Tinder in India

Time to write a post. Its been a really long time since I came back to this. Honestly, I miss writing but at the same time, I have been delaying it too - thanks to Netflix, YouTube and of course laziness.

Now there's a huge gap from the last post to this one. I'll perhaps come to that later. I did spend a lot of time in India - from mid-June 2017 to early Jan 2018 and during that time I decided to explore the Tinder app. I was quite sure that India has progressed over the last 5 years to appreciate random conversations over an app.

Tinder in Chennai

I think Chennai is one of the worst cities for Tinder. Chennai hardly has any migrant population compared to Bangalore or Hyderabad. So every now and then, you'll find your friend on Tinder. Also, you have to expand the distance meter to the maximum (which will also include parts of Pondicherry, read Auroville.. LOL) if you need any results. After all that, you'll see one you like. Without wasting time, you'd super like her. She'd accept. You ask her out for a coffee (Of course you cannot ask her out for a beer. You are in Chennai. Filter coffee is the best. In fact, her guardian may also be sitting a few tables away from you). She will un-match because she still believes in an arranged marriage. She is only on the app to waste your time.

Once that episode is done, your meter will keep rotating for ages. You'll find nothing. You need to wait for another eclipse.

And then there was another match. Another super like I think. Sent her a text and by the time she replied, I could see that she was a few thousand kms away in the country. She'd accepted a job in the north. Didn't see her back in the city for a really long time. I did meet her but maybe that's reserved for another post.

Tinder in Bangalore

This is perhaps the best! A lot of women, to be honest, and some really worth the super-like. And there have been times when women have super liked me too. This generally never happens anywhere else but I think India has started noticing that my physical appearance is quite stunning after all the Crossfit (Thanks to all those people who inspired me. That list is a few pages long).

Anyways, I am chatting with girl 1 (who is into sales I gather from her profile, quite irrelevant). I ask her out but she doesn't have time and its also closer to my travel date back to Chennai. So we just decide to meet when I am in the city the next time around. In the end, I never met girl 1. We decided to meet somewhere and she cancelled. Maybe she got cold feet or she didn't like me. Who knows.

Second trip to Bangalore and I had 3 matches. Voila! Chennai seriously sucks in this department.

Ok girl 1 says hello, we chat for a bit and then decide to meet! Awesome. We go out for a nice dinner. Wow this is so cool. And I must say, she was really nice. I would definitely go out with her again if I was in Bangalore. But that didn't happen.

Girl 2 said hello. We decided to meet for coffee. The intended place was quite crowded so we ended up at the coffee place for kids - Cafe Coffee Day. We had common friends. So we were chatting a lot. So, this is the problem with Chennai or Bangalore. The network is so bloody small that if you are in a good job or studied in a reputed institution, there's a 100% chance that you and your Tinder match would have common friends. Not one, but like a herd. So girl 2 actually told me some horror stories about Tinder in India which was quite shocking to hear. Girl 2 is also a Bangalore lover. I didn't get a chance to meet her again.

For all the men - If you match with a girl, then learn to take baby steps. This is India god damnit. Do not - wait outside their workplace, send them messages on Facebook or ask them why they don't want to meet you again. If they don't like you, just get the fuck out of there. Don't make them uncomfortable.

Girl 3 matches. Quite late in the night. I ask her out because I was driving back to Chennai the day after. Then she gave me this huge lecture about how we should chat, exchange phone numbers, get to know each other and then meet. I was SO not ready for all that. I just wanted to meet and say hello. That's all. Not even in the mood to take it to the next date. And then I heard all these conditions (owing to previous experience meeting dickheads). So we never met.

So overall, Bangalore scores way better than Chennai for Tinder. There are many many dry days in Chennai (when you have no matches) but Bangalore has a fairly large migrant population and also open minded people who want to date or meet people this way.

Of course, there's more to talk about the people I met. Maybe another time. But for now, I think this will be a good start for 2018.

USHA BUO 2013 - Predictions

With the seedings out, its now time to have a quick look at the pools and the games that follow. Here it is

Pool A	Pool B	Pool C
Learning to Fly	Stall 7	Spinergy
Blitzkrieg	Chakraa	DoD
Storm Chasers	Airborne Chicken Pox	Cat Dogs
Shurikens	Falcons	Fly Wild
Dishqiya	Dhokla Biryani	Fringe Flickers
Blue Rays	Discreed	Flying Spirits
Spin Doctors	Discotech	Airborne Small Pox
Airbenders	Air Traffic Control	Spin Offs

With 8 teams in every pool, it is going to be a lot of games per team before they get divided into Gold, Silver and Fun (that's how the organizers decided to call the last pool). The first two days of pool games is not going to be easy at all and I am sure we will be in for a few surprises.

