Phenomena
Single
At the ripe old age of 25, I received my first copy of Duet, the much-dreaded Social Development Network (SDN) publication. It was as if the government had issued an edict for me to immediately go couple up, get an HDB flat and assuage Singapore’s population anxieties. Perhaps this was because my mother walked into the room to deliver the magazine, simultaneously delivering a lecture on how I should start looking for a husband and go for their events. She even offered to pay me to go.
For the uninitiated, the SDN is a government organisation which functions under the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports. Marriage and singlehood in Singapore has long been regarded as a national issue, even before our society became so fraught with tensions over immigration, an ageing population and declining birth rates. SDN’s predecessor, the Social Development Unit (SDU), was formed in 1984 to cater to university graduates, while the Social Development Services (SDS) catered to non-graduates. In 2009 they were merged in what might have been an act of democratisation. SDN now aims to be a resource centre for encouraging romantic relationships which, eventually, lead to marriage. Their services include producing the publication Duet, acting as a kind of middleman for dating agencies and events, and private match-making.
Having passed my mid-20s, I can see how SDN might work. After all, the dating culture in Singapore is a little staid. Couples typically meet the ‘easy way’ in school, through friends, at work or through social activities, then couple up. Singaporeans also tend to marry within similar educational backgrounds; statistics from the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports show that, for example, approximately 75 per cent of men and women with university education married partners with a similar level of education. But what about the rest of us who are left uncoupled? I think most people are simply too busy to date – Singaporeans do work very long hours – and I imagine that socially well-adjusted people attend SDN events because they have exhausted their social circles.
Like embarking on a career, purchasing a car and acquiring the iconic HDB home, getting married is a milestone that marks a Singaporean’s transition into ‘adulthood’. The flip side of having this trajectory in life mapped out, is that we may come to view marriage as merely an accomplishment that must be ticked off the to-do list of the individual Singapore Success Story. If so, and since we busy lot simply do not have time to waste, SDN comes to the rescue. It is highly pragmatic in orientation, efficient financially (commercial dating services, especially those which cater to ’professionals’, cost much more) and also in terms of time, since there is no need to beat around the bush. At a government-organised singles event, not only is there a sense that everyone’s cards are on the table, it seems like everyone’s cards read the same way: meet, marry and procreate.
Perhaps I am too quick to associate a government-linked event with a government-sanctioned approach toward marriage. The romantic in me dreams instead of an epic love story. But when my friend suggested we go for an SDN event together, I decided to capitulate – just this once. According to the SDN website (at the self-consciously named domain www.lovebyte.org.sg), the speed dating dinner event promised to include a tour of a local museum. I told myself that even if all the people at the event were horrible, my $40 and two hours wouldn’t be entirely wasted since at least I would learn something. Right?
Desperate
Three weeks later, pacing outside the café where the event would be held, I failed to recall my well-constructed defence for being there. What would I tell people if they saw me there? What if I met someone I knew? Would they, god forbid, judge me as truly “single, desperate and ugly?” The unfortunate associations of SDN with this slogan are derived from the acronym of its predecessor, SDU. Though the organisation has changed its name, it has not managed to shake off these negative perceptions. Surely, conventional wisdom goes, if you were neither desperate nor ugly, you would not need any assistance in finding a life partner. People still whisper conspiratorially about attending any SDN events. My reputation was at stake.
My doubts were temporarily eased by the arrival of my friend. I psyched myself up for the social situation ahead, crossed the threshold and went forth boldly into the café.
We were early. Very early. In fact, we were the only two people there. As another wave of fear, regret, nausea and various negative emotions resurfaced, the two SDN staff in charge of the event arrived. They looked like they could do with one of the makeovers featured in Duet, which did not exactly raise my confidence.
Eventually, the other attendees trickled in and we were arranged at tables of four, with the men rotating tables every 15 minutes. By the time everyone arrived, I had already finished my meal and I was feeling more and more dismayed with the arrival of each new attendee. Many of the men were older than me and looked like they were 32 to 38 years old. Only one man dressed smartly, in a well-made shirt and with his hair neatly slicked back. In comparison, the women looked as if they ranged in age from their mid-20s to early 30s, and were definitely more presentable than their male counterparts. Whereas the women were of a similar height and build, the men ranged from thin to fat, and to my eye, what most of them lacked was the most attractive trait: confidence.
In the first round, the man opposite me defied any stereotypical expectations of smooth-talking bankers. In fact, he barely spoke at all; all his energy was channelled into staring intently at me. Naturally, conversation was painful and I was left groping for topics to talk about. Foolishly assuming that attendees might be interested in the current exhibition, I asked him and the other man at our table how they came to hear of the artworks. Apparently they (and everyone else) had not; they had simply chosen the event based on its convenient location in the city.
Disappointed, I asked one of the SDN staff when the exhibition tour would start. She said, “Oh, you can just go into the museum and take your own tour. Just be back by 8 p.m.!” This was not what I had signed up for. But the two men seated opposite us did not provide a feasible alternative. My friend and I opted to enter the museum, and one of the men from our table came along, though we soon felt as if we had a puppy tagging along with us as we wandered through the galleries.
