17 Dec serendipity?

It is strange sometimes how you meet the people who, expectantly, start to mean a lot to you. When I talk about how I met my friend Marcel, people often awkwardly laugh. And I can’t blame them. In fact, I sheepishly laugh along with them. I met Marcel through the dating app Tinder (no shame…).

I remember how I arrived here in San Francisco. I had already been looking for housing for months in advance, but none of my searches paid off. So for the first night in SF, I had booked a hostel, the cheapest hostel I could find for that weekend. It was a hostel on Post Street in the Tenderloin part of town. You can imagine that, when I stepped out of Powell Street Station with my pineapple suitcase, I was a more than little bit overwhelmed. Here I was, in San Francisco: I did not have a house and the hostel that I was staying at cost 90 (yes, nine-zero) dollars per night due to the fact that there was a famous music festival going on in Golden Gate Park. Also, though I now feel comfortable in any part of town, even the Tenderloin, I did not feel that way when I first arrived here. Having five months ahead of me, and my saving were eaten away by the hostel. I was seriously stressed about finding a home. And on top of that, I did not know anyone.

So what does one do? How does a millennial find like minded people, people who are maybe in slightly the same situation as you are. Or people who can distract you from your worries and cheer you up a little? You guessed right, one goes on Tinder.

On the second day I got here, I just thought f*ck it, I’ll download that notorious dating software and I’ll see who I’ll meet. So I made a profile, and wrote that I only just arrived in the States and was looking for people who could show me around.

And that’s how I met Marcel, he came from Switzerland to SF to do an internship for the Swiss consulate, and most importantly, I arrived in SF only two days before me. He texted, ‘guess we are in the same boat’. And we decided to meet up that night. We turned out to be like minded people, yet different in many ways and we had plenty to talk and laugh about. We had a couple of drinks and said good night. It was strange to meet someone who I clicked with in a nonromantic way through (freakin’) Tinder, the dating app that is mostly installed in smartphone to get a quick hook up. But having spent so many days with Marcel so far, has made me very grateful for Tinder, because I met one of my best San Francisco friends with its help.