iDate

Free, from Apple’s App Store. Great for long-distance lovin’.

I’ve always been suspicious of products that tap the “i” prefix (with the exception of my precious iPhone). My bias stems from the fact that at one time, there was a tidal wave of “i” merchandise – signalling the start of an era when people were obsessed with three things only: consumerism, the Internet and themselves.

So a free, made-for-iPhone dating app like iDate is bound to hook me up with an endless stream of iFreaks. Right?

I was wrong. The first guy to “smile” at me was “Justin”, a 27-year-old Texan with red hair. He liked to spend his weekends dancing to country music, and punctuated his questions to me with “hun”, which I found endearing.

There were also plenty of hot men. “Randy”, a 20-year-old student from Sacramento, appeared in his profile photo wearing a tight white singlet, revealing taut arms.We had a surprisingly meaningful exchange, in which he told me he was studying computer science, and liked singing and dancing although he wasn’t into “crazy parties”.

But shallow me – my favourite was still “Tommy”, a 27-year-old from Florida. He had deep-set green eyes and a brown quiff , and he looked like a Calvin Klein model. We wrote each other a few times a day, mostly talking about what we were up to, but I ended that after he sent a message saying, “I will come see your country and you. You’re a very beautiful woman.” It screamed stalker potential.   

The only thing I didn’t like about iDate was its faulty search function – I wanted men who were geographically close to me, but instead I got a motley crew of men from “unknown” locations. One guy whose location was stated as “Finland” turned out to be in Taiwan. Sussing out the Singaporeans was easy though – they were the ones with usernames like “Ham Tam” and “Hei Zai”. They also sent messages like “I am very bz at work”.   

If you’re open to the idea of long-distance lovin’, you stand a very good chance of meeting someone and striking up a romance via this app. But if it’s a quality local guy you’re after, you’d be better off during happy hour at Balaclava. Those guys don’t waste time on iDate – they all have Blackberrys.

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