Shortest Date, and Ketchup

The author comes off as lacking EQ. It’s strange to ask someone’s last night before you’ve met them, so that’s a red flag for the author. Being judgmental about someone’s voice, another red flag. And the 35th and 8th thing? Why wouldn’t you just drop it? Too quick to point out flaws, another red flag. I grew up in NYC and at one point in my youth, I had the same answer as her. If she was annoyed by the random ketchup question, It’s likely because you have put so little effort into building rapport. Those types of random/abstract questions are best AFTER you’ve built a connection with someone… not topic 1, date 1.

Sorry to vent, but it annoys me to see this posted on HN.

I know another English word that comes from Indonesian, as my friend from there likes to proudly tell everyone, "Orangutan". The original meaning is something like "the man of the jungle". I found it really interesting since it's the same word in Spanish, so basically this word has come all the way around the world.

Though TBF a "species word" is a bit of a cheat, since I'm sure there are many more local species like that where if you know the name it'd be in the foreign language, it's just "orangutan" is a fairly common word compared to more specific species names.

About the rest of the article, agreed, the best relationships I've ever had (friends, flings or girlfriends) have always had that curiosity factor strongly present. Though I guess it depends and you need to be a curious person for you to care about it first? Non-curious people might find curiosity boring or even immature?

> Little interesting things are all around us. But the uncurious will never know.

Says a lot about a person that they are curious about “ketchup” but so incurious about a person. Even if you do t go on a second date, there is still a lot to be learned by talking with a person. You might have learned something about her life or her experiences. But, “ketchup” was more interesting to the author. I wonder, in the grand scheme of things, who was actually the more incurious person?

The past doesn't actually give the info it teases, so here it is.

> Ketchup comes from the Hokkien Chinese word, kê-tsiap, the name of a sauce derived from fermented fish. It is believed that traders brought fish sauce from Vietnam to southeastern China. The British likely encountered ketchup in Southeast Asia, returned home, and tried to replicate the fermented dark sauce.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with not sharing your last name before a dating app first date.

> Little interesting things are all around us. But the uncurious will never know.

Apparently the "curious" will never know either unless they accidentally learn the information by accident years later.

I wonder if she actually drank the beer that was served to her not by a bartender, but by her anonymous date who could be a serial killer. That's inadvisable. Never let a drink out of your sight. Always permit your companions to receive their drink directly from the server or bartender.