A Date or Not a Date?

Why is it that the popular myth states that WOMEN are the complicated ones?

Maybe I am the only woman in the history of the world who's ever thought this out loud, or at least let it out in a blog, but I can't figure men out for the life of me!

Like the dating situation. You'd think, I am, after all, twenty seven years old and have dated plenty of frogs and princes in my twenty-something life. I've loved exactly (probably) twice in my life and I even had the misfortune to live with one of the exes for three months.

However, I have yet to learn the very basics of men's behavior. Like, how to recognize when a guy is interested in you and, most recently, how to figure out whether I am going on a date or not.

So this new guy, The Banker... he seems different from the rest thus far. For one, he is making me feel all those things I haven't felt for any of my other casual dating partners. The thought of him is actually making me, gasp, smile! I recognized this feeling all too easily when it came over me for the first time on Sunday - I was developing a crush.

The Banker and I had drinks at a quaint little wine bar, sneakily tucked into the depths of a Singaporean side street. It was all so very casual, but I kept catching myself not being able to take my eyes off his eyes, his smile. I was fairly captivated, intrigued by what he had to say. Our conversation was effortless - instant commonalities in every aspect of our pretty different life experiences. I felt like we clicked and then some.

But I couldn't be absolutely sure.

Upon his offer towards the end of the night that we should get together again, perhaps for dinner, I wholeheartedly agreed. The little schoolgirl in me jumped giddily in excitement.

"Ooh, ooh! I can't wait, I can't wait until I hear from him again!" she was squealing in my ear in pure delight.

The next day, much to my delight, The Banker made contact by sending me a text message that followed up on a conversation we had over drinks. I responded back with something rather generic but was still a little let down when he didn't text anything else.

On Tuesday, I tried to stay calm as best as I possibly could. I turned my iPhone off in the evening as to avoid the temptation to text The Banker. I occupied myself by playing Angry Birds, by checking my email, by trying to find the pesky gecko that decided to make my room his home. To no avail.

At around 9pm, my fingers involuntarily and without any permission from my brain typed:

"So, any plans for this weekend?"

Oh sure. Plans. Any plans for this weekend? Trying to act casual but who was I kidding? There was not an ounce of casual in that frantic text message. Super.

I didn't hear from him until two hours later. Two hours that felt like two years, mind you. But he finally responded! He texted back with:

"You beat me to it! How about meeting up Saturday afternoon? If you like outdoorsy stuff and are fine with heights, we can check out the Treetop Walk. Otherwise, we can beat the heat at a museum you haven't been to yet."

We had a brief text conversation after that, where basically I could hardly contain my excitement over the impending course of events but acted polite and cordial by saying that yes, in fact, the Treetop Walk sounds like a lot of fun. Our text exchange concluded with him texting, "Looking forward to it. I think it'll be a lot of fun!"

I won't read into this. Even though I already have 1001 outcomes in my head of how this trip to the Treetop Walk could possibly go. Basically, I want a freaking date out of this. I want the damn Treetop Walk to BE the date. But is it? And how can I tell?

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a prime example of how a twenty-seven year old can revert back to being fifteen, in a quick blink of an eye.