People have said that the SDN is full of socially awkward people who are desperate to settle down. What armchair critics often don’t realise is that there is a large self-selection bias: the people who attend SDN events are usually those who have not had any luck meeting others in regular social settings, or cannot (or will not) afford to pay for expensive, private matchmaking services. In other words, those who attend these events are usually more conservative in terms of their personality, spending and social habits. At the same time, the speed dating event offers ‘efficiency’ but also puts pressure on people to ‘perform’ within a short duration of 15 minutes. When you combine the fact that the nature of the event is highly unforgiving, with the notion that these men are unable to make small talk, you get a situation in which the odds are against them.
At such events, then, it seems that there are tensions between laying one’s cards on the table and the limits of propriety. One of the men at the museum event told me how a man at the same event – in his mid-40s, balding, with a solid belly and dark purple shirt bursting at the seams – had been shot down for his bluntness. The man had pointedly asked one of the women for her age, height and weight, and also if she was a Christian, since he was one and preferred to marry someone of the same faith.
Her reply was impressive, my informant related: “Why? Are you my insurance agent? Or my banker? Why do you need my details?” It seems that, despite the unromantic premise of speed dating, people still desire to retain the ambiguity associated with romance. After all, don’t flirting, bantering and uncertainty contribute to the thrill of romantic love?
But that was not to be, either, in my experience of the SDN event. A case in point: I asked two men about their jobs and they joked about how they were IT managers, so everyone asks them for advice on fixing vacuum cleaners or purchasing cameras. They soon switched to speaking in Hokkien to one another. Suddenly one of them demanded of me, “You know what I’m saying or not!” When I told them I like Shakespeare, the same man responded, “Wah, Midsummer Night’s Dream? Wa buay hiao gong liao!” After telling him I live in a private housing estate, he said, “Wah, that area no HDB flat one hor! Your chauffeur fetch you to work everyday, is it?”
Words failed me. And so I drank water to hide my frown and to stop myself from cursing and swearing. And then my bladder failed me and I had to go to the toilet four times in two hours. I also held my friend’s hand under the table. While I was squirming in my seat and trying not to roll my eyes, my friend was more patient and less demanding (she attributes it to her job, which includes aspects of customer service). After that, I went for a much-needed round of drinks with long-time friends who laughed about my experiences with me.
Ugly
Love, we like to think, is about transcending stereotypes and seeing a person for who he or she truly is; an object of love is no longer defined by his or her job, physical attributes, financial status, religion, interests or even how he or she treats you. But in a mere 15 minutes, how can any two people get to know each other beyond a stereotype? Writing this piece, I could only remember every guy from the SDN event not by his name but by his job, physical features or mannerisms. As misguided as stereotypes are, they are, unfortunately, an all too easy shortcut for making sense of someone when there is limited information – and in this case, time – available.
To me, the IT manager was defined by his job, proficiency in Hokkien, demanding tone, social awkwardness and receding hairline. But I’m sure he also judged me as an over-privileged, self-righteous kantang (“potato” in Malay, coloquially meaning a Westernised person) who likes Shakespeare. The clash exemplifies the fact that Singapore society is divided along the lines of class, language and interests. Singapore is a small country, but when singles are also limited by such criteria, the pool of available partners shrinks further.
Moreover, I think the gutsy woman’s response and my indignation reveal that women (and men) still want to be regarded as individuals who need to be wooed and won over. The love story is a narrative that we still want to live through. Nobody wants to admit that such speed dating events are a marketplace where you buy and sell ‘love’, and nobody wants to be reduced to the qualities that give them ‘market value’. Attending such an event may be a pragmatic choice, but it is not entirely divorced from a natural desire for romantic, or at least considerate, gestures.
I’ve always believed in hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. I had low expectations of the SDN attendees, so I was not quite as shocked by that, as by the fact that speed dating was so physically and emotionally trying. It’s no walk in the park, pitching yourself over and over again in the same fashion every 15 minutes. Another thing that shocked me was that the men seemed to perceive me as deviant, somehow: most of them were taken aback by my frankness, and some seemed to recoil when I told them I was going to Zouk afterwards.
I was also surprised by how physically tense I was during the entire event. Besides the usual social assumptions about how men and women are supposed to behave, there was also a degree of conflict, vulnerability, fear and pressure that came with an event laden with such expectations. At the end of the day, nobody wants to be rejected – even if I didn’t like them, I didn’t want them to actually dislike me.
While the SDN website archives many success stories, I wonder if it takes a certain type of person to find love, or at least commitment, under such social circumstances. To me, the hardest thing to accept about these dating events is how they strip romance to its very pragmatic core: the fact that two people are at a point in life where they are ready to settle down becomes the very basis of that awkward conversation and, perhaps, relationship. And by delineating all one’s likes and dislikes, the speed dating scenario tries to reduce all possibilities of conflict by being frank about what each person wants or does not want. Such convenient love is what the French philosopher Alain Badiou describes as the equivalent of car insurance, summarised in the Guardian as “a fully comp policy that eliminated any risk of you being out of pocket or suffering any personal upset.”
According to this approach to love and relationships, the magical aspects of serendipity have no part to play in such an arrangement. SDN publicity materials often remind its readers that love will not just happen out of nowhere; you must go and ‘put yourself out there’. In some sense, these speed dating events defy the very ideal of love by removing it from all the romance (and troubles) associated with it. Then again, ask me again in five years how well ‘magic’ and ‘serendipity’ have served me. Perhaps then I’d be more willing to re-engage in SDN’s more reliable services. 
Words Miss P.
Illustrations Norman Teh
