Flashback Friday #1: Blind Date (Part 1/2)

I’m starting a segment called Flashback Fridays. As I’ve mentioned in my intro post, I would really love to document my past experiences. Since I’ve only recently started my blog, I was unable to write about things I’ve done in the last 19 years (almost 20 – approaching the second decade! #Holla)

To kickstart my new segment, I’ll be writing about my first and only blind date. But prepare yourselves… it’s not your typical blind date where your friend sets you up with someone they think you might like but you actually end up thinking of ways to torture your friend later (like Rachel from FRIENDS).

I went on a blind date with my best friend from elementary school, Maria, during the summer of 2013. Since I was doing some summer courses at UBC, her roommate subleased her room to me and so began our many crazy roommate adventures.

*Note: We’ve also made a video documenting our blind date (before, during, and after).  Link at the end of this post.

My good friend Eric told me about this relatively new restaurant in Vancouver called The Dark Table. The unique thing about this restaurant is that you eat in the dark and your servers are either blind or visually impaired. When I heard about it, I quickly rushed home to tell Maria. We started to joke around about how cool it would be if we were to have a blind date at that restaurant because you wouldn’t know what the other person looks like during the entire date. Side note: it started off as a joke.

Anyway, as two single girls (at the time… sorry dudes, Maria’s taken now) in Vancouver running out of novel things to do, we decided to take the idea and run with it. Initially, we were going to set each other up with each other’s friends (for example, I would set Maria up with one of my single guy friends but she won’t know who he is until the end of the date and vice versa). But we thought about (get ready for the deep side of Mawisa – yes, that’s what we call ourselves) how we could really use this opportunity to eliminate bias before getting to know someone. I mean, think about it. When you meet someone, you helplessly form an impression. Whether it’s because of their looks, their clothes, or even their name, it is in our nature to form some sort of impression (good or bad). Even if you’re the nicest person out there who refuses to judge a book by its cover – let’s face it – you have some impression formed. So back to my story, we thought it would be ineffective to set each other up with our own friends just because we would obviously choose someone that would be slightly compatible with the other person. So to avoid that… we decided to try other means. (aaaanddd… this is where the crazy part comes in, ladies and gents)

We thought “where can we find people we’ve never met that would be willing to do this with us?” The one thing that really came to mind was – *drum roll please because I can already sense a freakout* – Craigslist. At first, we were going to make our own post but we thought against it. I mean, can you imagine the title of the post?! “TWO GIRLS WANTING TWO GUYS TO GO ON A DATE WITH THEM BUT WE DON’T NEED YOUR NAME OR ANY OTHER INFO JUST MEET US THERE”. Uh…  imagine all the creeps that would respond to that.

Instead, we decided to find our own dates through Craigslist under a section called “Men Seeking Women” (I SWEAR WE DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THAT SECTION UNTIL THIS EXPERIMENT). Now, keep in mind that the point of this “experiment” was to eliminate as much bias as we can but still do it safely so our pictures don’t end up on milk cartons.

We managed to find two anti-creepy posts by two friendly guys that were around our age. We responded to their ad to ask if they would be interested in this one-date venture. When they replied saying they were interested, we told them our plan. To make it more clear, I decided to type what we did in point-form below.

1. Setting a time

We made sure to set a time that worked for the 4 of us. This way, when Maria is on her date, I would be on mine. We would be there for each other if needed. #BestFriendsForever #PrentendToBeLesbiansIfAllFails #GotYoBackGirl

2. Calling the restaurant

The Dark Table requires prior reservations so we made sure we called the restaurant to set up 2 tables. The restaurant insists that all parties arrive before the reservation time so the server can bring you inside together. Since that wouldn’t work with our plan (we don’t want to know what they look like until after the date) we needed to specifically tell the restaurant so they can make alternate arrangements for us.

3. Utilizing unisex names!

We needed to leave a name for The Dark Table and we didn’t want to reveal our names prior to the date, so we made sure to use unisex names. This way, our dates would also be able to tell the servers the reservation name without spoiling information such as their ethnic backgrounds (eg. if their name was a traditional Chinese name, I would know beforehand that he is Chinese). Maria used Sam (her cat’s name!) and I used Alex (I’m not very original…).

4. Arriving before our dates.

We made sure to get there 15 minutes before the time we told our dates to ensure that we get inside the restaurant before they did. #ladiesfirst

5. Wait & Date! (Oh, I’m such a poet)

After waiting inside, we waited for our dates’ arrivals. #iwassoboredinside #icouldntusemyphone #icouldnttalktoanyone #iwaswritingblindlyinmynotebook

AFTERMATH

stay tuned for part two next Friday! 🙂

Love,

Lisa

PS. Our video version is here (excuse my poor video editing skills… it was my first time using iMovie LOL)