I had always wanted to go out on one of these and not because of the rave reviews they get in some publications. In fact, I would bet close to 100,000 dollars that what the reporter or date writes after the date is more fiction than fact.

No one wants to read about the blind date from hell. Well, almost no one. I know a number of people who ran mad with excitement at the prospect of reading clearly insane accounts of dates. They just get giddy at the thought of there being someone else out there who is slightly madder than themselves.

In order to accomplish this date, I did what anyone would. I made a list. This list did not include the names of my friends who had friends who I could possibly go on my date with. That, according to me, would be like in a strange way going on a date with my friends. And really, as I see them all the time, it would not be a new experience, more like meeting up to go to Rock night or something.

This list was made up of all the weird possible ways to meet new people. I use weird here to refer to means I would not normally employ to achieve a goal. And no, I did not even consider dialing that number that accompanies those weirdly worded advertisements around the city. You know the ones. The ones that scream out “GET A LOVER!” or more recently “GET BUMS”. They say the quick method has no side effects, I wonder how many gullible people are out there. In fact, it would be interesting to actually find out how many calls the person receives each day.

It was after some careful analysis and the fact that this method fell in with what I had the time to do anyway, I decided to look for my date online.

You may now shake your head in total disbelief and dismay. Disbelief because it was like the most obvious route for me to go and I actually choose to use it and dismay because I actually talked myself into going on the said date.

Now, you might be wondering why I did not just ask one of my friends to hook me up with one of their friends. Here are my reasons. I call very few people “friend” and generally I sometimes wonder how we became friends. Some of these people are wacky and I mean that in the best possible way. Sometimes I wonder if we would have been friends if we had met at different points in our lives. Suffice to say, their friends would never be my friends so a hook up would never go down. And if by some quirk of fate it did happen, I would probably spend all of the ten minutes of the date wondering how you (my friend and you) became friends and more importantly continued to be friends.

That aside, I started the usual way. Google. That proved ineffective because, unlike some people, I do not know the right combination of words to make Google miraculously burst forth with helpful information. As I was unable to find even one online dating/ blind date service in a town near me, I next ventured to yahoo! I figured I had an account with these chaps for a reason. The yahoo! Connection proved interesting. The world was like at my feet and I met interesting people. It was fun.

Then the reality of the matter hit me. François was more than 500 miles away from me. Alien probably could not speak English to save his life and Dwayne’s name reminded me a tad too much of drains and their inhabitants. I some how did not see a future with this man. I might have been a bit rash but how was I going to explain how I knew someone named Dwayne?

I had a sit down with the people who reside in my head and they decided that the best approach would be to look for people at most 50 minutes away from me.

As Uganda’s online community is not yet that advanced I played with the idea of creating my own online dating company. The prospect excited me no end until it occurred to me that with fraud being what it is and those crafty overly active Nigerians messing up the interwebs for us otherwise enterprising persons, this project would not last to see one moon.

Added to which, which Ugandan would pay for something they could get free?

So I did a little research and found chat rooms. Finally I was in my element. I could finally joke about Melanie (Sanyu Fm Dj) and have fun at her expense. I could debate the rather humorless Comedy night and have my thoughts confirmed or trashed! I could finally swap stories about home with people from home.

This little high lasted a short time. It is hard to read someone’s response to your joke especially when you have not spoken to them and know absolutely next to nothing about them.

I am getting a head of myself. I need to go through chat room etiquette so you can fully understand what I went through and help those of you who intend to venture into a chat room as a result of this post.