Name: June Cheong (above)
Age: 25
Event: Dating website Hitchoo (www.hitchoo.com)
Format: Singles sign up at Hitchoo where they can create and join events to meet other people.

People lie. Or, at least, they often obscure the truth.

This is understandable especially when they are trying to land a date (and perhaps even more) on a dating website. I profess I was less than scrupulous when I created my own profile. But then I was under duress from my editor to "find a date or else". That was enough to send me scrambling for the "Submit" button on dating portal Hitchoo.

Filling in the membership form was a breeze, thanks to the kind folks at Hitchoo who were obviously well-schooled in the quirks of Singapore's education system and drafted the form as a series of 32 multiple-choice questions.

Even then, I admit I was stumped (and a little bored) by the time I was asked to describe my dress sense. How do you digest 365 episodes of daily drama into one tiny word? More importantly, which date really cares?

In the end, my answer was "flamboyant". I neglected to mention that that depended on the party.

I said I spoke Cantonese. Only in my dreams can I bargain my way through Hong Kong's street markets.

I said I had 14 hobbies, from clubbing to fishing. In truth I have two: films and sleep.

Scanning the profiles of other singletons after I was officially enrolled - 2,848 members at last count according to Singaporean Hitchoo founder and Oxford law graduate Hu Yinghan - I was mortified by the dozens of cutesy pictures of dewy-eyed women baring duly dimpled cleavage.

So much for feminism. I guess I wasn't the only liar online.

In defiance, I uploaded a picture of myself - nose upturned and wearing my sister's oversized spectacles - to provide an alternative viewpoint on femininity. Not surprisingly, my profile went unnoticed for two days.

Besides the desperate play for attention by sex kitten wannabes, another thing which annoyed me no end was the "ai mai ai mai" (Hokkien for half-hearted) attitude of many online members.

While they were happy to post pictures of themselves, most were hesitant to reveal further details about themselves. It was as if they were ashamed to be caught on a dating website and would deign to put up only a picture to indicate the most marginal of interests.

The beauty of online dating is that you can find out and choose what you like and dislike without stepping out of your door and here are these lazy people ruining it with unnecessary mystery.

Deciding it was time to boot fate out of its lethargy, I created an event - a wine date at Wine Affaire in Tras Street - in Hitchoo's Hit List, an auction site where members could sign up for events.

I started logging on to my Hitchoo account every day. Zilch. Zero. Nada. My editor nagged me to change my profile picture. I resisted.

Thankfully, two days before the wine date, two unsuspecting guys signed up and I dragged a sporting girlfriend along.

The date turned out to be a polite, genial but ultimately unremarkable affair.

The guys - one an engineering undergraduate and the other an engineer in a Loyang factory making screws - were painfully shy.

As they slowly warmed up, the latter joked about how he "screws" for a living while the former revealed that he loved wine and film thrillers. Like The Green Mile. Hmm.

After two hours, when the atmosphere had become decidedly friendly rather than romantic, we parted ways.

On the way home, I suddenly remembered this guy I met online and dated briefly while I was in university.

A Disney animator and sometime mosaic artist, he was cute, rich and talented, every bit as promising as his online persona foreboded. Plus, it seems I lucked out and he liked me. But I didn't like him enough. And sweet and interesting as he was, I couldn't lie to myself about that.

This article was first published in Urban, The Straits Times on Feb 14, 2008.

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