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Bored in Berlin


“But I don’t feel the sparks”, she said.

“That will come later once we start making out”, I replied.

Or more like that is what I wanted to reply, but the wannabe-dignified, in-reality-ball-less me held my tongue and just strolled along in rejection, knowing I had pretty much talked the past 3 hours into the friendzone.

What was I thinking? Here was a woman from back home who had tasted the holy grail, the white man, one of the best of the human specimen in all his glory. And once you drank wine, there was no way you were going back to chocolate milk (#subtlereferencetomyself).

With the number of suitable candidates in close proximity reducing by a drastic 100%, it was time to put out the ad again.

“Lonely and poor student, seeking warmth, security and comfort in the cuddle of a stunning, Snow-White-like Fraulein, if not, worse case, remotely better than average-looking woman, so my mother will not marry me off to a woman whom I barely know and all my relatives won’t suspect I am a homosexual”.

But nobody like the truth. I had to touch it up like just a bit.

“Singaporean Masters Student who has worked/lived/studied in 3 continents and love to hang out with friends, travel and see the world and experience different cultures. In my free time, I love to meditate, read books, play sports and hike.

Adventure!”

My playboy friend there was something about the word ‘Adventure’ that turned woman on, so I threw it in, along with the standard 4 pictures, one of just me (#howiwishilookedlikeallthetime), one doing an exciting activity (#badboy), one of me with a large bunch of friends (#iamnotaloner) and one with me in Paris (#iwillbringyouthereoneday).

Then I started swiping.

Reality has a way of bringing you back to Earth, or in my case, to make me crash down from a thousand feet from the sky onto a ground full of sharp gravel and then drag me through rocky ground till I have penetrated the Earth’s core and reached hell. After 5 days of incessant swiping, the only result was that OkCupid ran out of server space storing the data on all the woman I had swiped right to. In the tab,’ Who likes you’, it read,

‘Nobody’

Then, when I was about to give up, there was one.

OkCupid went crazy. Within a moment, I was told that somebody had (finally) liked me. My status was upgraded from ‘Nobody’ to ‘A-list’ (Brad Pit, here I come!) and I was encouraged to check out her profile, see her pictures and get in touch with her.

Just for $15.99 a month.

And I did what any sensible man would do.

I went to Ruyaam, had the best kebab in Berlin and made peace with myself.

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