Stage Eight: A New Beginning

The last week has been spent getting used to the website OKCupid. I have to admit, if you are looking for something to suck away all of your time get involved with one of these websites. It is great for the inner voyeur and gives you the illusion of intimacy.

OKCupid is very different from PlentyofFish. For one thing, it has an area called a Quiver (in keeping with the cupid theme). This is where prospects are placed after the "staff robot" has taken a look at your profile and found some possible matches. It looks at the interests and requirements you have written in your profile to determine this. As yet, I have not agreed with the staff robot. (Surprise, surprise!) One major flaw (in my opinion) of this website is that you can't seem to pick a country as a requirement. Most of the men in my Quiver have been from NY state. I appreciate that the website doesn't see boundaries to love. However, this is not very practical since, if you did find love, one of you would eventually have to leave his/her country.

There is also an area called "Journals". You can write your own, as well as peruse others. This can give you a very good idea of education level, attitude, as well as insights into someone's personality. One morning recently, I got totally sucked in to reading all of the journal entries of a man in Michigan who has just gone through a divorce. My heart was aching for him! It's the online version of reality TV.

One of the fun and mindless features of OKC is that there are a myriad of quizzes that you can take. There is a vast range of topic:

1) The Personality Defect Test
2) The Lover Style Profile Test
3) The Four Variable IQ Test
4) The North American Trivia Test
5) The OKCupid Kissing Test

There are literally hundreds of these tests. And you can see which tests others have taken and what they scored. This site has a lot of gadgets that seem to be created just to keep you on the site. Oh, and I was surprised to find that it has chat built in. All of a sudden a man popped up asking me how I was! It was a short chat since he was, yet again, an American. You can turn the chat feature off if you aren't interested.

So other that having much more of a "fun" factor, there really hasn't been too much that's been different from the main function. I am still getting the same sorts of messages from men that I usually cross off my list for one reason or another. There has not been one yet that I've thought I'd like to meet.

I have, however, decided to meet up with a man that messaged me on POF about a month ago. He was in my possibilities list and now I have decided to see where it might go. He is an aviation engineer. He asked if we could speak on the phone. Two days ago I called him. We spoke for over half an hour and I have to say, it was an incredibly normal, pleasant conversation. At the end he asked if I'd like to meet up for a drink this week. I said yes and closer to the end of the week we will set up a time and place. So off I go again with an open mind, but with more subdued expectations. Wish me luck!