The (Online) Dating Game (Episode 2)

Well I’ve obviously got too much time on my hands. I am one of those lucky people that doesn’t have to work too hard, and can still earn a decent living, and I mainly work from home on my PC. Recently I have had so much time on my hands
that I have been giving a lot of thought to retiring to Thailand within the next 18 months on an O visa. It wouldn’t really be a retirement, as I would carry on what I am doing at the moment. All I need is Internet access.
If
it happens, I would like to be in a relationship before I make the final move. I don’t really want to spend the rest of my life trawling the bars, and on occasion, wonder how both I and the girl whose name I have forgotten, but is sleeping
in my bed, managed to get here. So as mentioned in my last contribution to this site, I have been looking at the online dating scene.

So far, I have had several encounters, and to some extent, they have helped me refine my searches. Of course before you can start to search, you have to enter your profile. The whole idea of this is to give your potential partner, some idea
of what she may be letting herself in for. So, if I had to make things as short as possible and do it in 25 words or less, I could say “Farang, aged 57, overweight, smokes too much, and a slob around the house seeks female 18-35, rich,
beautiful, clever and speaks perfect English”. Object: to keep him in the style to which he would like to be accustomed.

In my previous contribution to this site, I mentioned how I had to actively discourage Filipinas from messaging me. I still get dozens of messages daily from them. I wrote in my profile, “I have no interest in visiting the Philippines,
so unless you are coming to Dublin, there is no point in contacting me”. In spite of this, I would get dozens of messages daily from these ladies. I started by responding, “Read my profile”. After a while, I got bored with
this and changed it to “Read my profile. When are you coming to Dublin”? Within about half a dozen of these messages, I get a reply, “When you send me ticket?” Aaaggh! Now I just ignore them.

I have a vision, probably unfair of two scenes: one in Isaan, and the other in Manila. In the first, the family tell their beautiful daughter. “Som, I am very sorry but the family has bad financial problems, and you are going to have
to work in a bar in BKK”. In Manila, the family says, “Christina, I am very sorry, but the family has bad financial problems, and you are going to have to go down the Internet cafe”. Somehow, I think they would not be discouraged
at writing to me if I had used my 25 word profile.

Fortunately, I am not restricted to a 25 word profile, and before I wrote mine, I had a good look at what the ladies were writing. I won’t tell you how I described myself, but there is an old song called “You’ve got to
ac-cent-u-ate the positive”.

I would start out by saying that I did put “seeking female 18-35. I noticed as I looked at the profiles, there were 18 year olds and plus, seeking a “male 18-80”, mainly from Isaan, and even had a few of these write to
me. The idea of a beautiful young girl in tow might be initially appealing. However, I realised, that by the time she was in her thirties, I would be in my 70’s and could I really expect her undying love, as my body deteriorated? A couple
of other thoughts occurred to me. An 18 year old girl who was seeking a male aged 18-80 was probably quite desperate, but was even likely to be more desperate by the time she realised what she had let herself in for, and somehow, I couldn’t
see a girl like this going without making sure she was what she adequately felt, compensated for her own mistake.

The second thing was that I found it very hard to establish a “mental connection” with these younger girls. And no. It doesn’t have to be all about lust. With a lot of these younger girls, you could see they were online
for hours at a time and they would answer your messages about once an hour. There were two likely scenarios: either they were starting out on the road to becoming an Internet tycoon, or more likely, they were casting their nets wide and far. Of
course, the two are not mutually exclusive I suppose. Seriously though, if a girl is not really interested in me, I would prefer to pass on to the next and there are plenty.

My first MSN webcam experience soon arrived. She was an Isaan girl, aged 31. We chatted for a few days, but she had a bit of baggage that when I considered my position, left me uneasy. She had been married to a Thai policeman who had left
her for a younger woman. She had a 13 year old son. As we all know, there are very few animals that can be difficult to tame as a teenage boy. I had this vision that he might not like me. We argue. He tells Dad. I end up as a guest of the best
police force money can buy!

I sent her a polite message explaining my fears, and wishing her well. I can be a bit of a coward when it comes to confrontation, especially when the other person is blameless and a victim of circumstance. In this position, I did the only
thing I could think of. I blocked her on MSN. <I think you're very wise and I always advise caution when getting involved with a woman who has a father or brother who wears that unmistakable brown uniform – Stick>

My next encounter was with a girl from Buriram. We did the exchange on the Internet dating site, and then moved on to MSN. She described herself as “very attractive, 5’2” and 50 kg. Before we got to MSN, she sent me some
photos. In one, she is wearing a black dress, and there is a clear glimpse of white thigh at the top of her stockings. My brain started to move three feet in a southerly direction.

