16 Swipes No Breakfast , livre ebook

Marshall Cavendish International - Mark Powell

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83 pages

English

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16 Swipes takes you on a journey of discovery through a rinse cycle of Tinder dates, personal encounters, and struggles, as author Mark Powell navigates the sea of online profiles in search of his soul mate. Through a fair number of swipes and a very unfair number of breakfasts, you'll smile, split your sides laughing and be thankful to have dodged these yourself. Beyond the humour, you will gain insights into the relationships to avoid, situations to extract yourself from, and the women you should never get serious with. Mark candidly shares his own mistakes so you gain valuable dating lessons and identify with the near misses. You will sympathise, empathise, and maybe even recognise your own situations as Mark - with his old school values - embarks on a wild ride in our modern dating scene problems in Singapore.

Sujets

Dating

Humour

Informations

Publié par	Marshall Cavendish International
Date de parution	24 novembre 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789814868983
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0450€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

2020 Mark Andrew Powell
Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Requests for permissions should be addressed to the Publisher, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited, 1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196. Tel: (65) 6213 9300. E-mail: genref@sg.marshallcavendish.com Website: www.marshallcavendish.com/genref
The publisher makes no representation or warranties with respect to the contents of this book, and specifically disclaims any implied warranties or merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose, and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
Other Marshall Cavendish Offices: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 99 White Plains Road, Tarrytown NY 10591-9001, USA Marshall Cavendish International (Thailand) Co Ltd, 253 Asoke, 12th Flr, Sukhumvit 21 Road, Klongtoey Nua, Wattana, Bangkok 10110, Thailand Marshall Cavendish (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Times Subang, Lot 46, Subang Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Batu Tiga, 40000 Shah Alam, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia.
Marshall Cavendish is a registered trademark of Times Publishing Limited
National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data
Name: Powell, Mark Andrew. Title: 16 swipes : no breakfast / Mark Powell. Description: Singapore : Marshall Cavendish, 2020 Identifier(s): OCN 1124732025 | eISBN: 978 981 4868 98 3 Subject(s): LCSH: Online dating. | Dating (Social customs)--Technological innovations. | Marriage brokerage--Technological innovations. Classification: DDC 306.73--dc23
Printed in Singapore
Dedicated to all who surf Tinder in the hope of getting breakfast!
And to all who inspired this book, I m a better person for our encounters and I hope you re all better off for them too.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
SWIPE 1 Upon a Spiral Staircase
SWIPE 2 Fleeced Like a Sheep
SWIPE 3 For Whom the Phone Rings
SWIPE 4 The French Connection
SWIPE 5 In the Swing of Things
SWIPE 6 Radiation Alert
SWIPE 7 The Tinder Finger
SWIPE 8 Take My Pulse
SWIPE 9 Miss Forgetful
SWIPE 10 Crazy Rich Asian
SWIPE 11 The Princess
SWIPE 12 Los Angeles Sun
SWIPE 13 The Butterfly has Landed
SWIPE 14 Photoshop Abuse
SWIPE 15 The Player
SWIPE 16 Ladies are Adjustable
SWIPE 17 Two s Company, Three is just Weird
EPILOGUE
TIPS FOR SUCCESS
GLOSSARY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
POEM TO LOVE LOST (A SONNET)
To my very special girlfriend, on this very special day, I m writing you a sonnet for there is so much I want to say.
Thanks for thinking I m funny, handsome and smart, even though I m not, and though I hardly say it, I think you re hot.
Thanks for being with me and seeing what others do not, for saying you love me, even when I do not.
Thanks for taking me to places that I couldn t have gone alone, and for always making your place feel just like my own.
Thanks for always being there, to make sure that I m okay. I know that when I need you, you are just a buzz away.
Thanks for all the good times and the ones that are to come.
Thanks for always listening, to all that I have to say. I hope that one day you will be mine to stay.
Now this is all fine, and well, a dream to be sure. So first, I ll need to find you, please be on Tinder.
INTRODUCTION
To Date or Not to Date
When Tinder first launched in 2012, it was an instant success. The now infamous dating app made over a million matches in less than two months, becoming an overnight sensation. From college campuses to office towers in every city, and everything in between, the application gained recognition from tech s most elite.
In the six years after its launch, the company was valued at around US 3 billion and is one of the highest-grossing apps of all time. With a pedigree that good, it was good enough for me to give it a shot.
If you re genuinely single, divorced, separated or widowed and ready to start again, looking for love, companionship or just benefits of a physical kind after a hibernation, then dating apps like Tinder offer an ideal way to find others just like yourself. As for me, I have been amicably divorced for over a decade, and it s taken me five years after that divorce to feel ready to start over, and then another five years to figure out that I m utterly useless at dating.
So this book bears testament to my adventures - or more often than not, misadventures - coming out of a period of solitude and neck deep into the dating scene. The fact is that it is not easy to take the plunge into this whirlpool we call dating and doing so in your fifties is just harder. We tend to be set in our ways and sometimes less adaptable in our older years. Or maybe we are still boys who have not grown up and should know better.
But fret not, for there are many people in the autumn of their lives who have entered the dating scene for one reason or another. So stay hopeful and it may just work for you.
I thought long and hard about whether this book should be written and couldn t decide until a female friend - over lunch one Sunday - listened to yet another hilarious account of my roller coaster of an online dating experience on Tinder, and commented that it was a story that needed to be told. That was the moment I felt compelled to write this book in the hope that my experiences will help others. By help , I mean it could confirm that you are sane and need no professional help, or if you had made the same mistakes, then reading my accounts will make you feel better and not so alone.
Interestingly, women seem to enjoy my stories more than men and looking back at these now, I have no idea how I survived the many challenging experiences.
To set the backdrop, I had long given up sharking around bars or clubs for suitable dates, perched on a bar stool eyeing up ladies in the hope that they would smile at me. In the rare instance that they actually did smile back, they were usually the types of ladies who would leave a meter running. Please note, I m not so desperate that I need to pay for companionship. At least not yet.
I also deduced that blind dates set up by well-meaning friends is a no-go zone, to avoid potential awkwardness should the date end in disaster. Imagine arriving at the agreed venue looking for the sporty, athletic, well-groomed, social extrovert that was described, only to meet someone who can t make eye contact and has not seen the insides of a gym. This goes both ways - I was once described as a man long past his prime and too full of himself .
Feedback is always good, if not hard to accept at times, so I turned to Tinder for quick, effortless results - all I had to do was swipe right and engage in some light-hearted banter if there was a match. The stage for romance was be set and I just had to sail into the sunset. Perfect, it sounded so easy.
Many experiences later - and I ve honestly lost count - here I am writing this book. These are 16 of my most memorable Tinder dates. It would be fair to say that I had gone on these dates with too high an expectation, which is probably why most of my encounters were an epic failure. My simple advice: Don t set any expectations at all.
Just so that we are clear, I am just as much to blame, if not more so, than the other party. So names and places have been obscured to protect all parties. These stories are meant to be entertaining for you, albeit at my expense, and also inspirational. Today, I m happier than ever being single, living alone and in the company of good friends. My dating days are over for a while, fate will either play its hand or not, and life will be life. These dates have made me a better person and I hope it is so for those involved as well.
The dictionary defines online dating as A way of starting a romantic relationship on the internet, by giving information about yourself or replying to someone else s information.
If only things were as simple as they seem. Then again, where would all the fun be if it was.
SWIPE 1
Upon a Spiral Staircase

