The 8 Minute Dating Experiment Part 2: The Dates

As I’d men­tioned in my last post I had gone to a speed dat­ing event.  Let me tell you, it was inter­est­ing.  It was pretty much what I expected and it tested my abil­ity to strike up con­ver­sa­tions with strangers and keep things mov­ing with women that, well, were chal­leng­ing.  All in all it was a pretty pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence and I’d do it again, I think.  That said, how did my night go?  Oh and the names have been changed to pro­tect the not so inno­cent.So I went to this thing with a friend of mine, I was too shy to roll up to the place all by myself.  The event was hosted by 8 Minute Dat­ing and the event was held at a local club in Orange County.  It had been some years since I’ve been to that club.  It’s  a nice place and a good place to have the venue since they have a large area sep­a­rate from the rest of the club to hold the actual speed dat­ing event.  All in all the envi­ron­ment is was good.

My friend and I bought some drinks to start things off right, before the dat­ing began.  We were look­ing around and noted that most of the speed daters came with a friend, or friends, too.  That made it eas­ier for us to check out who we may be meet­ing later.  There was a good mix of women.  Var­i­ous ages, shapes and what not so I knew it was going to be a good time…  I was a bit ner­vous though.  Yet I did not “down” my bev­er­age… I didn’t want to be buzzed going through these dates, you see.

Date 1  Trina — This was eas­ily one of the fun­ner ‘dates’ I did that night.  Before the bell sounded we were already exchang­ing witty ban­ter.  We actu­ally talked about a vari­ety of things, mostly com­mon stuff, though, but that was okay.  She had a great per­son­al­ity and a great sense of humor, yet I got the friend vibe feel­ing from her… But that’s okay, it was cool by me.  Awe­some woman.

Date 2 — Juna — This date was a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult as there was a slight lan­guage bar­rier, Juna is from the Phillip­ines.  She told me her story of how she came to the States and what she does for work.  Hon­estly, I was really impressed with her story, she is obvi­ously a very deter­mined woman and I can appre­ci­ate that.  All she could think to ask me was my age and what I did for a liv­ing. Nice gal, but no con­nec­tion there.

Date 3 — Veron­ica — My third date was with Veron­ica.  Nice girl, she offered that she was from Canada, to which I replied, “Why would you ever move from Cana­dia?”  She chuck­led.  She was obvi­ously very ner­vous about the whole thing.  So I kept jok­ing with her and things seemed to move on well enough.  How­ever, I didn’t feel a con­nec­tion and I wasn’t really attracted.  Friends for sure.

Date 4 — Kathy — This is going to sound mean, but the first thing I won­dered was “I think she’s too old for this dat­ing pool.”  Kathy is from New York and has a hint of that accent, which sends shiv­ers down my spine, just like when I hear Fran Drescher speak… Ugh.  We really had lit­tle to talk about.  I think there was a feel­ing of mutual dis­dain.  Wow.  I just wrote that. =)

Date 5 — Jackie — Jackie and Kathy are room­mates. The good news is that Jackie’s per­son­al­ity is a lot more friendly than her roomie’s.  The bad news is that she hates cats and told me as much when I said, “I’m a fan of shiny things, pup­pies and kitty cats.”  Lit­er­ally, it seemed that she lost inter­est right there on the spot.  I was pretty amazed actu­ally.  Yet, we still talked about a num­ber of things and I was hav­ing a good time with her, but it was appar­ent she was not hav­ing any­thing that I was offer­ing, kids.

Date 6 — Jena — I was very attracted to this date.  She was very friendly, she got my sense of humor, too.  She also shared a fas­ci­na­tion of mid­dle east­ern foods and try­ing dif­fer­ent restau­rants, which was great.  We spent time talk­ing about her job as a vet­eri­nar­ian and our favorite din­ing spots.  Very cool.  Even though I was quite inter­ested, I was get­ting the friend vibe from her.

Date 7 — Andrea — Andrea and Jena are friends.  Jena told me that Andrea likes web design, which is some­thing that I do for a busi­ness as well.  SO we talked busi­ness the whole time.  Noth­ing wrong with that, how­ever.  We were both very pas­sion­ate about the topic and she knew her stuff.  Any­way, def­i­nitely a good busi­ness con­tact and some­one that I’d hang out and have drinks with some time.

Date 8 — Jen­nifer — My friend and I agreed that this girl might have been high for this thing… And, maybe she was, or maybe she was super mel­low with the trade­mark stoner gig­gle.  I don’t know what the heck hap­pened here.  How­ever, I was still able to talk to her and had a good con­ver­sa­tion with her.  She seemed really nice.  Also from NY, sans awful accent.  She’s been in So Cal for only a few months, so it’s all new to her.  So I can respect that, com­pletely.  I felt there was mutual inter­est shared here.… We’ll see.

Date 9 — Alley — Boy.  This date.  This date kinda sucked.  This girl was dif­fi­cult to talk to.  It seemed like she was going through the paces and was over all dis­in­ter­ested in the process and in me.  Con­ver­sa­tion was painful.  I lit­tle to con­tribute and it was pretty appar­ent.  Ugh!  Get me out of here.  This one seemed to go an hour.

Date 10 — Anna — This date was fun.  It seemed to go by too quickly, which I think is a good sign.  I started off with, “So, have you been to prison?”  She shot back, “Which one?”  I knew I was in for a good time.  We talked a bit about the expe­ri­ence and then I asked her where she’s from and all that.  Really, this date seemed like three min­utes… It seemed so short.  I felt chem­istry here.

Date 11 — Amber — This date was kind of a “blah” for both of us, I think.  I think we were both ready for this thing to be over. We were cor­dial and kept up the convo, but nei­ther of us was excited to really press to get to know each other.  She’s a Speech Pathol­o­gist, works with kids and prob­a­bly didn’t like the fact that my friend said to me, at one point, “What, do you have a prob­lem with stut­ter­ing?  M-​​m-​​m-​​m-​​move it!”

Date 12 — Monique - This date was sim­i­lar as the one with Amber.  We were both friendly, cor­dial and just “done” with every­thing.  We were both not try­ing to impress.  Actu­ally we talked about our worst expe­ri­ences of the night, so that led to some laughs.  Cool beans, but noth­ing doing here, kids.

All in all, I’d say it was a fun night and I had a good time and met some cool peo­ple.  The 8 Minute Dat­ing moniker is a bit of a mis­nomer, how­ever.  On the web­site they describe the event as eight dates of eight min­utes each.  You do four dates, then a twenty minute break, and then do the next four dates.  The night I went that was not the case, As you read, I had twelve dates and they were around five to seven min­utes each.  I guess it’s pop­u­lar enough and they get to feed more peo­ple through the process, so I get that.  How­ever, there were some women I did not get to meet, which was too bad, because there were a few I wanted to talk to dur­ing the vent.

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Through­out the night you are expected to take a card to each date with you and take down the names and num­bers of each per­son you date.  Then, after your date you mark a box with one or two of the fol­low­ing choices: 2nd date, friend­ship or busi­ness.  When you are done, you log in to the web­site and enter your dates and your match.  If you and one of your dates match, your con­tact info is shared with one another, thus open­ing up the chance to meet up again.

I’ll post another arti­cle about who I matched up with next week. So check back!

Related posts:

1. The 8 Minute Dat­ing Experiment.
2. Speed Dat­ing. An Inter­est­ing Experience.
3. Three Dates & Some Gin Sound Mighty Good to Me…