It’s almost here. The day for you to wear green, be as IRISH as you can be, drink Guinness all day long and ..you know the rest.
ST. PATRICK’S DAY IS ONLY A COUPLE OF DAYS AWAY and here comes the parade.
St. Patrick’s Day Parade
3/17 Saturday 11am-5pm
Fifth avenue from 44th St. to 86th St.
website
Why won’t you try out a new Japanese place in Greenwich Village with you new date?
Enjoy sophisticated, clean and delightful Japanese small plates, sashimi and sushi from an open kitchen.
DailyCandy says the “omakase tasting menu with blowfish beneath shaved daikon radishes and scallops and sea urchin served sizzling on a half shell” is a must.
OPENS TODAY, Friday 3/9/2012. Daily 5-10:30pm
Location: 61 W. 8th St., between Fifth & Sixth Avenues
Phone: (212) 505- 2610
Website:http://www.netanyc.com/
Price: $18–$23.50
how men should dress and where to take women on dates.
clean+crisp+warm accessories
combined with savory+sweet desserts
I read a very interesting, funny and also insightful article on The Spec on online dating. As a single, 31-year old male, Frank tried both paid service, e-harmony and Plenty of Fish. I’m not sure why he chose e-harmony over match. You can read the full story here but this pretty much summarizes it.
e-harmony:
“The user experience was phenomenal. All the matches came into my inbox. If there was mutual interest, we’d proceed with the guided communication. This was four-step process generated by eHarmony where you had the opportunity to get comfortable with your match until you were ready to take it offline.
And therein lay the reason I stopped using eHarmony. Having two presumably mature adults getting to know one another via a Q&A computer template seemed abnormal. I could have been more patient, and the website does tell you that it may take up to a year to meet your perfect match, but this site just wasn’t for me. I wanted my online dating experience to mimic real world dating as much as possible.”
Plenty of Fish:
“Dating on a free site is about being active. You have to put in the time and that means logging on several times a day and chatting with someone who may or may not be who she claims to be.
Although it’s exciting to meet dozens of attractive single women every day, it can also be a bit scary. Let’s just say not everyone I’ve chatted with was single or even a woman. This is where pay sites have a distinct advantage — the security.”
His conclusion clearly highlights the painful limitations of online dating sites, which therefore forces users to make tradeoffs.
“If you place a monetary value on your time and user experience, and if the added security features are important to you, then registering with a pay site is the way to go.
Conversely, a free site may be more your style if you’re willing to sift through hundreds of profiles and you enjoy the freedom of choice. I see value in both.”
And I’m here thinking, why do we have to make this choice? Why is it that unless you pay substantial amount of money, you can’t get the security you want at the fraction of time you must invest currently in free dating sites?
Just wait. I think Coffee Meets Bagel might have just the right solution. :)
A few shocking stats:
1. % of married among people 18 or older: 2010: 51%/1972: 72%
2. # of marriages decline by 5% from 2009 to 2010.
3. Mean age of marriage 2010: Men: 29, Women 27/Baby boomers: Men: mid-20s, Women:early 20s
In a recent survey, 40% of people said they believe marriage is obsolete, including 31 percent of married people! Wow.
5% doesn’t seem like a lot but that translates to 100,000 less marriages a year which can be quite a bit, (2MM marriages a year) especially when you think about the economic impact.
The article argues that married couples also tend to have more spending power which helps the economy. But then again, a large part of the reason for delay in marriage is also women pursuing higher education and career, which presumably means that they will have more spending power as a financially independent women. So I don’t know if this is necessarily negative for the economy.
I’m also not sure socially how much impact this might have. Yeah, your kids are going to have older parents, or parents who are not married but from my personal experience, good parenting doesn’t depend on a marriage certificate.
I think at this point, marriage is perhaps a more of a psychological, feel-good celebration that you share with your close people, and more of a signaling effect for the couple themselves and those around them. What this allows is mentally gets the couple ready for a long-term commitment and cooperation—-which may or may not help with the stability of the relationship.
So all in all, I can’t really see how the drop in marriage really impacts the society in any significantly negative way.