<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR>July 6, 2009
SOAP BOX
</TR><!-- headline one : start --><TR>SDU, time to get with the times
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>Forget mailers, dating website should Twitter or tap Facebook instead </TR><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Grace Chua
</TD></TR><!-- show image if available --></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->TO STEM Singapore's rapidly falling birth rate, the Government does many useful and wonderful things.
<TABLE width=200 align=left valign="top"><TBODY><TR><TD class=padr8><!-- Vodcast --><!-- Background Story --><STYLE type=text/css> #related .quote {background-color:#E7F7FF; padding:8px;margin:0px 0px 5px 0px;} #related .quote .headline {font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:10px;font-weight:bold; border-bottom:3px double #007BFF; color:#036; text-transform:uppercase; padding-bottom:5px;} #related .quote .text {font-size:11px;color:#036;padding:5px 0px;} </STYLE>YOUR SAY
HAVE something to say about articles in YouthInk? Thinking of contributing a story? E-mail [email protected] with your name, age and contact number.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>It recently launched the Marriage Central website for newlyweds, to-be-weds and already-weds. Ngee Ann Polytechnic conducts a course on relationships for its students. And the SDU sends me mailers.
The SDU, or Social Development Unit, is a dating agency. I'm sure it has a very important function to play, but I'm not sure what that function is, because I don't personally know anyone who got married after meeting someone else via the SDU. I do know people who got married after they went to a heavily discounted SDU event while they were already dating, but that's another story.
So, until I received a mailer, the thought of joining a dating agency had never crossed my mind.
I have never signed up for an SDU event.
I didn't graduate from university here, so how did they find me? Heck, I was already dating someone.
The mailers advertised tango lessons, extremely basic dating advice heavy on personal hygiene tips, and a website with singles ads featuring dashing young men named Stallion - none of which, bless their well-intentioned hearts, is really my thing at all.
So I wrote a polite letter asking the SDU to please not kill trees for my sake.
'To whom it may concern: I have been receiving unsolicited SDU-SDS event mailers at my home address. However, I did not join SDU-SDS, have never paid membership fees, and am mercifully not single. Would you be able to remove me from your mailing list? Thank you.'
This tactic worked so well that I received yet another mailer the next month: a bigger, fatter magazine. When I shook it, I half expected subscription cards to fall out.
I moaned about this to my boyfriend and some friends. Who laughed at me.
'I graduated from NUS and I've never received a mailer,' most of them said.
This situation, I decided, called for some creativity. So I wrote the SDU another love note.
'To whom it may concern: I have been receiving unsolicited SDU-SDS event mailers. Now my significant other of over two years, who is not familiar with the work of the SDU-SDS, is angry at me for signing up for a dating service without his knowledge. Please remove me from your mailing list lest it affect my otherwise healthy relationship. Thank you.'
Finally, I received this:
"Dear Grace: Thank you for your e-mail...Your SDU-SDS membership has been terminated as requested. We sincerely apologise for all the inconvenience caused. (HAPLESS CIVIL SERVANT), SDU-SDS, Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports.'
The close encounter of the dating- agency kind has taught me, I think, two things.
First of all, most of my peers and I don't even want a dating agency hovering over us. Personal ads perhaps (but not from people named Stallion). It's nice that someone out there cares about our social lives, but we can organise our own dates, thank you very much.
And second, there are people who are interested in SDU activities. But are dead-tree mailers really a good way to reach them in an age of e-mail, SMS alerts and Facebook messages?
There is an unofficial SDU Facebook group with 254 members. But the organisation isn't on Twitter. And the website is out-of-date - under About Us, I was greeted with the SDU's annual reports from 2002 and 2003. Listen up SDU, if you want to marry off youngish Singaporeans, you'll have to get with the times.
And what of the mailers? So far, I haven't received any more of them...but I have the niggling suspicion that my name will stay on those lists until I am firmly, decidedly, resolvedly married. Well, gentle reader, I will keep you posted.
