At Hype & Stuff, the majority of our team appears to have found their partners for life (or so they think)—all except one. At the ripe old age of 30, Amelia has been single for most of her life. Not that she minds the single life, and not like it’s our job anyway, but in the vast sea of twists called love, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to assist Amelia in her quest to find romance.
Backed by Singapore’s Social Development Network (SDN), matchmaking service provider GaiGai holds themselves to high standards when it comes to love-finding. We nudged Amelia to give GaiGai a chance after learning that they have a dedicated team of Relationship Managers and matchmakers to bring individuals together through a set of algorithms and frameworks based on each client’s preferences.
After exhausting all possibilities, will Amelia finally be able to find love at 30 with modern matchmaking? We asked Amelia to share her experience with GaiGai’s resident relationship manager and her thoughts about the process.
Hi, my name is Amelia. I’ve always wanted to find the one, but I’ve never had the time to date. With such a busy schedule, I always found it hard to go out and meet people. When I found out about GaiGai’s personalised matchmaking service, it definitely piqued my interest and I immediately wanted to find out more about whether I could find a good match for myself. Here’s my GaiGai story:
I arrive at GaiGai’s cosy office nestled in the heart of Singapore’s Central Business District for my dating personality review. Aside from their working space, the office also houses 7 to 9 small rooms—all there for the sole purpose of conducting profiling. I’m a little bit nervous, but also really curious to start my matchmaking journey.
Getting Started
My relationship manager—Joan—is bubbly and cheerful as she dives right into the process, starting with a mandatory check on my NRIC card to make sure that I’m legally single. Joan made me feel comfortable right away—we chatted as if we were like old friends, and I was comfortable opening up to her.
The basic questions include my height, annual income bracket, and highest education qualification, amongst others. Joan then repeats the same questions, but in reference to my desired partner instead. Issues such as the race, height, and size of one’s desired partner surfaced, and understandably, they might be challenging to answer for some. But that’s precisely why it is important for the attendee to be as honest as possible during these sessions—as Joan fervently reminds me so that the matchmaking team can do their best work. I felt that this introductory process legitimises my experience, and made it feel like my needs were really taken care of. It was also a bit surreal, like, am I really doing this?
7 Fs
A framework that’s unique to GaiGai are the 7Fs that are used to pinpoint my dating priorities and is later revisited in an activity meant to sieve out the importance of each one to me. The first 4 components of the 7Fs are as follows—Fundamentals which identifies who I am as a person and my MBTI type; Family represents my family values and my relationship with my family members; Faith elaborates on my personal belief system and how religious I am; and Fitness focusses on what my workout routines are and how often I engage in them.
The final 3 are Focus, which refers to how important my career is to me; Finances is an indication of how financially savvy I am; and lastly, Future explores my life plans in the upcoming 5-year horizon.
I found the 7Fs to be the most useful to me because they really helped me understand what my priorities are. The overall experience for me was quite interesting—while Joan mentioned that I’m not actually that picky, I personally feel that my deal breaker was quite a big one and that there’s no room for compromise in that area.
Ranking the 7 Fs
With that out of the way, Joan then pulls out a deck of cards that bear each ‘F’. She instructs me to rearrange them and rank them in order of importance. Emerging as top 3: faith, fundamentals, and family are undeniably crucial to me. Having a shared faith and value system are of utmost importance to me, and I believe that the family values of my partner will give me a snapshot of what our own future family might look like.
The activity forced me to think about what’s really important, and it was surprising for me to realise that I actually wanted the same top 3 things in my partner, in that particular order. I’ve never thought about it that way before because I was never pushed to think about it.
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Profile Writing
For this segment, I’m asked to throw out as many self-descriptors that come to mind as possible. This includes quirks about myself I’d like to highlight, how I spend the rest of my free time, what my friends would say about me, and other good-to-know information.
This was a tough one to answer because I was worried about being biased in my recount, but I just thought about everything my friends have said about me, and how a third party might feel when interacting with me.
Closing Questions
Before we end our close to 90 minute session, Joan shifts the focus to more practical questions—some that don’t immediately strike us as imperative but can play an extremely crucial role in making or breaking any relationship. Some examples are like how I feel about having pets, the details of my past relationships, and any deal-breakers that may be on my list.
I personally liked this segment because it was necessary and important—deal breakers are so crucial to iron out.
Explanation of the Dating Process
After Joan wraps up the consultation, she moves on to explain how the information is used to find me an ideal partner. Unlike most dating applications and platforms that solely rely on Artificial Intelligence algorithms, GaiGai does it a little differently—with a dedicated team of matchmakers that will vet through each profile and find a suitable match. It’s love, with a dash of human touch.
Upon successfully finding a match for me, the team will then set up a date for both parties—with all date arrangements handled entirely by GaiGai. Where we decide to take the date after that point will then be entirely up to us. I liked the fact that GaiGai uses a physical team of matchmakers. It’s an interesting and more personalised way of going about finding a match. Plus, I don’t actually think that solely relying on AI would be effective in this case—the human element is always important in romance.
Testimonials
GaiGai has an impressive 80% of couples who indicated that they would go on a second date with their match, which sounds like some pretty successful matching if you ask me. So naturally, this service also paired many couples who are now happily attached or married. You can read their heartwarming stories here.
Hearing others’ success stories makes me feel like it’s promising, and that there’s potential for me to end up in that position. From last I’ve heard, I’ve already gotten 2 names, so I’m looking forward to seeing where that takes me.
Overall, I’d say that I had good fun partaking in the dating personality review with GaiGai, and it has also helped to dispel some fears and misconceptions I had about dating agencies. I was afraid that I would feel uncomfortable sharing personal information with someone I didn’t know, but Joan really made me feel so comfortable, and chatting with her feels so natural. I truly believe that sometimes, sharing your story with a stranger will help you gain perspective that sometime’s sharing with friends can’t.
The process has helped me to reflect on myself, my personality type, what type of partner I’m looking for, and what type of partner will be most compatible for me. I walked away from that session feeling like I learnt a lot, and feeling hopeful about meeting someone new and leaving my love life in the hands of GaiGai.