No, the subject is not travel-related, although for me it turned out to be. However, I warned you that from time to time I might express my opinion or tell a story about other subjects that caught my attention. If you are not interested, just don’t read and patiently wait till the next update (:
Patience is a blessing.
I am not sure if I have many talents, and if I do I sure as hell I don’t like to brag about them. There are always people that are better than you. However, there is one particlar talent that I have and can be sure of that I must be in the top list of people who have this talent; getting distracted.
Distraction may not sound like a talent to you, and if it is, it’s not a very useful one. Both true and wrong. In everyday life, especially with my studies it can be an enormous pain in the ass to have an attention span of about 15 minutes, before either the ceiling or the mysterious scraps of thoughts that go through my head become more interesting. Despite that, getting distracted has gotten me where I am now. If I had a perfect focus I would not have ever experienced travelling the way I did now, maybe not at all. I would sure as hell not have stumbled upon the most wonderful experiences and people, sometimes by quite literally running into them (or a closed door, a tree, or a lantern post).
When learning for my exams this week, distraction hit soon enough. Facebook, eating something, making tea and replying to a text all come in a very unpractical ratio with actual studying. However, the distraction never seems to be enough. Updating my blog would be perfect, but I know that once I start on that I will accidentally spend hours instead of minutes, so I needed something different. This time it was…. Tinder.
Tinder is a rather controversial app that matches people by whether they like each others profile pic. If you both like each others photo, you’ll be able to send your “match” messages that will perhaps end up in a date. If the like was not mutual, the person will just disappear in the Tinder jungle, never to be seen again.
Some actual couples are known to have found their significant other via Tinder, however more often the app insinuates many sexual dates and a lot of dissapointment to those who expect more. Not so strange considering the app generates matches based on someones looks, not even that, more on someones photos (that could be photoshopped).
Personally I was not looking for sex or love or anything else that you can find on the app. I was mostly looking for distraction and driven by curiousity, so I started swiping. It didn’t take long before I had over 20 matches. Great, but what now? Less then a quarter of them had started an actual conversation. I tried starting one with another quarter and would leave the rest for now. 20 people is too many to chat with anyways, besides, I had exams to study for.
At first I was slightly dissapointed by the lack of actual text respoonses from people. Whether they’re on there to find their soulmate or to find someone to warm their bed for a night, communication is mostly appreciated. After a while this problem sorted itself out. The interesting people stayed at the top of the list, playing truth or dare, talking about common interests or complete bullshit. It turned out to be a lot of fun. I also met an Italian guy that was on a holiday in the Netherlands for a few days and was looking for someone to show him around, nothing more. Perfect opportunity for me to broaden my foreign network.
Unfortunately him and I didn’t get around to meeting each other, he would go back to Italy in two days, and I was too busy studying after all…
Not all those who wander are lost 