Love in the time of Cholera

You may remember that I am involved in the domain name business, which has broadened my knowledge of human failings and quirks considerably.
One of the more annoying things are the emails from people saying they want a domain we own, but they have no money, and would we be really kind and just give it to them.Or say they used to own it and demand we give it back to them - again for free.I wonder if they would let me have their England fubaw shirt for free... no hang about, they well might.
Anyway, one of the things we do is dating sites - I know, tacky and sleazy - but there are something like 20 million ( yes that's MILLION) people registered with dating sites in the UK alone.
For some reason South Africa has not that many less, but of course the holy grail is North America, where there are well over 50 million men and women of every sexual orientation looking for the One - or even just a one-night stand.
In amongst these are the poor souls who have a serious problem, like an STD (HIV,herpes, aids etc).They have no fewer yearnings and needs than the rest of us, and of course there are actually quite a lot of them out there.
So it wasn't a total shock when I got a request to add to the dating sites we have one domain that has good traffic for related medication (might earn 50p per day) and
which,when translated into an STD dating site, appears to be earning USD 10-15 per day.
I do not in any way suggest, dear reader, that you have such a problem, but I can only say my eyes have been opened to another area where help is desperately needed.
Click here to find out more.
PS The title of this post refer to a rather good book by Gabriel García Márquez

Tantra

You may recall we are attempting to do something with some of our domain names which involved linking to a dating site.
Having rootled about a bit, we found we owned www.datingtantra.com, and duly sent it off for approval.
Back came an email which basically said "I never heard of tantra so I looked it up and I don't understand a word. What do you mean by it?"
Now the one thing I am really really good at is talking as if I know what I am talking about. Acutely aware that if I mentioned "Sex" or " Sex at Oxford and Cambridge" ( I believe that increases your Google traffic) we would get the name thrown out, so I came up with the following:
"Tantric teaching is all about channelling energy within yourself to achieve higher levels of peace and spiritual calm.Our idea is that people should look to find soul mates who are reaching towards spiritual union. It comes from the Sanskrit word meaning " to weave".Part of eg tantric meditation consists of visualising an ideal eg god or goddess, and uniting with them in mind, body and spirit , a process likened to courtship. Our civilisation's idea of "The One " is VERY much of relevance here."
You have to admit that sounds pretty romantic. Certainly the young lady you was reviewing our application fell in love with me on the spot. Fortunately, she lives in America......

Making a difference

Weirdly, the two largest online dating nations are the UK and South Africa. Don't ask me why I know this - it's part of my plan to carve a new career doing even less than I do now.
What has surprised me, though, is the infinite splitting. The marketeers always say get your market properly " sliced" and then swamp your slice.
But the range and variety of dating sites defies belief. Not only do you have white, black, asian, old,young, pink,yellow, religious,green etc etc, but in every segment there is gay, bisexual,lesbian ( what's the difference between gay and lesbian? I thought gay was both men and women), heterosexual, Goth, Jedi you name it.
There is quite clearly a market for these services. I believe more than 3 million people currently use them in the UK - and it would appear there are many more who simply use agencies and newspaper ads. Some of the companies concerned have turnovers in excess of £50 million pa, and of course because its all online their costs are minimal.
So I was quite taken with an ad I saw which started:
"Missing cat - possibly."
To cut a long story short the person advertising was looking for a partner who could bring a cat - but only one that had a nice nature. It was a play on words that the advertiser was " missing" her deceased cat... oh, never mind..
The nicest cats I know are extremely old and sleep all the time....
I'm reminded of my long dead extremely rich old aunt ( never left me a penny, but at least there was no cost to me) who - when crossing the Atlantic in the Queen Mary between the wars, saw a good looking young American at the bar and remarked to her sister " Well, he'll do for a dance or two".
That would seem to be the perfect match required, for they were married for more than 45 years.