#sparkzi

Princess Link fanart.

Took around 3 hours.  I'm so slow.

Listen, when guys get wasted EVERYTHING we do is unattractive. We slur, we leer, we look like gross, sad apes. It’s a bad scene. Women, on the other hand, can kind of pull it off. IF and only IF you can pull yourself together and avoid ALL of the following:

1. Singing “Pour Some Sugar on Me” at the top of your lungs

This song should be called “Have Terrible Sex With Me”

2. Stumbling

Stumbling sober is cute and Tina Fey-like. Stumbling drunk is sad and Snooki-like.

3. Asking me if you’re a terrible person

Um… Kinda?

4. Saying “I need to vom” (actual vomiting not nearly as unattractive)

Honestly, I’d prefer “barf.”

5. Missing the straw

Imagine the face you’re making when it stabs you in the lip. Yeah, that one.

6. Deciding that now is a good time to try out winking for the first time

Is that…Do you have a twitch or something?

  It’s totally cool. It happens. Just try to avoid the above and you’ll come off as more or less charming.

  Blog Post by Shiva Persaud. Please send comments to hello @ Sparkzi dot com

Whether you’ve just ended a long-term relationship where all your friends were “couple friends” or your single pals are in serious settling down mode, it’s easy to feel like the odd one out when all the people you grew up with are paired off. It doesn’t matter how you got there, the question now is: how do you avoid third wheel status?

Pass on Invitations  It’s okay to say no to invitations from friends. If your best friend invites you to a Halloween party with their boyfriend/girlfriend, suggests a three person costume (bun, hotdog and ketchup) and you kind of want to slit your wrists at the thought of it, it’s okay to say you have other plans.

Break that Last Rule  That said, if you’re looking to meet people – including single friends – go to any and all parties you’re invited too. Just don’t spend all night talking to your couple friends. Wear a great costume, bring an interesting bottle of champagne or sparkling wine, brush up on your conversation skills and put yourself out there to meet some new friends.

Unless…  It's a dinner party. Be wary in these situations. House parties, gatherings at bars and coffee shops, where you can mingle and meet new people are great for breaking out of the couple-dom rut. Dinner parties, not so much. You’ll likely be stuck next to someone’s sister (okay that might be awesome) as a set-up. Because friends in relationships live to set up their single friends. Which is fine, if you’ve agreed to it. If not, it can be a long night.

Be Outgoing  If your friends are all partnered up and you feel left out, the sanest thing to do is add a few more single friends into your rotation. Reach out to coworkers you like, join the soccer team at work, sign up for a new class you’re interested in and grow your friend circle. It sounds cliche, but it works. Added bonus: you’ll be a lot more fun and cool on dates and have great ideas for fun things to do.

Connect Individually  If you’re a guy and only seeing your guy friends with their wives at wine bars, you have a problem. Reach out and set up a men-only road trip (did someone say Hangover part III?). Same goes for the ladies, hit the spa for a girls day. This will not only get you some quality time with your friends, it will likely help their relationships – spending all your time together can be suffocating.

Don’t Force It  Being around couples can make you want to introduce a new prospect to the group. Be careful here, this is almost as dangerous as bringing them around your family. If it doesn’t go anywhere, you’ll have to deal with them asking what happened for at least a month. Three months of solid dating is a good rule of thumb before bringing someone into your circle.

Your Life is Awesome  Don’t let your single-dom get you down when you’re around couples. They’re not trying to make you miserable with their seemingly happy relationships. Even money at least half of them are a teeny bit jealous that you’re out there playing the field and having a blast. Because you are having a blast, right?!

1. What's your policy regarding leaving people suddenly and without warning?

2. Are you obnoxiously dependent, or are we still going to be able to have our own lives?

3. How much money do you actually make?

4. Are you seeing other people? HOW many other people?

5. You talk to your ex how often?

6. What's your number? (Not your phone number. The other one.) Just give me a ballpark range.

7. Do you have any plans to gain a ton of weight/lose a ton of weight/take up drugs/change your career/change your religion/change your country of residence, or in any other way drastically alter your life in the next two years?

8. Will you always expect me to pay? (Will you always pay?)

9. Does any part of you right now think that I'm not someone you could be serious about? How attracted/interested in me are you really?

If online dating hasn’t led you to your perfect match, perhaps the issue isn’t that you’re too choosy, but rather that there’s too much choice.

There’s no doubt that dating in the 21st century offers a lot of opportunities. Today, women and men are increasingly marrying someone outside of their religion, their ethnicity and their geographic area. Never in history have we had so many potential partners to choose from - and never have we had so much difficulty choosing. In fact, several recent studies suggest that this explosion of options has made men and women feel more confused and uncertain about finding a partner than ever before.

The challenges of choice were well illustrated in a study in 2000 that looked at people’s buying habits. Researchers asked customers to participate in a tasting of different types of jam; those who sampled the product were given a $1-off coupon. On the first day, the researchers offered a choice of six different jams. On the next, they offered 24 different jams. People tasted the same number of jams, regardless of the number of available samples. Yet their buying choices varied dramatically: Offered six jams, about 30% of samplers ended up purchasing a jar. Faced with 24 choices, though, only 3% bought a jar.

