expectations vs reality

You know when you build yourself up, thinking about how awesome is going to be, and then afterwards you're like "that was not what I expected"...?

It happened to me at Christmas - Mum had built up my expectations of my big present to be something hilariously large and ridiculous; it all came about because I said I wanted a robovac so I could sit the cat on it, and her comments made me think that maybe she was finally going to panda to my weird sense of humor (come on, who doesn't love a cat on a robovac?); or maybe it was when we walked past an ice-cream machine and she mentioned something about now knowing how much it cost (also, at this stage I had seen the present box, and the ice-cream machine was about the same size).

So with all these crazy ideas and expectations running around in my head, and with my amazing imagination, opening my present to find a Nespresso machine was not what I expected.

This weekend was that same experience.

I went on two dates this weekend, both that I was kinda excited about - one was the cute bartender at uniclub and the other was from internet dating.

The first one, well in hindsight I probably was tipsy with free alcohol when I said to my friend "gees he's cute" to which she obtained his number and I ended up having coffee with him on Friday morning... which will never be repeated. "Why?" you ask... well when discussing John Mayer his outcry of "wow, I can't believe primary school was ten years ago" basically shut any possibility of the non-smiling Tom to ever win my heart over. Sure, age shouldn't be a barrier, but that my friends is cradle-snatching.

So, onward to the second one. Surely I couldn't have two awful dates in a row, right?

True. But false all in the same breath.

On paper (or more accurately, his online dating profile) he seemed exactly what I was after - an engineer retrained as a doctor who has a passion for infectious diseases, taller, older, has a foreign passport... perfect right?

Well, our conversation was fantastic and lively, but that's about it. There was no spark, no chemistry on my end, he was wearing hiking boots in a cafe in Fremantle, he contradicted my opinions on basically every topic of conversation, and asked if I had chosen my first Masters degree because of the research of by one of my most disliked teachers... and he was shorter than his profile said. He then proceeded to find me on fb (to which I will not add him) and contact me in three different ways to say he had a great time.

Lesson of the weekend - there are plenty of fish in the sea but most of them you'll throw back.

And as for my coffee machine - I love it! I don't know what my mornings were without it.