31-year-old Cat Le-Huy, Head of Technology at Endemol UK, was detained and arrested during a tourist visit to Dubai for carrying melatonin, an over-the-counter jet lag aid. Though once in custody Le-Huy tested negative for drugs and his melatonin was cleared by officials, he is still in Dubai jail with no charges and no release date.

Full story can be found on the Free Diz page where you can also donate to his mounting legal defense fund. Talk about Dubai being a tourist trap…

All of his family and friends (myself included) are shocked and worried.

Please pass this on to friends and family. Also, please spread the word around that Dubai is NOT a safe place for Western tourists, regardless of what their advertising campaigns say.

More information about this and other similarly horrible cases can be found on the BBC news site.

I followed a bitter-sounding man who said women should pay for their half because “men end up paying for everything once they are married”. The presenter asked me whether I thought the matter of who pays for the meal at the beginning can be an indication of how things will pan out during the rest of the relationship. I said yes and that if a man is problematic about paying for a date with a woman at the beginning of the relationship, it does not bode well, although many women prefer to split the bill to avoid feeling indebted to a man they have only started seeing.

The way I see it, when a man takes a woman out on a date, he is trying to make a good impression on her. Sure, the woman also has to make a good impression, but in nature it is generally the males who dance around shaking their tail-feathers at the females and the females take their pick of the lot. I am perfectly happy with that arrangement, as are most women I have come across.

In today’s world it’s no longer unheard of for some women to be making more money than their male dates, but it’s debatable whether this issue should really matter when going on a date.

If during that time of supposed good-impression making, a man thinks of his wallet more than he thinks about the woman in front of him, that is not a good sign. It doesn’t exactly spell devotion to the cause, does it?
Think of how much worse things will get once you’re in a relationship with him and he goes a bit complacent.

A man should at least offer and be willing to pay for the woman’s meal out of courtesy, to make her feel that he values her company.
Believe me, no woman would find it “refreshing” of a man to expect her to pay for his meal. It is also not refreshing for a man to make an awkward point about women pulling their own weight and how equality goes both ways, etc.
If you are willing to risk ruining a perfectly pleasant date by making a point about “women” or going over the bill with a fine tooth comb to see who ate how many potatoes, then you have your priorities all wrong.

As for women, remember that dating is not a job where you get paid with free meals to spend time with guys. There’s another name for that sort of activity.

Gentlemen know they are expected to pay for a woman’s meal and do so without any expectations of things to come. It’s a nice gesture and one that should not be taken for granted. It also won’t kill you to politely refuse sometimes and pay for your half, especially when you know the person you are dating is not exactly loaded.

Where is the best place to meet the love of your life? Ask any person who’s happily married and they’ll tell you the place where they met their husband/wife. This could be a particular club, the supermarket, the chess club, a resort in Ibiza, or practically anywhere else in the world. If you went to the same place as person X, would you meet the love of your life too? Who knows? There is absolutely no guarantee.

All we have going for us are statistics: increasing our chances of success. Sure, you may well meet the love of your life on the bus or on the beach, but you are far more likely to meet him/her somewhere a bit less random. While miracles obviously do happen, you can’t live your whole life sitting at home, passively waiting for one to happen for you.

So the first step is to put yourself out there, go out, date online, etc. Doing this increases your chances already, so how do you increase them further?

If you were picking a singles’ bar to go to in order to meet people, you would probably base your choice on the type of people who go there. The way a bar is designed, the music played there, the price of the drinks - these are factors to consider, but often only in relation to the audience they attract.

Basically - If you want to meet some cool kids and all the cool kids are going to Bar X, you’ll go to Bar X even though Bar Y might be better value for money.

It’s the same with dating sites. Some sites are clearly better designed than others, some are cheaper than others and offer plenty of cool features. There are now thousands of sites out there promising to revolutionise the way you date with their amazingly clever new concepts. Does any of this matter?

At the end of the day, people would happily sacrifice everything from additional features to basic functionality if they can make contact with similarly-minded singles. As long as a site allows you to search for people and make contact with them (even in the form of a really basic message) then it is suitable for anyone’s needs.

For this reason, it’s only possible to answer a question such as “what is the best online dating site?” on an individual basis. I often recommend sites to people based only on the site’s vibe and general clientele, rather than features, pricing or concept.
For people I don’t know personally, I recommend serious market research across a number of sites before deciding which one to go with.

Never make the mistake of assuming all dating sites are the same. They differ from each other as greatly as bars, restaurants and clubs differ from each other. Only you can decide which dating site is the best for you and you can always change your mind if the site you’re on is not performing as well as you’d hoped. So try a few different ones - big ones, small ones, generic and niche and see what works best for you.

I’ve seen quite a lot of profiles where people seem to almost write in code. They seem to almost be writing for themselves without clatrifying potentially ambiguous points.