It was a perfect Tinder Sunday when the first encounter took place - the monsoon rain was pouring torrentially down outside with bouts of thunder rumbling in the distance, I was comfortably stretched out on my sofa at home with a mug of steaming hot English Breakfast tea. What better time and place for a bit of private Tinder surfing?
Top Tip 1: I place an emphasis on the location and time being private because I m shocked at how many people surf Tinder when they are out on a date. Check it out next time you are in a bar or restaurant - look over a few shoulders, you may be surprised.
So, from my safe place, I fired up Tinder and began swiping. What do you know - I had 24 likes! Feeling rather flattered by this, I decided to explore those first. I m not sure what the general hit rate is, maybe twenty-four is actually a norm, or even low, but my ego loved it!
Anyway, one by one, those ego-inflating likes were reviewed, considered and deleted. In my defence, when there are no profile pictures, a man has nothing to go on and would only wonder: Why would she not want to display a photo on a dating website? Something to hide? If there isn t a biography, then maybe she has nothing interesting to say. Awkward pictures, like one of a dog licking your face, makes me feel a tad queasy. How does one interpret that? Whilst a banner with a quote about how spiritual you are makes me nervous. All of these made me question the supremacy of Tinder over the more traditional ways of finding a soulmate.
Next up, I carefully reviewed the new faces on offer. Mixed among these were the prominent fake profiles and catfish. To my knowledge, Jenn