It is often said that you can still feel lonely, even in a crowded city. In fact, the problem seems to be exacerbated in big cities, where the pace of life is much faster and social interactions have to make way to… whatever it is people in big cities do.
And that’s the problem that the new social app Timeleft is aiming to solve. It’s an app where strangers have dinner together every Wednesday night in the hope of making new connections — or as founder Maxime Barbier put it, to “address urban loneliness, one dinner at a time”.
While I’m not exactly lonely living in crowded Singapore, I do crave new connections time and again. I’m lucky to be able to count many as my true friends, but as they move to different stages of life (having kids, for example), I find myself wishing that I had more friends who understand the struggles I currently face.
Hence, I tried Timeleft, persuaded in a huge part by the persistent ads they put on Instagram (well played, Timeleft marketing team).
Signing up was easy enough: you create an account, you enter a bunch of seemingly irrelevant information about yourself and your preferences and choose your dinner timing, and voila! An algorithm (or so the company claims) is going to match you with a bunch of strangers for you to have dinner with at a designated restaurant.
I went to my first one not knowing what to expect. As a self-proclaimed introvert often mistakened as an extrovert, I do get nervous in group settings. But my worries quickly dissipated as I sat through the dinner, having easy conversations with the group I was assigned to. And had there been any awkward silences (which there weren’t for my table at least), Timeleft provides ice breaking questions in the app. (I was comfortable enough to show the indecisive side of me in choosing what to eat for dinner.)
After the dinner, we were all shepherded to a bar for the “Last Drinks”, where we got the chance to meet the rest of the Timeleft dinner participants all over the island. While at first I did feel overwhelmed trying to find my footing among the many new faces in the bar, by the end of the night, I was surprised to find myself absorbed in conversation with one of my table mates, wishing that time wouldn’t pass so quickly.
Once in a lifetime
Earlier this year, I came across the phrase “ichigo ichie” while travelling through Japan. I chanced upon it during a tea ceremony session, and our lovely master explained that the term loosely translated to “once in a lifetime” — it is the Japanese culture that treasures the unrepeatable nature of a moment in time.
My first Timeleft dinner somehow reminded me of that phrase. The fact that the six of us chose the same night to have the dinner, were assigned to the same table and were sitting in the seating arrangement that we did – that has got to be the definition of unrepeatable, and to a certain extent, fate.
And I think that is the true value that apps like Timeleft bring. It is creating the serendipitous moments for people to meet, at a time when many are jaded by dating apps, professional networking events or find sitting one-on-one across the table with a stranger too overwhelming. Somehow, by putting six strangers in a group, you take a huge chunk of the pressure away.
Human connections
So have I gone for another Timeleft dinner?
Yes. In fact, I was waiting for my second dinner before publishing this post. While I was under no illusion that it would have the same dynamics as the first group, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed when I didn’t quite click with my dinner mates.
This makes me realise — all the apps in the world probably couldn’t force a connection that isn’t going to be there in the first place. But what apps like Timeleft do is create the opportunities, and it’s up to us to get out there and make the most of them.
Human connections are a funny thing — you either have it or you don’t. And sometimes it’s all down to luck that we get to sit in the same table as someone you connect with for a few hours that night.
And while such connections don’t happen only once in a lifetime, they are rare enough that we should cherish them, should we ever be lucky enough to find one.
missruslee 