Last Wednesday I went up to the city with F1 & Ross for a party thing reddit was throwing to celebrate their open-sourcing. That I’d never used reddit and was only vaguely aware of what it was didn’t seem any good reason at all to skip free food. ;)
I kinda figured it’d be the same sort of deal as the previous party I’d attended with them (+Tom), so I wasn’t particularly interested for it in itself, but I also figured I need to get the hell out more, so, what the heck, right? It was only supposed to be two hours long anyway; I figured I could survive that long, worst case.
And I did, though, it kinda sucked. I was a bit of a third wheel, which was ultimately no-one’s fault but my own… but it really wasn’t my kind of scene. Mainly because it was predominantly a) web guys b) Y-Combinator startups and c) associated trophy wives and golddiggers. And so I’d do the usual “hey, so what do you do?” and they’d explain about their totally-original-and-completely-not-a-Facebook-rip-off social website, or whatever, and then reciprocate the question, to which my answer of ‘Apple’ would invariably yield a “ohhh..ohhhhhhhh” response, as in “oh my, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked… I hope you get better”. I was very much the dinosaur in that crowd, which while amusing at first has limited novelty value. It was also pretty ironic given that a lot of the people there had at some stage worked at Apple or some other large company, and their kind of elitist attitude may be deserving of the lifestyle choice of doing a startup, but certainly not by the value of their products – I mean, some of the people I spoke to have been in this startup scene for years and still have nothing to show for it other than some good tales and a “I Was There When Nothing Happened” shirt.
There were some cool people, nonetheless. All working on things I don’t know anything about nor particularly care for anyway, but certainly very talented. Unfortunately it’s a bit of an incestuous crowd, the whole startup scene, so everyone’s talking about people and events that I’ve never heard of or been to, and that dampens things as you can imagine.
As a result of this I eventually gave up trying to lead a conversation and just loitered around F1 & Ross. They ended up talking for quite some time with the guys (termed loosely; 1 girl included) from “I’m There”, which is actually a site concept I could definitely get into, though a cursory glance at it reveals it is seemingly broken. Ah well. :/ Anyway, I was saddened and amused by the fact that there were three of us, and three of them, but they also had their third wheel guy who just stands nearby and drinks slowly and says nothing. You could tell we were both thinking we should, like, talk to each other, or something. But we didn’t. It was hilariously cliché. :D
I put up with that standing-around-doing-nothing-for-ages for quite some time – about an hour longer than I would have liked – simply because Ross & said random girl where getting along rather nicely, which I was inwardly cheering Ross on for. But my patience is finite, so eventually we left, after a bit of prodding and poking on my part.
It was kind of a wasted night for me, in summary, and I was a bit cranky by the end of it, but, it was pretty much exactly like I expected, so I can’t fault anyone but me. At least I gave it a shot. I doubt I’ll bother with any further such events. It makes me wonder if I’m getting too old. ;)
It did actually give me something of an epiphany though, when I thought about it later… I realised that half the reason I can never really be bothered going out to a random bar and meeting girls, in the potentially-biblical sense, is that it’s not my idea of where to find love. I am too romantic, I have concluded, though with much amusement and sense of irony… I want to meet someone through some series of crazy events, in a crazy place, in the very cliché fashion portrayed by your typical Hollywood romantic-comedy. Meeting a girl in some random local bar seems like a great way to get stuck in a rut that’s “comfortable”, which I kind of feel I’ve done and the idea of revisiting it makes me ambivalent between pining and detesting.
Which furthermore has kicked me in my own arse to actually start looking at travel options this year – not expressly for that purpose, but certainly to facilitate it, perhaps. Thus far I’ve really only checked out Contiki’s tours, which seem like a good bet though I would like to try something a bit different perhaps, but… anyway… I started looking at Europe but the decent tours there are really 3+ weeks, which probably is not going to happen, especially if I want some time back in Australia as well… but then I noticed there’s an Egypt tour for nine days, cruising up and down the Nile, which sounds both timely, exciting and decadent. True, I’ve been trying to really focus on Europe, but, I have always wanted to go to Egypt – it was probably my most favoured destination as a child, come to think of it – and it does seem more convenient. Alas, kayak reckons it’ll set me back only about $6,000 or so for the flights… granted kayak is pretty useless outside the U.S., so I’m sure there’s much better available, but, it’s a pain because it means actual leg work. :/
But it’s a nice idea, anyway. I’ll be looking into it further this week, I’m sure.
