TIN DER DONE THAT

A couple of months ago my friend introduced me to Tinder, an app where you can meet all single men (in my case) nearby. I thought, wow they make life so easy these days. After years being of the market this must be the perfect platform for me. I totally forgot how dating works. I prefer men in bars just to wear a cardboard around their neck with: "Hi I'm single! Wanna drink?" That is actually what Tinder does for you and the good thing is that it's confidential. Besides your name, age and some pictures they don't know anything about you. 

Our generation of girls was already prepared for a app like Tinder because we used to play "Dream Phone" while we were younger. A board game where you had to call fictive 'handsome' American guys with baby faces. Tinder is actually kind of board game as well or should I say a washboard game because come on, it's not about your all-so-great personality it's just a meat inspection and we girls are really picky. A guy needs to have the perfect hight, the perfect haircut, the perfect clothes/ shoes, can't be fat but definitely not to skinny, not to sportive or to lazy and in that overview from 5 pictures he needs to show us that he has a great life. Easier said then done because perfect and great are of course really subjective so you guys have to play it smart.

Here are some don'ts for you Tinder guys:

• Never add a photo with another girl. We think it's you girlfriend and that means that you're able to cheat.
• Don't add a photo from you and a baby. Even not when it's your cute, little cousin. Girls my age don't do guys with babies. We like to spend our Saturday afternoons drunk in a lunchroom instead of a playground.
• If you're sportive just put one photo at your account doing for example kitesurfing. If you add more we think you would like us to join you while the reason we girls do sport is only because there are 1) hot men at the gym; 2) cute sport outfits; 3) the only way of trying to keep some balance between hangovers and healthy life but we definitely don't go for fun.                                                                
• Don't show of your body to much even though it's pretty. We like to find out for ourselves
• What we all notice is that most of the men wear sunglasses on the pictures. A person looks better with sunnies and a tanned skin but without you can look totally different. So if you want to avoid the "sorry-something- really-bad-happened-call" at your first date just show us some eyes. 
• And then last but not least, delete your stunning, hot friend from your profile picture. It's such a disappointment when we slide through your pictures and find out  that you're just the 'other' guy, bummer!

Tinder is just for fun but we will never find there real, redicilous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-eachother-love. Not even in your wildest imagination. Tinder dudes are more comparable to milk, they have a an expiration date. Once they become sour you tossed them away and grab a fresh one. 

Well good luck to all you Tinder guys, play on players. 

ROOM FOR THOUGHT

I want to share a cool app with you. It is called: ROOM for thought. It is an app you can only use on your smartphone. Once a day a reminder pops up and when you open it a 10 second countdown starts and you have to get ready to take a picture. You have one shot to get it right because these photo's can not be deleted/replaced/done over. It tends to be a bit stressful sometimes ;-) Of course you could make a selfie everyday but it's more appealing to take a thing, moment, location, loved one that's iconic for that day or moment. As they say "Once a day ROOM for thought gives you 10 seconds to relax. To do nothing for a moment." They also have Instagram-like filters and the possibility for a comment to spice up the photo-post. Everyone is always rushing all day long, so how nice is it to just stand still for 10 seconds?

I found out about the app in December 2012 and really liked the idea, so I downloaded it. I started on the 1st of January 2013 and have been doing it ever since. Sometimes I missed the reminder and deadline so I don't have 365 photo's, but it's a quite good summary of my past year. I know you could also do this yourselves and don't really need an app for it. I mean, we're all addicted to Instagram right? But this is different because you don't choose the moment, the moment chooses you and you probably end up making pictures of things you normally don't see, not really. And that's on of the reasons I like it so much.

A small selection of my photo's in 2013: 1st of January 2013, Amstel Station during rush hour, drinking beers at De Biertuin, New York Mets game, pre-festival chaos at home, airplane situation, Miami beach, boat trip from hell to Formentera and the view while walking home from work on a beautiful winter night.

The ROOM for thought app can be downloaded in the App store.