Boer soek 'n Vrou

To my English readers: This post is in my home language Afrikaans. It’s about a strange dating type show where girls essentially enter to meet a farmer. Culturally, this may sound weird and I’m sure if you try and put this post through Google Translate it will sound even weirder. Don’t bother. I’ll write the next post in English again as my next date has been introduced and we plan to meet up this week.

  

Afrikaans pappa! Hierdie inskrywing kan slegs in my ou hartstaal geskryf word en dit voel skoon vreemd om nie in die ‘taal van die vyand’ te dink nie.

Ek is seker daarvan julle het al van KykNet se program Boer soek ’n Vrou gehoor. Verlede jaar sou ek ingeskryf het omdat ek ’n weddenskap met ’n vriendin verloor het, maar kort voor die inskrywings gesluit het is daar darem vir my gesê dat ek nie meer hoef in te skryf nie. Ek was ongelooflik verlig want ek het nog nooit regtig die program gekyk nie.

Ek het so paar episodes laasjaar gevang, maar nie regtig veel opgelet nie. En toe is dit 2013, en ek is steeds alleenlopend en toe herinner my liewe vriendin my dat ek miskien hierdie jaar moet inskryf.

Hier is hoe die program werk: 10 boere oor die land word gekies en aan die land voorgestel. Daarna kry meisies die geleentheid om vir hierdie 10 liefdesbriewe te skryf waarna dit aan die boere voorgehou word. 5 boere word hier geelimineer omrede net die 5 boere wat die meeste briewe ontvang het aanbeweeg. Die boere lees dan hulle liefdesbriewe en kies dan ’n sekere aantal meisies om te ontmoet. Ek dink hierdie is 10 meisies – ek sê mos ek het nie regtig opgelet in die klas verlede jaar nie. Mos.

Na ’n kort onderhoud/gesprek met die boer kies hy dan 4 meisies om saam met hom plaas toe te gaan en dan stuur hy een vir een huistoe totdat hy nou met sy ideale plaasvroutjie opeindig. Pragtig.

Snaaks genoeg wil ek hierdie jaar inskryf en dis presies wat ek gaan doen. Ja, ek weet wat die meeste mense se reaksie is. ‘Neeeeee, Jeanine! Dis nou desperaat. Jy weet dis ’n klug en die hele land gaan dit sien’. Ja, ek weet dit. Maar regtig? Ek verstaan nie dat mense gereeld gaan draf en hul eetgewoontes kan aanpas om hulle nuwejaarsvoornemens te hou nie, maar as dit by ‘dating’ kom dan sit hulle net agteroor en wag vir iets om te gebeur. Julle ken die ou sêding: jy kan nie die lotto wen as jy nie ’n kaartjie koop nie.

The scum of the dating world: The Players

It’s funny how life works. My last post explained the very reason it’s a good time to fall in love. Unfortunately, I spent my time since then consoling my friends as it seems everyone is breaking up.

I asked two of my friends for permission to share some of their experiences as I believe both of them have come into contact with that type of men that have a certain bad-boy allure that drives some women wild. They know how to make a woman feel special and really turn on the charm to get what they want. You know the type - we call them ‘players’.

It is really difficult to define a ‘player’. You will definitely not find a dictionary explanation. Some call them Pick-up-artists, Casanovas or even ‘dating predators’. In the simplest terms possible, I find good synonyms to be asshole, loser and jerk. You may have your own favourite terminology, of course, but the man himself is always the same.

The aim of a player is to win your affection and the mark that this has happened is often that the relationship becomes sexual – they have achieved their conquest. However, this is not always the case. Players these days are more cunning.

For me a player is so called because he is actively partaking in a game. Let’s say you have a rugby player who is partaking in the Super 15. He has to abide by certain rules, he needs to practice and above all the needs to know what the aim of the game is. The same is true for players in the dating world. They have certain rules by which they play. I’ve listed the most obvious ones and I’ve tried to make a few suggestions as to how you can spot whether he is following them…

'Tis the season to fall in love...

