian man with the big balls… if you ever read this, please contact me as I’d love to buy you a beer.

Overall... Interesting!

As for the rest of the girls I met from these events, they fell somewhere in between the "dates" described above… generally being on the side of pleasant, rather than unpleasant. There were a few follow-up dates and some are now friends, but I’d mess up the blog chronology further by writing about those again.

As a general overview though, I have to say these are definitely interesting and fun events to go to, and I would recommend anyone to give it a go... Although I think most girls attend these for a laugh, rather than actually looking for a romantic partner. Still… I’ve met girls and gotten dates from stranger places than this!

Next!

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Not The T (inder) Word!

If you’re reading this blog about dating, then there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Tinder… but for this who haven’t, it’s a mobile app inspired by our (randy) pioneering homosexual cousins who came up with Grindr. Tinder also started life as a hook-up app and follows a model in which one only needs to load up a very simple profile consisting of your pic(s). You are then presented with a never-ending number of pictures of other users that fall within your age-range and distance to “like” (swipe left on your screen) or “don’t like” (swipe right). Other users do likewise, and if two people like each other, then hey presto, it’s a match!

It’s actually become very much a bona fide dating app, with people openly using it and I actually now know of 3 friends who have started relationships from it (and a few horror stories to boot :P ). Not only that, but the simplicity of use and ease of access seems to have reached a much wider audience and allowed for unparalleled growth amongst singletons when compared against the traditional dating websites out there. The entrepreneur in me can only look on in astonishment and envy and wish I’d come up with it!

Starting Up

I heard of Tinder a while back and must now confess that I’ve been using it a tool for Banana Dater to generate some traffic to the blog. Having witnessed the impressive growth, I finally took the plunge and created a profile based on my real identity…

Setting up is dead easy… you log into your Facebook account which Tinder uses as a basis for your profile (first name), and then select a couple of pics to use. I also wrote a few niceties about myself… this was the easy part, since I borrowed a few words from my existing dating account.

I used the best picture I could find of myself (form an orderly queue, girls…), and used this as a serious dating tool, applying the same dating principles that I had tried to follow so far: aged 25-30, prefer BBC or Chinese, unless there’s something really interesting that caught my eye… this being much harder on Tinder, since it’s basically a case of “do you think this person is attractive?”

Left, Left, Left, Left, Right?… No Left, Left, Left, Left, Left…

At some point you have all heard a tale from a friend, or read it somewhere, or at watched a film, in which a pet eats an incredibly valuable item, followed by various shenanigans trying to retrieve said item. One true story that sticks in my mind, is of an ex-colleague from a few years back, whose dog ate an extremely expensive earring belonging to his wife… thus the next 2 days were spent sifting through the dog’s every bowel movement, in order to attempt to find said earring. Well… you can probably guess where this is going, but yes, I would say that using Tinder does feel a lot like sifting through sh*t!

Logging on, you come across all manner of ladies… unlike the dating sites where you can have a say over what you get shown (age, personality, ethnicity, background etc), Tinder does not discriminate beyond age and geography… So you end up swiping left ("don't like!") a lot. In fact, you become a right horrible superficial cad.

Becoming A Horrible Superficial Cad

I’m probably going to make some enemies for this, but you end up being incredibly picky over all sorts of tiny things that wouldn’t normally be a problem. If pop onto Tinder now, here’s my next 10 results:


No:   I don’t like your flowery shirt/top thingy

No:   The picture is just a piece of text, in what I presume is Arabic

No:   Pretty, but a ridiculous write-up that includes “YOLO” in there

No:   Bizarre sense of style, looks like insane and like a plastic doll (in a bad way)

No:   Munter

No:   Plain Jane

No:   Oh my, she has an enormous grin

No:   Ooh, she’s got strange lips

No:   Really good looking… aaaannnnd I accidentally swiped left. Sh*t 

No:   Not my type

No:   Wow, you’re great looking… also clearly about 20ft tall

No:   Grossly overweight

No:   COVERED in tattoos

Yes:   Myfawny… hahaha, wicked name. You yes just for such an old school name

Yes:   Yeah, she’s totally smoking hawt… miles out of my league, but hey ho

No:   Not my type


Ah, I’ve accidentally done more than 10… Well, the worst (best) thing about Tinder is that it’s actually kinda addictive, so it has an almost game like feel to the repetitive left and right-swiping. So yes, I’ve joined the ranks of the horribly superficial… And it is rather fun!

