Datamatch: Flyby’s Shot at Love, Part 5

By Hyemi Park

“You must be so uncomfortable: you’re on a date, and your date starts undressing…”

Ahh, if I had a dollar for every time a date had said this to me. I’d only be a dollar richer, but I could probably get a bar of chocolate at CVS.

Luckily, Datamatch didn’t actually set me up with a male stripper, and Alexander J. Rohe ‘17 was just making a joke while he took off his sweater.

But let’s rewind for a second– back to the Monday after Valentine’s Day, when the Flyby writers decided that we all collectively would ask out our Datamatches.  My top match politely turned me down, probably because he was intimidated by my beauty, and definitely not because he didn’t want to be written about online. So naturally, I turned to the desperate act of Facebook stalking the rest of my matches. It was at this point that I realized that some of my friends actually knew these guys. Perfect.

So, like all great romances, my Datamatch date was orchestrated through texts with a mutual friend:

“okay, so i write for flyby and all the staff writers are trying to go on dates…so we can write about the ~datamatch experience~…i saw you were a mutual friend and i was just wondering if you knew him well enough to ask him if he would be willing to partake”

#desperate. But what’s more attractive than an inability to communicate effectively without emoticons?

After a couple of cancelled dates (one thing we have in common: we’re both super busy/did not know our schedules when trying to pick a time!) we finally agreed to meet at Clover for dinner.

Eva with her non-Datamatch friend Nacho, who also went on a Datamatch date for Flyby and posted a picture with Eva instead of his Datamatch #inception By Eva S. Monroe

Taking some advice on timing from my good friend and Crimson Staff Writer Ignacio Sabate ’18, I rolled up fashionably late. My date was already there. We ordered and made small talk while trying to listen for our names.

He ordered the rosemary fries. I ate the rosemary fries.

I had a good time talking to Alex, and we had a decent amount in common, like our music tastes and the fact that we both have done scientific research.

Admittedly, we’re no Chuck and Blair, no Rachel and Ross, no Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. And while we weren’t exactly ready to jump into the 36 questions to make us fall in love, I did enjoy getting to know him. Datamatch, unfortunately, isn’t magic, but it’s at least a conversation starter.

And hey, I got back to my dorm and my entire entryway was asking about my date (I conveniently had forgotten to mention that it was for an assignment…but a fake social life is better than none, right?) And I’ll take any excuse to not have to eat at Annenberg– even if I have to endure a striptease or two.