In the first quatrain of his 73rd sonnet, Shakespeare used autumn as a metaphor for aging

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

But in the face of deterioration and mortality, Shakespeare reminds us, love can not only endure, it can grow stronger.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long

Okay, so maybe you don’t like poetry that much. Maybe you hate it. Maybe you hate it as much as autumn. It is the time for colds and flu and feeling miserable. We are only now starting to approach the half way mark until the end of 2013 and the falling leaves inevitably remind us of the passing of things. It is in this time of year that people all around start feeling depressed. Some even suffer from a form of depression called seasonal affective disorder when the days shorten, the nights get longer and temperatures drop.

Well, Prof. Till Roenneberg, a chronobiologist at the Institute for Medical Psychology in Munich, knows that autumn totally bums people out. What is a chronobiologist? It’s the dude in the white coat that studies a specialized bundle of cells that regulates our cyclical processes or biological rhythms (brought on by example: seasonal changes) and how that affects our physiology and behaviour.

Roenneberg discovered that we bounce back from the cold autumn blues by seeking to create more warmth on the inside. We fight the autumn depression with… falling in love!

You are going to love this.

The 'future spouse' list

A while back my best friend encouraged me to make a ‘future spouse’ list. You know the kind where you list all the qualities that you look for in a partner. Yeah, that list. Everyone needs to have some idea of what they are looking for and making this list, she explained, is like ‘praying with fine print’.

I don’t believe that this list will magically manifest itself if I burn it, put it under my pillow for a week or send it off into the internet… I don’t believe you can ‘order a soul mate from the universe’.

I also don’t believe that God will cater to all of my wants. I know that He will provide me with what I need.  This list isn't so much as a checklist or a rigid document to guide my future, as it is a reminder of what I learned about myself and about relationships.

I found the notes of Marilyn Graman, author of There is NO PRINCE and Other Truths Your Mother Never Told You quite useful and decided to shape my own list according to her mini-lists. It’s a great way to distinguish between what really matters and allows you to get clear about what you want in a partner.

Here goes:

Some Ex-perience

I have written this post about five times. I deleted it about 5 times.

I have been making amends this past year. It has been an arduous and testing experience of clearing the baggage of my past and learning to be honest with myself and with others. It has also been one of the most liberating and rewarding experiences of my life that has helped put me in a position to be of maximum use to the people around me.

This week, I had to make an amend to my ex.

Stalking is only one letter away from talking...

I am a self-confessed Facebook stalker.

Being single, I find this one of the greatest forms of easy entertainment on those lonely nights. Who doesn’t find themselves mindlessly clicking away from time to time? I don’t necessarily mean spying, just checking up on your friends from time to time out of curiosity.

I prefer to think of this activity as "research" or as I like to call it Facestalking. I find it pretty amazing that the ability to access information can lead us to find people in way that we never had before. We can find so much information on a person by simply typing a name into Google and hitting the search button. We have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs.

Researchers at the University of Missouri School of Journalism have proved that online stalking, scientifically speaking, feels good. By monitoring students while they navigated Facebook and measuring physiological responses associated with motivation and emotion, the researchers found that the students derived the most pleasure from activities described as "social searching" or what they call "goal-oriented surveillance" (how cool is that!) that involved visiting another friend's profile page, reading their Wall posts, perusing their photos, checking out the events they'd recently attended.

So, why am I telling you all this? 

My date with Number 5

My dating life has turned into a slow churn, understandable for the amount of work I have been swamped with. I have been throwing myself into many different projects and I have been relatively nonchalant about the need to find my Prince Charming at this moment.

My dating service has not been too preoccupied and notified me that I would be receiving a call from Number 5 last week. Our conversation over the phone was nothing to write home about but we decided to meet on Tuesday as I was in Cape Town the weekend. Busy as always.

Here is what I knew beforehand: He is a 32 year old who lives in Johannesburg. He owns his own IT company. He loves reading, being outdoors, Latin and ballroom dancing and he was described as being an ‘energetic and outgoing personality, a real gem’. He is English. Never been married. No kids. (Yeah! No kids!)