There… There are BBCs on here?

I’ve been dating for some time now, and those of you who have read before will have a pretty good idea what I’m looking for... So although it is starting to feel like I’ll never find this mysterious magical BBC girl, I continue to live in hope. Reflecting the relative Chinese population in Britain, Chinese girls on Tinder are few and far between, broadly similar to the dating sites I’ve been using. There is, however, one pretty big difference: the Chinese girls on the traditional dating sites are mainly Mainland Chinese girls, whereas Tinder features proportionally more BBCs.

As it happens, I've not been dating much the last few months, as I’ve been horrifically busy both with work and outside of work, and consequently not updated this blog as much as I'd like. This has been compounded by the fact that I’ve pretty much exhausted the supply of people I actually want to get to know from traditional internet dating and a majority of those I’ve started conversations with end up going nowhere because I don’t get round to following up in meaningful way, let alone converting into dates. So, I guess in the meantime, sifting my way through Tinder is the way forward...

Now then, I should also tell you conclusion to the story about my ex-colleague and the dog-eaten earring. Having sifted through a number of dog poops... For 2 days... He subsequently found the stray earring... In the laundry basket... Where it had fallen from the table...

Read into that how you will!

Next!



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Lost in Translation: Dating Girls from China

It's been a while since I last blogged due to being ridiculously busy the past few months on a host of projects… However I found time to squeeze in the odd date here and there. Not ideal, but it’ll have to do for now! 

Anyhow, remember how I said that in an ideal world, I’d date a BBC? Well that’s because she’ll speak English and (hopefully) Chinese, which means that I have a much easier time not trying to bridge cultural gaps and all that jazz. And barring the odd encounter here and there, I am mainly meeting girls via internet dating. I know… “fun”, right?  

On the internet however, is mainly girls from Mainland China… Whilst I mentioned my distaste for the strong Chinese accent in an earlier post, I’ve been on a few dates with some and now realise that there can be massive disparity in the quality of their English:

• There are those who do high-quality, good pronunciation etc, and written English that isn’t noticeably different to native English writer. It seems that this usually comes about as having made the effort to integrate and make some English/Western friends. Also they understand the slang and colloquialisms I use. These girls are alright.

• And then there’s those whose English is still as if they’re fresh off the boat, despite having been here for 14 years in one case; absolutely shocking. Often these girls came here to study, and honestly, it’s an absolute miracle that any of them managed to get a degree. Or a job for that matter!… How can their English be this bad?

So… A very strong Chinese accent is a virtual dealbreaker (sorry girls, you know Scouse accents rule in this Banana’s opinion), and just as bad, is sh*t English… I know I still go to Chinese school and am a massive hypocrite, but at least make some bloody effort!

And this appallingly bad English has led to the occasional misunderstanding i.e. they think I’m a bit of an idiot. These misunderstandings have happened a few times to varying degrees, from girls telling me I spoke too fast (fair comment, I do talk quickly), to those telling me I had a strange accent (yeah, that’s a good one coming from you, love), to something else completely. And whilst me being a bit of an idiot is pretty close to the truth, at least think I’m an idiot for the right reasons!

I’m pretty sure I don’t mean what you think I mean… 

There was Dorothy from Oxford who I had been WhatsApping, and happened to mention that I thought that I’d heard eHarmony was more “girl-friendly” than some of the other dating sites out there. Despite perfectly fine eConversation for a while, she suddenly went quiet. 