When you are writing about yourself, then you are writing about a subjet you know a lot about, so it’s easy to forget to fill in the details you think are pretty obvious.

While sometimes it’s OK to not over-elaborate (If you’re into house music, for example, there’s no need to spend lines upon lines explaining what type of music that is) some things may require a bit more detail to be properly understood.

Saying you are into “travel” or “dancing”, for example, would not make you stand out from the crowd and will definitely not tell your readers that much about you. Most people would say they enjoy travel but one person’s idea of the perfect holiday could be another person’s total nightmare.

Remember that what is obvious to you (’travel” meaning adventure travel to exotic places or “dancing” meaning ballroom dancing for example) may be completely misunderstood by others unless you elaborate.

Think about all the things you would like to know about your potential mate and come up with a list of questions (you can even write them down if that helps). Then answer all those questions in your own writing about yourself.

Normal service will resume shortly.

In my recent column for Gorgeous Dating I wrote about the Seinfeld Dating Syndrome and how people often subconsciously turn insignificant faults into deal-breakers and ruin their own chances of happiness.

To compare and contrast, I briefly touched upon the subject of how we are often willing to sacrifice our own happiness for the illusion that a bad relationship with an inconsiderate person could turn around and be a “happily ever after” affair after all.

Surprisingly (or not!) it’s often those people we find “perfect” who end up mistreating us again and again. We put up with it without saying anything, like the little mermaid who swapped her voice for legs and hurt every time she walked or danced.

It’s not just women who make such compromises. Men are exactly the same when it comes to sometimes allowing themselves to be abused in relationships.

In most cases, the end of such relationships is as nasty as the Mermaid’s (Christian salvation symbolism and emotional blackmail issues aside).

The moral of the story is simple: never sell yourself short. If you are in a relationship that demands the sort of sacrifice that feels like losing your voice and walking on knives (or eggshells), then it’s probably time to slay the prince (or rather, the attachment you have for him), go back to the sea and find yourself another fish.

Anyone who says differently (I’m looking at you, Disney studios!) should be treated with the contempt they deserve.

Said guy sued said site for damages and lost, which I’m sure will warm the heart of every site owner out there.

I know from experience how hard (read: impossible) it is to prevent people from lying about their age on sites. The girl would have had to borrow her parents’ credit card to sign up to the site, as well as lie about her age. If someone is willing to lie and steal to place a profile on your site, there is very little you can do, unless you start doing serious background checks (and those have already been proven to be somewhat pointless). It’s usually much easier to tell in person whether someone is 14 or 18.

While I feel sorry for the guy and don’t think he should have necessarily received such a heavy penalty, I’m happy to see the law recognising the fact that the site itself is not responsible. The only thing I would say is that maybe the bit in the T&C about not being able to 100% guarantee the information provided by members is accurate should be made a bit clearer, rather than (probably) being hidden somewhere half way down the list. Really, though, a bit of personal responsibility should be factored into any dating experience.

Opinions?

I can’t think of a better metaphor for relationships. In fact, I am pretty certain you can learn a lot about the way people are in their relationships by observing the way they interact with each other while dancing.

Some guys were very musical, but didn’t know how to lead. Others were very confident, but weren’t paying any attention to the music whatsoever. Some guys were attentive, while others kept stepping on my toes. Some apologised, some blamed me for getting in their way.

Each one of these things taught me something about the person it would have taken me months to learn otherwise.

Now, usually couples’ dances hail from eras where men were considered the driving force of a relationship and women were generally thought to be the quiet ones who did what they were told, which makes the whole concept a bit difficult for women like me who are not used to depending on men to push them about the room, but as an exercise in communications, dancing can’t be beat.

It made me realise how flimsy online communications actually are in comparison. Using the Internet to meet people you otherwise wouldn’t is pretty amazing, but let’s never forget that there is a whole world out there, and a whole other world in us as well.

In my opinion, you’ve not really given online dating a proper chance until you’ve looked at 5-10 sites and properly tried (as in, signed up for the free account, ran a detailed search and maybe even joined the free trial) at least 2-3. There are literally thousands of sites out there and while there are things that are bound to be similar, there’s also plenty of differences in everything from features to audience. a Ford Fiesta and an Audi TT are both cars: they both have wheels and seats, etc. but driving one would not necessarily tell you all there is to know about driving the other. If it’s driving itself you don’t enjoy, the differences may pass you by, but until you’ve tried a few different cars, you may not be able to pinpoint exactly what it is you dislike.

If you’re on a dating site that isn’t delivering you the results you want, try a different one and try to make it as different as possible - bigger, smaller, more niche, more generic - whatever can give you a broader taste of the industry.

You may discover that what you dislike is common to all dating sites, or you may well discover there is more to online dating than you thought.

I will be commenting on this news story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6943616.stm