If things go by the way my brain is thinking right now, here is what we can expect from every pool.

Pool A will be topped by Learning to Fly (nothing different. Same team, maybe a few new additions. They should sail through, especially considering its grass and they have been quite consistent on grass). It will be a good fight for Storm Chasers with Shurikens in the same pool (if the people I used to know  in Shurikens are still around I mean). If they get their act together, then team Blitz has a chance too. Dishqiya is a good contender as well considering that they have worked together as team for sometime now.

Pool B will be topped by Stall 7 (but for a few X-Men characters missing from their roster, the college team has come a long way and should sustain their run), followed by a good fight for the next few places between the following teams: Airborne Chicken Pox (guessing this is their A team as there is a small pox somewhere down the line. Airborne performed well at Kodai when I was there and at the Heat last year. They should do well this time around too);  Falcons (the young boys of Bangalore give most of the teams a hard time) and Chakraa (a team that I know closely and has been doing reasonably well)

Pool C will be topped by Fly Wild (runner up at Chennai Heat. These guys should be on fire this time around), followed by Spinergy and DoD. Cat Dogs are going to have a tough time in this pool with 3 other strong teams.

The Gold Pool would probably look like this, in no particular order or ranking

Learning to Fly

Stall 7

Fly Wild

Spinergy

Storm Chasers (the design of Pool A makes it easy for them)

There will be a sort of scramble for the next 3 places. An educated guess would be DoD, Airborne Chicken Pox and Chakraa, but we cannot leave out the Falcons who have the capability to create an upset. Watch out for the games these teams play as they could go either ways. Interesting that out of the five teams mentioned above, three are in one pool. Which sort of gives DoD an easy entry to the Gold Pool unless the Cat Dogs throw a surprise party. I decided to leave Blitz out of this equation because their performance hasn't been consistent beyond Chennai Heat.

As there is not much information about the Gold Pool match-ups, in the end its mostly going to be a final between Stall 7 and Learning to Fly and I am expecting the host team to continue their winning streak.

PS: These are completely my thoughts from the information I have. I will be only happy if more rabbits are pulled out of the hats.

USHA BUO 2013 - Seedings Analysis

The seeding of teams and pools for USHA BUO 2013 was just released today. The organizers Arjun Lall, Satish Raj and Abhishek Srinivas have done a good job in getting out the information for the tournament. We'll come to that soon.

A quick look at the seedings (Don't mind the font. Silly excel troubles)

1	Learning To Fly	9	Cat Dogs	17	Discreed
2	Stall7	10	Fly Wild	18	Blue Rays
3	Spinergy	11	Falcons	19	Spin Doctors
4	DoD	12	Shurikens	20	Discotech
5	Chakraa	13	Dishqiya	21	Airborne Small Pox
6	Blitzkrieg	14	Dhokla Biryani	22	Spin Offs
7	Storm Chasers	15	Fringe Flickers	23	Air Traffic Control
8	Airborne Chicken Pox	16	Flying Spirits	24	Airbenders

So we have the usual suspects on the top (see the first column 1 to 8)

DoD seems to have moved up. They have been doing quite well as a team and we expect them to do well this time too.

Blitzkrieg at 6 was something not expected, considering that they have not been a consistent performer (atleast from what I know).

Storm Chasers Mumbai at 7 - also a good team but not quite sure if they can be up there.

Airborne at 8 - definitely a hardworking team and I think they entered the Gold pool last time in Chennai Heat if I am not wrong.

CatDog from Delhi (guessing its the original Stray Dogs), Flywild, Falcons and Shurikens have all been pushed to the next 8. Quite a shock.

All three teams (above) are definitely at a seeding that is contestable. I am not getting to the point of asking why they are where they are. TD's have the ultimate call. We still don't have a strict process of maintaining rankings in India Ultimate. And not all teams have participated in all tournaments. They end up doing a mix and match as and when required.

For now, seeding seems to be okay. Watch out for the next post about pools and predictions.