A week or so later, I sent a “Hey, how’s it going?” message, only to get a reply in the form of both barrels. I was told that I was extremely disrespectful and some other stuff indicating I was on a par with Hitler for sheer douchebaggery and evilness; I even got “you are a nasty show-off man” thrown at me! (I’ll remember that one for the next time I really really wanna tell somebody off). My crime? I had "many girlfriends on so many other websites”… This girl was an interpreter FFS, but she’d interpreted my “girl-friendly” comments as me boasting to her about having many other girlfriends on other websites. Not entirely sure how she came to that conclusion, given the conversational context … Or why she didn’t ask me to clarify my comments at the time.

I didn’t bother dignifying her message with a response.

They’re All Quackers

The other one I’ll mention was a date about 7-8 weeks ago in which we were talking about favourite foods. Nice girl, played piano really well, PhD candidate in something clever. Now, I bloody love roast duck, and I can talk for England (China?), so I spent a good period of time waxing lyrical about how I loved duck. Literally 15 minutes of her looking at me as if I was some sort of philistine and asking me repeatedly why I liked it so much (Mmm… flavour, texture, aroma, all that delicious fat…) before I finally cottoned on… In the end I resorted to childlike simplification:

“Ooooooh, no! Haha, I think we’ve got our wires totally crossed [Not sure she understood this phrase either]. Oh man, this is embarrassing… right, just to be clear I really like DUCK; Quack Quack? But whilst I’d be willing to try, I’ve never had DOG; Woof Woof… and I think it’s illegal in this country!”

I didn’t see her again. 

The Test

 

 

So… you’re going to go on a date with a lovely girl from China… How will you avoid the perils that have befallen me? How will you establish if you can communicate with her? How will you know if you will be able to bridge the cultural gaps?

Aha! Well, let me introduce you to the test…
It’s something that I used to jokingly take the piss out of my parents for, but I have devised a test as a rough ‘n ready way of establishing whether a Chinese girl’s English is good enough, and therefore make (quite a big) assumption of whether to date her. It’s not particularly accurate, but if nothing else it’ll give you a laugh.

Ok, so... Can your date pronounce these words properly?

1. Woolworths:        Woorwoo, Woorowoof, Woowoofu, Woorwoofs…
2. Famous:              Fimuss, Femuss, fermurs, fermuss…
3. Parallelogram:     No, I’m joking. Don’t really do this one.

Go on. Ask your parents/China friends/China dates to give it a go… 

______________________________________________________________________

On A Related Note… Nǐ huì shuō pǔtōnghuà ma?

There are of course some very specific benefits to dating girls from China. Mainly, that they speak Mandarin perfectly well!

A few months back, an old friend from university who went back to China, got in touch to say that he was getting married. And because I couldn’t make it all the way to Beijing for his wedding, he asked me to provide a short video message to be shown at the wedding. “I know you don’t speak Mandarin” he said, “but don’t worry, English is fine...”

… Challenge accepted, my friend. Challenge accepted.
 
I wrote a short wedding toast in English and then asked a friend’s Mandarin-speaking wife to assist in a decent translation. I couldn’t get much more help than that though, as they had a baby and it would be cheeky to take further advantage.

What I did have though, was access to Mainland Chinese dates. And I am ashamed to say that I have taken full advantage over the last few weeks. One particular girl, Rachel, who I’ve had some great dates with the last 6 weeks, has been beyond helpful; we’ve spent the best part of 2 dates and more WhatsApp VMs getting my Mandarin pronunciation nailed, over and over and over again. Forgetting all I’ve said so far about dating Mainland Chinese girls, she has been a super patient Chinese teacher and great fun to boot. Whilst I could read the wedding toast to perfection when I concentrated hard enough, I must say, learning the damn thing by heart and remembering the pinyin to be repeated into a camera was an entirely different affair! The day of me recording my wedding toast, I clambered into a suit (top half only!) and started filming... Over 120 takes later and I only had two satisfactory attempts… The only reason I stopped was because my bloody camera ran out of battery!

I now know, that I may never be able to pronounce these two phrases without losing my rag or having nightmare flashbacks:

• 錄像   lùxiàng
• 支持    zhīchí 

I can only imagine how much more ridiculous I look and sound attempting Mandarin, as these girls do speaking English...

Next!

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