I won a raffle at a Korean hot pot restaurant.

I was on an unsuccessful blind date with a guy that some distant relatives hoped to fix me up with. There was nothing wrong with him, exactly. Just like me, he was trying to grind his way upward in the world of finance. He took care to dress the part. As soon as he opened his mouth, I could hear something familiar in the way he spoke. He had the habit of taking any subject and trying to break it down into figures and formulas that he could then split into A, B, C, D, and enter into spreadsheets. His face floated in the steam between us. He was using the same face on me that he must have used for sucking up to his boss or trying to sell clients on some new scheme. I plucked a quivering rice cake out of the red-hot broth. I mumbled uh-huhs and oh yeahs back to whatever he said. I hadn’t expected anything less out of the date.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “You’ve got everything a man is looking for. If you’re too picky, you’re going to miss the window of opportunity and won’t be able to cash in any options.”