Eventually, we do the Messenger bit. When I see her “in the flesh” so to speak, she looks quite a bit different from her photo. She is nearer 65 kg, which doesn’t look that good on a 5’2” frame. Turns out
the picture was four years old. I am trying to look for an excuse to politely extricate myself from this one (I told you I can be shallow). Anyway, due to the hour, it’s about 3:00 AM in Dublin (I said I had too much time on my hands),
I claim tiredness and promise to chat tomorrow.

What happened next on the following day, I have no explanation for, but I look in my inbox on the dating site, and see a message “XXXXXX is interested in you”. I go to the profile, where there is no picture of XXXXXX. I look
at the profile, and read it. She is “Very Attractive, 5”2’, 50 kg, and lives in BKK. As I read the profile further, I begin to think it looks familiar. I pull up the profile of Mz Buriram, and they are about 90% identical.
This includes the fact that they have the same mobile phone and e-mail address. I don’t know what was going on, but I dashed off a quick e-mail accusing her of toying with my affections, and told her not to contact me again, not forgetting
to press the block button on MSN. For those of you who might think harshly of me, I have already said I can be a bit of a coward in these situations. I haven’t got the guts to tell a girl, “You are too fat for my liking”.

On to the next. This time she is 35 and lives in BKK. I read the profile, and I can’t stop laughing. It’s well written and she is very, very funny. She also has a most gorgeous smile. We start using the dating message service
and exchange messages for two hours. We exchange MSN messages and e-mail addresses and agree to chat tomorrow. I have to tell you now, I am a bit besotted with this one. She is smart, pretty and very funny. She has only just finished work. It
is 4.00 AM Thai time and she lives in BKK. Ummmm! Wonder what she does for a living?

I have an idea and it doesn’t really worry me that much. Most of the nicest girls I have met in Thailand work in bars, and they have never done me any harm, and have usually been good company.

I tell someone about her, and he hints that I need to look out for the possibility that she works in a bar. I had already thought of that, but it’s nice when people look out for your welfare.

When I wake up the following morning, I have an e-mail from her, with photos attached. One of them shows what I would call a large Maori style tattoo on her shoulder. Now I have a theory about girls and tattoos. Why would someone with beautiful
skin want to harm it in such a way? My theory is that girls with tattoos don’t like themselves. So what? Well the problem is if you tell someone that doesn’t like themselves, that you like, or even love them, they don’t usually
believe you. Their own thought processes are they don’t like themselves, so why should anyone else?

To be fair, I do know girls who have the odd tattoo that are not like this, but my general experience is the more tattoos a girl has, the more self-destructive the personality.

As I said, I find myself besotted by this one. She is going to get the benefit of the doubt. We do the MSN bit. I get around to mentioning the tattoo, and that I am not fond of them. She tells me she has seven. Oh dear. She then tells me
she got them when she split from a long-term Farang boyfriend, saying she was angry at the time. I can hear the phrase “self-destructive personality” screaming in my head. As she talks, and can she talk, she tells me that when the
next long-term Farang left her, she tried to kill herself.

As I said, I have this theory about women and tattoos…

To be fair, I do like her, but the prospect of spending time as a long-term boyfriend is scary. Her first response is to self harm with tattoos when one leaves. Her next is to self harm with a suicide attempt when the other leaves. In both
cases, she admits it was a stupid thing to do at the time. So come the day that if I decide to leave her, I am the one that gets the knife between the shoulder blades as she realises that she shouldn’t be hurting herself, but the cause
of her pain.

And so onto the next one. She is in Khon Kaen. She is pretty without being remarkable, but what makes her different from her predecessors is that she hasn’t spent too much time telling me how unlucky she is to be born Thai. Oh, and
she’s clever! I do like a clever woman. Perhaps there will be that mental connection to look forward too?

So far we have chatted for about five hours on MSN. I wonder if I should tell her I am a Marxist? As the great man once said, “I could never become a member of any club whose standards were low enough to have me as a member”.
Maybe the same should apply to any girl who would be genuinely interested in me