The conclusion: When given so many choices, people have more trouble making any decision, and this sense of indecisiveness could lead to a cascade of negative effects. In his seminal book, "The Paradox Of Choice," Dr. Barry Schwartz writes, “Choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis.”

The problem could be our quest for perfection. We all want to believe in "The One" - a person that meets every item on our relationship checklist, who’s our soul mate forever. But when you search for perfection, you’re unlikely to find it. “People who attempt to make the 'perfect' choice, whether it comes to buying a car or finding a partner, end up less satisfied, regardless of what or whom they choose. That’s because they tend to look for flaws, and become disillusioned with all of their options," says Andy Trees, Ph.D., author of "A Scientific Guide to Successful Dating."

Many services also ask you to fill out exhaustive questionnaires about your likes and dislikes. It might seem like more information would help you make smarter choices, but again, that’s often not the case.

The more criteria and qualities you consider for a partner, the tougher it can be to narrow down your choices. A study of people attending speed-dating events, published in the August 2011 issue of Biology Letters, found that they made fewer decisions to date when they attended events with higher numbers of candidates and greater variety. Again, the researchers concluded that people who have too many options would choose nothing.

Although one day someone may indeed invent the perfect algorithm to match two people, no online dating site has yet provided proof that its formula works, regardless of what its marketing department wants you to think. Seeing a new person every night of the week isn’t going to increase your chances of romance, just your risk of exhaustion.

Sparkzi has been developed keeping the paradox of too much choice in mind. It’s model allows for a measured quality engagement, so you give each person you’re interested in due consideration.

Although there is no perfect mate out there, patience and mindfulness will lead you to people that you can enjoy spending a day - or maybe even the rest of your days - with.

So, you’ve been working long days all week. You finally go home and, even though it’s Friday night, you’re too tired to even make it to the local bar and deal with the same ol’. The thought of even trying to find romance in your life right now seems impossible considering you live at your office. And, yes, your coworker clearly has the hots for you, but you actually have dignity. What you don’t have is time. Or a dating website which works for you.

And this is where Sparkzi.com comes into play. But first, why exactly do we need another dating/matrimonial site?

Matrimonial websites (we all know what they are) are practically trying to offer love as a version of car insurance: a fully comp policy that eliminates any risk of you being out of pocket or suffering any personal upset (because if the product is successful for you, you’re married in no time. Never mind the question of whether you’ll be married to the right person for you or not). But love isn't like that. Love is about adventure and risk, not security and comfort. But, for a large segment of South Asian society this is an unwelcome thought: love is a useless risk. Love, in our world such as it is, is encircled, and threatened. And Sparkzi believes it's a philosophical and moral task to defend it.

At Sparkzi, the main problem as we see it with other products out there is online dating sites (or matrimonial sites for that matter) assume if you've seen a photo, star sign, BMI index and electoral preferences, you're all set to get it on à la Marvin Gaye. Wrong! Most sites assume we are like digital cameras, that you can describe somebody by their height and weight and job title and so on. But it turns out people are much more like wine. When you taste the wine, you could describe it, but it's not a very useful description. But you know if you like it or don't. And it's the complexity and the completeness of the experience that tells you if you like a person or not.

Hence, Sparkzi.com has been developed to be a product that can better deliver what people want to know about each other. The model is: authentically displayed personalities & real dates. Dates are not about sitting in the room and interviewing each other about questions; they're often about experiencing something together in the real world. If you and I went out, and we went somewhere, I would look at how you react to the outside world. What music you like, what you don't like, what kind of pictures you like, how do you react to other people, what do you do in the restaurant. And through all these kind of non-explicit aspects, I will learn something about you.

Many people go online hoping for happily ever after, but end up with horror stories instead. According to Internet dating statistics, lying is common in dating profiles. Men lie most about age, height, and income, whereas women tend to lie about their weight, body type and age. "When you look at their profiles, they're all the same," wails one disenchanted online dater. Everyone claims to be "charming, generous, funny, 'no mind games', good-looking, sensual” ... the profiles practically guarantee you'll be on cloud nine. With so much emphasis on physical appearance, fake or outdated photos often accompany those lies.  The (online) description is very skeleton-like & we fill the gap in over-optimistic ways. And then you go and meet your potential romantic interest for coffee, there's a gap between what you built in your mind and between what they really are. When everyone is presenting themselves as practically perfect in every way, then you're bound to worry you've signed up for a romance-frustrating yawnathon.

Sparkzi has been developed keeping all of these insights in mind. Moreover, Sparkzi is focused on long-term relationships. That feels very unhip and very squarish, but really, when it comes down to it, our desire to find someone to connect with, to find a beautiful long-term relationship is a very deep part of our psyche.

Sparkzi.com. Please stay tuned.

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