Of course, there will always be someone to tell me that if meeting men is the problem, it can easily be solved. With a few clicks, on an online dating service. Ah, what cannot be solved online these days?

The truth is, I gave it a try a few years ago. I have no horrible story to tell about meeting total jerks, or guy who had lied about their age or appearance, or married guys looking for an affair... I only met men who were alone and looking for their significant other, just as I was. But it didn't work.

At first I thought it just didn't work out for me: I was finding it hard to be online very day, available for anybody who wanted to talk because well, you never know, the one you turned down could have been the right one. I was finding it hard to have 3 dates with 3 different guys on the same week. And I was finding it hard to decide which one of those guys I liked best. If I liked any, that is.
So I gave up.

It was one year later that I read several articles on the subject, and began to think about my experience again. And this is how I see it now (and sociologists see things the same way). When you enter that see full of fish, you look for someone who shares your interests because you need something to start a conversation. Oh, that guy likes Fiona Apple and Bruce Willis, too, I am going to contact him! And of course the standard questionaire we fill in when we subscribe are full of information of that kind. So we look for someone like us.

But look around you, look at the happy coupled, ask them what they love about each other. I bet they won't tell you that having a favourite actor in common made their relationship last. Actually, it is their fundamental differences that brought them together and made them a good match. One of my friends'husband finds it hard to make any decision; he says that what he loves about his wife, is that she can always decide what to do so quiclky. Unlike him. My best friend, before she had her kids, told me she thought she was going to be a terrible mother because she's so anxious, but that it was OK because her husband would be a great father. Unlike her, she thought.

What we need in a long-lasting relationship, what we crave for, is someone to give us a hand and help us walk when all we want to do is sit on the side of the road and stay there for ever. And vice versa. And that is something you cannot look for in those standard questionaire.

You will probably tell me that you know someone who met their significant other online. Actually my colleague just married a guy she met online. She kept looking for 3 years, so I guess if you look long enough and have a bit of luck, you might find a partner this way.

But I am convinced that looking for someone this way is mostly unproductive and leaves a lot to luck.

________________________
I am Marie D., a 30 yo marketer and aspiring writer from Belgium.
I blog at http://itsmylife.terapad.com

I heart PowerPoint. I started using it when I was a student, I think around 1997. At that time most people didn't know it existed, outside the business world.

At first I was shy, just writing a couple of key words on a few slides. Then I started falling in love and I wanted more - that's how girls are. I got a glimpse of all its nice features: the transition effects, the sounds, even the programmed buttons and hyperlinks. We had passion. PowerPoint came along with me when I presented my thesis to the jury in college, and we did a great impression.

Then came corporate world, and I must say, if I am good at one thing in business, it is making presentation. That was so easy, with my beloved PowerPoint.
Everyone knew about us and our great relationship.
Event at home, when I switched to Mac 4 years ago, I couldn't leave PowerPoint for Keynote. Keynote was nice, but it was just a fling.

Of course, people (hum, softwares) change, and PowerPoint was getting older, more mature, a bit different, but always the same old one I had always known.
Until recently. Maybe it's mid-life crisis, but that much change came unexpected to me. I changed jobs in April, got a brand new PC, and there it was: PowerPoint 2007, all brand new.

At first I got curious about its new features: new templates that look young and professional. New styles and color sets.
But then came hell. I got used to the "office button" because it's on every Office program and I had to deal with it. Still, I don't like it much.
That ribbon idea, it got me confused. Where, oh where were my buttons and menus??
And then came the worse: thinks that I really liked in PowerPoint, things that were making my life easy, were gone. The drawing bar, gone. The selection pointer, gone. When I want to draw 10 lines, I need to go to the insert/shapes menu and click on the line button and draw ONE line and DO IT ALL AGAIN. That makes me crazy.

And I haven't even tried to apply effects to objects or transitions between slides, yet.
I am telling you, PowerPoint and I, it's over.
Thing is, we are going to have to keep on leaving together for a little while. I can't do my job on my own without it.