[email protected]
SOAP BOX
</TR><!-- headline one : start --><TR>SDU, time to get with the times
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>Forget mailers, dating website should Twitter or tap Facebook instead </TR><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Grace Chua
</TD></TR><!-- show image if available --></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->TO STEM Singapore's rapidly falling birth rate, the Government does many useful and wonderful things.
<TABLE width=200 align=left valign="top"><TBODY><TR><TD class=padr8><!-- Vodcast --><!-- Background Story --><STYLE type=text/css> #related .quote {background-color:#E7F7FF; padding:8px;margin:0px 0px 5px 0px;} #related .quote .headline {font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:10px;font-weight:bold; border-bottom:3px double #007BFF; color:#036; text-transform:uppercase; padding-bottom:5px;} #related .quote .text {font-size:11px;color:#036;padding:5px 0px;} </STYLE>YOUR SAY
HAVE something to say about articles in YouthInk? Thinking of contributing a story? E-mail [email protected] with your name, age and contact number.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>It recently launched the Marriage Central website for newlyweds, to-be-weds and already-weds. Ngee Ann Polytechnic conducts a course on relationships for its students. And the SDU sends me mailers.
The SDU, or Social Development Unit, is a dating agency. I'm sure it has a very important function to play, but I'm not sure what that function is, because I don't personally know anyone who got married after meeting someone else via the SDU. I do know people who got married after they went to a heavily discounted SDU event while they were already dating, but that's another story.
So, until I received a mailer, the thought of joining a dating agency had never crossed my mind.
I have never signed up for an SDU event.
I didn't graduate from university here, so how did they find me? Heck, I was already dating someone.
The mailers advertised tango lessons, extremely basic dating advice heavy on personal hygiene tips, and a website with singles ads featuring dashing young men named Stallion - none of which, bless their well-intentioned hearts, is really my thing at all.
So I wrote a polite letter asking the SDU to please not kill trees for my sake.
'To whom it may concern: I have been receiving unsolicited SDU-SDS event mailers at my home address. However, I did not join SDU-SDS, have never paid membership fees, and am mercifully not single. Would you be able to remove me from your mailing list? Thank you.'
This tactic worked so well that I received yet another mailer the next month: a bigger, fatter magazine. When I shook it, I half expected subscription cards to fall out.
I moaned about this to my boyfriend and some friends. Who laughed at me.
'I graduated from NUS and I've never received a mailer,' most of them said.
This situation, I decided, called for some creativity. So I wrote the SDU another love note.
'To whom it may concern: I have been receiving unsolicited SDU-SDS event mailers. Now my significant other of over two years, who is not familiar with the work of the SDU-SDS, is angry at me for signing up for a dating service without his knowledge. Please remove me from your mailing list lest it affect my otherwise healthy relationship. Thank you.'
Finally, I received this:
"Dear Grace: Thank you for your e-mail...Your SDU-SDS membership has been terminated as requested. We sincerely apologise for all the inconvenience caused. (HAPLESS CIVIL SERVANT), SDU-SDS, Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports.'
The close encounter of the dating- agency kind has taught me, I think, two things.
First of all, most of my peers and I don't even want a dating agency hovering over us. Personal ads perhaps (but not from people named Stallion). It's nice that someone out there cares about our social lives, but we can organise our own dates, thank you very much.
And second, there are people who are interested in SDU activities. But are dead-tree mailers really a good way to reach them in an age of e-mail, SMS alerts and Facebook messages?
There is an unofficial SDU Facebook group with 254 members. But the organisation isn't on Twitter. And the website is out-of-date - under About Us, I was greeted with the SDU's annual reports from 2002 and 2003. Listen up SDU, if you want to marry off youngish Singaporeans, you'll have to get with the times.
And what of the mailers? So far, I haven't received any more of them...but I have the niggling suspicion that my name will stay on those lists until I am firmly, decidedly, resolvedly married. Well, gentle reader, I will keep you posted.
[email protected]
