Outsourcing

So I was forwarded this humor article a while back on outsourcing. It's about a guy who decides to outsource his entire life, including: calls to his wife, picking out gifts for his children, and telling his boss he's coming in late. That made wonder what could I outsource. The answer came quite simply: online dating.

You see, working in an investment bank, one doesn't have too much time for interactions with new people -- I think I can count all the new people I've met in the past year on one hand. Basically, one of the few effective ways to meet and date while being an i-banker is to go online. In fact, the only date I've been on in the past 18 months was with a girl I met on Friendster. She was a pretty interesting person, but alas alas, the feeling wasn't mutual because she never spoke to me again (the drunken emails probably didn't help matters.). That was about a year ago (and I've been milking the story for the entire year).

In my rare moments of free time, I often think that I should try this online dating thing, but it's just too much damn work. I have to create a profile, think of witty comments that would interest girls that I find interesting, choose appropriate photos, etc. I could imagine spending hours internally debating the pros and cons of the question: "What are your Favorite TV shows?" I could either answer

a.) truthfully: The OC and The Gilmore Girls; or
b.) make up more masculine shows like: 24, CSI something or Lost.

See, with a.), if interpreted correctly shows that I have a sense of humor and am not overly serious, but on the other hand, The Gilmore Girls??!??!?! I think one of my female friends once said, "Even I'm not gay enough for that." But then again, do I really want to go out with someone who wouldn't go out with someone who likes The Gilmore Girls? Or who couldn't appreciate the irony in the profile? You could see how this could take hours. But I digress.

The point is that it would be great if I could get some cheap outsourced labor to do all this crap for me. And continuing on, I don't really have the time or patience (not to mention the intestinal fortitude) to browse profiles, send custom introductory emails, get replies for only 1% of them, establish contact, try to establish some sort of repartee online, then try to work out some mutual meeting times. Just too much damn effort. If there was ever a situation that needed outsourcing, it's this one. I imagine I could give my friendly Indian outsourcer my resume, likes and dislikes, and he or she could work out the profile, submit it for my approval, review profiles, send out standard "Hi, saw your profile, thought you were interesting, would love to get to know you better" emails, filter the replies, then come up with some witty responses to the responses, then prepare some prep materials for me before I went on the dates.

Since there are no Indian firms that do this currently, any takers out there?

Actually, come to think of it, that job sounds like banking, just replace girl with "Potential Buyer" and me with "Seller". So does anyone want to hire me for your dating outsourcing needs? If it's local, I'll even go on the dates for you.


Last thought:
Song that in principle I should hate, but find annoyingly catchy and find myself humming it randomly: You're Beautiful by James Blunt.