Chris
I know I shouldn’t have eaten dinner, but the aroma of fresh curry was too alluring. Justifying it to myself by saying that the food at Metro would just be “nibbles” I tucked into one-and-half helpings of flat-made Thai and half a small glass of Jim Bean bourbon in an attempt to combat nerves. It didn’t do too much. Dastardly rice. Why must you be so absorbent? I guess it’s all the starch. The day the date took place will henceforth be known as “worst weather ever day”. Sleet was assaulting me at a horizontal angle and the intermittent dumpings of hail were literally making certain classes during the day totally inaudible. It wouldn’t have surprised me one bit if she never turned up, and I wouldn’t have blamed her. As it happened I was waiting around 25 minutes. The friendly barman kept on saying that it looks like she might be a “no-show”. I spent the time conversing with him about bar-topics: “So, how does one go about becoming a bartender?” “What was the old bar like before you had it refurbished?”Just as I was about to finish my Speights, and was beginning to agree with his estimate, she arrived. She’d been stuck at the top of the hill de-icing her car’s windscreen and nervously driving down the slippery hill in a car that didn’t have a “really good brake”. She risked her life to meet a stranger. Cool girl. The preparatory alcohol proved to be totally unnecessary. She was incredibly easy to talk to, and we had a little bit in common. We were studying in a similar area, and knew a small handful of the same people. I admitted to having eaten dinner beforehand, and I felt pretty bad about it. Ordering a large seafood pizza as well as some soup and a banoffee pizza we blew through the $60 tab in one foul-swoop – that worked out really well, she was driving and I wasn’t in the mood to get drunk anyway. We discussed a whole bunch of topics: she wasn’t religious (great!), but also wasn’t at all aggressive about it and thought that freedom of thought was important (even better).
We chatted about horror movies for a little bit – she was a heck of lot more educated on the topic than I was, and I couldn’t contribute much. In the end she gave me a lift home, which meant I got to avoid Dunedin’s horrifying winter hell. I had a real nice time.
Trisha
Hail, snow and rain. Temperature 0 degrees. It was the worst possible day to have a blind date on. The fact that I live on a hill pretty far away from any civilization doesn’t make it any better. I have never done anything this crazy, but it was Dunedin and experiencing different aspects of the student life was goal. So why not try a blind date?It was quite short notice for the date and all kinds of horrid scenarios played out inside my head, including getting ma karate friend to the rescue if anything creepy happened.
Drove down the hill at 20km/hr, still skidded at turns and nearly had a heart attack. Arrived late at metro, and assumed the only guy at the bar to be the one. He was friendly looking, quite tall and slender. The conversation was awkward at first but we got talking and found a few similarities between us. He was a med student; we have friends in common, chatted about a variety of things from future plans to religion and beliefs; from human cruelty to scary movies. I tend to ramble on about various weird things, hope it was entertaining. The bar tab seemed a lot at first but was quickly gone, the pizza and desert were pretty awesome. Alcohol free for me as I was driving, so any chat was strictly sober and non-regrettable. He has a few interesting points, especially his lack of ability to stay awake late at night, hence the early curfews.
We stayed at metro the whole evening, nothing else happened apart from the chat, but he was easy going and we are definitely friends now. Nothing romantic at all happened, sorry to disappoint. We left as more people started to come in. I drove him home and the night ended with a slightly awkward and unexpected hug.
Overall, it was an enjoyable experience and nice food and it is always good to make new friends. Thank you Critic for setting me up with someone far less scary than I anticipated and Metro for the awesome bar tab and food.