Professionals In The City - Washington DC

I miss Pros in the city. They were an event organizer in DC targeting young single professionals. Most of their events range from $10 mixers to $50 classes. They usually offered several events per day. I remember doing random things with them, from small mixers to tubing down the Potomac river to handwriting analysis seminar and more.

I guess that was the advantage of living in DC - lots of people with tons of things to do. The "main excitement" in Greensboro are the fratastic bars filled with kids in their early 20's. The southern culture conditions locals to settle down, and stay home after that age, but oh well.

Such is life.

Salsa Class at The 411 in Winston Salem

So I randomly decided to join a salsa class at a club called "the 411" in Winston Salem. It was fun, we did it in a way that we kept rotating and switching partners. Since there were about 9 guys and 8 girls (including the instructor), a guy's out of a partner 1 out of 9 "rotations". I learned the basic Salsa 6-step, the instructor taught some bells and whistles in addition to the 6 steps, such as the steps to rotate to the next partner, both the girl's version and the guy's version.

Since we rotated quickly, with each rotation lasting anywhere between 10 seconds and 45 seconds (depending on when the teacher calls it), I had multiple sessions with each girl. I enjoyed almost all of them. With most of them, I'd be polite, and ask for their names while we're doing the 6-step in a coordinated pattern (guess it's the basic Salsa version of the 2-step). I gave some of them a small compliment, such as "I like the way your waist moves when you do the side step", or "I like that thing you do with your hips".

The best dancer there seemed to be a Southeastern Asian American chick, in her early 30's. She's average looking by DC standards, above average looking by Carolina standards. She obviously has done this before, added her own little fancy twist and turn with each step, etc. She just seemed super arrogant, and when it's time to switch partners, she gave that arrogant dismissive pointing finger, telling the guys which way to go (myself included), almost like a girl in a club telling you to "take a hike". She seemed to be overly confident, almost like overcompensating for something else, but I'd imagine her to be what PUA's call "high social value" in that setting at that specific time.

Overall, I had an awesome time, and at least I now know the basics of the Salsa step (even though I probably look like a dumbass doing it.

Guy Decoder From I-Village

While doing my usual dating research, I stumbled into random "guy decoder" from i-Village. I remember the site because I had a job-interview with their parent company, NBC-universal about a year ago. This "guy decider" is a list of explanations for girls on why guys do things they do. I got curious and decided to check on the article for "Why does he put his friends ahead of me", and the answer just sickened me.

It's with great reluctance that a man leaves the tribe of men to be with a woman. And often that's what it feels like to us: As a couple, people have entirely different social interactions, and for a man to be part of a couple usually means he can't hang with his buddies as often as he wants.

Your man just can't commit to the transition to couplehood -- it's the classic desire to want his cake and to want a stripper to pop out of it, too. But he needs to make a choice, doesn't he?

The bad news is he really might choose them over you. He might not be ready to be with you the way you want. Some men are just very slow to grow up.

The article described men as some kind of pre-human, using words like "leaves the tribe". "Can't commit to the transition of couplehood"? Maybe he can, and the woman's just too demanding of his time. A lot of times, the guy really isn't the problem, he CAN "commit to the transition of couplehood", but his version of "couplehood", not hers. And just because he doesn't enter a relationship in the exact same manner as she wished him to, he is "slow to grow up"?

It's these types of articles that make society how it is today. It's not uncommon for commitment seeking people to have more than 5 "meaningful relationships" before marriage, and today's divorce rates are higher than 50%.

Let's make a change: Instead of building unrealistic expectations by bashing each other and making society think everything is at fault of the opposite sex, more should be emphasized on "what can we do to help the situation" instead of "the bad news is...".