'I have to confess, I absolutely love my life. And why wouldn't I I live in this beautiful city where I get to go for morning walks on the mountain, surf in Muizenberg (when the Cape Doctor isn't making house calls) or just relax in some postcard- perfect spot and read.
"The way I see it, Cape Town is a blessing and a curse because you don't need anyone to make you feel alive, happy or fulfilled. You have it all. You just have to open your eyes and heart to it. So why am I here?"
It's not often you get to quote your online dating profile's personal "narrative". That's the part where you get 20 to 2 000 words to "sell" yourself, or at least the SABS-approved version you want to put forward.
It really is an exercise in sales, where miscalculating your value or the market's interest could cost you in receding hairlines and awkward dates.
In my case my avatar was "surfyogi", the adventurous free spirit who is "already in love with life but open to new possibilities". Or so says her headline.
Well travelled and adventurous, surfyogi is a thirtysomething girl who knows what she wants – "I like a passionate, adventurous man who has a great sense of humour" – but keeps herself open to new possibilities – "I am not sure I have an ideal man. The men in my life keep on surprising and challenging me, and I like to keep it that way."
Creating a profile
And just in case she gets pigeonholed as a jock looking for her iron man, she throws in a piece of prose to hopefully capture a few creative souls.
"I hope to make you laugh, to inspire you to be more courageous and adventurous, to live life fearlessly and freely and to never stop asking why? Or why not? And in return I hope you do the same for me."
On any given day surfyogi could have been "culture vulture" or "creative guru". It's hard choosing just one angle for your entire life story.
The book cover is a bit easier. The best profile photographs always cover the basics – sexy, sporty and slightly mysterious. Surfing photos show physical ability and put you in a bikini, in Europe or at least Durban (this also shows you travel). In hindsight, surfyogi might have thrown in a few more "sensitive" photos, pictures of her playing games with cute children or engaging with animals and nature, all firm favourites on the online dating circuit.
Of course, creating the persona and making a checklist of the ideal man was the fun part. What happened next was more difficult: giving a stranger – in my case it was DatingBuzz – permission to launch your personal thoughts and romantic wishes into cyberspace for any site member and their friends to scrutinise with glee or malice.
It's akin to someone posting excerpts of your diary on Facebook only to hope you at least get some "likes".
Do South Africans use online dating sites?
The South African online dating industry is much smaller than its international counterparts. Cost is not really the key issue here. Most sites operate on a "freemium" basis, making it free for members to sign up and browse profiles until they want to contact and message someone, in which case a paid subscription comes into play. This varies between R80 and R150 a month depending on how many months you commit to.
It's not as much as the R2 390 that the average online dater spends in the United States every year, but then our numbers don't compare with Europe and the US, where online dating is the norm rather than the exception.
According to Statistic Brain, research provider to publications such as the New York Times and Forbes, a whopping 40-million of the 54-million single people in the US have tried online dating.
Specific online dating sites
Niche sites get to the heart of the issue even in their URL: singlewithkids.co.za, afrikaanssingles.co.za, justwesterncapedating.co.za and gochristiandating.co.za. No further explanation needed.
A30-year-old Cape Town-based creative type, "ar1" played the numbers game and won the love lottery. After nine months of chatting to almost 100 people that turned into 30 dates, she finally came across a profile picture so bad that she thought the tall man behind it must have an exceptional sense of humour.
Turns out he did and two years later "ar1" and "Cape31" are engaged with a good story to tell at their high school reunion.
The punch line is that they attended the same high school and music school, and he knew both her brothers yet they had never met.
But speak to any online dater and they will probably tell you that there are fewer Cape31s out there than Petes. And that's usually what people want to know about – the freaks, the weirdos and the oddballs. I have to remind myself that, to someone else's social circle, I could be Pete.
I probably wear the wrong clothes, and don't say the right things. Surf-yogi could have become a catch phrase for all kinds of weird.
The actual stalkers do get filtered out, although not to the extent that they do in the US, where social security numbers (and probably the National Security Agency) provide greater barriers to entry than a loveLife condom.
"We manage to locate and delete most nefarious profiles before they become public," reassures Burstein.
A fairytale ending?
As it happens, Surfyogi's love story followed no line of scientific reasoning or online logic. She responded to one email, and in the next conversation met TeacherPlant after seven days on the site. They chatted on the site for 10 days. Nonstop. The conversation flowed and flowed and eventually burst its banks.
She wrote her usual stream of unconsciousness. He kept his mails short and succinct. She made him talk. He made her laugh. She asked whether his profile picture was taken before or after the 28 gang in Polsmoor rejected him. He apologised for misspelling "throw" as "through". That was probably the clincher.
They organised a date, somewhere public with clearly defined exit points. They both secretly hoped for chemistry and feared reality.
As Cupid would have it, there was no chemistry, even though they talked for hours. They walked away with slumped shoulders, sad to have lost that special connection. They stayed in touch. He popped round for coffee the next week.
With the pressure off, something shifted. Their eyes met and they both looked away. There was chemistry, the kind that would see them through the next 10 months and counting.
Surfyogi's first and only date turned out to be her last. For now. Most likely surfyogi and TeacherPlant will spend their time together enjoying their 93% compatibility and negotiating their way through the 7% that didn't tick their boxes – like any normal couple.
Their story still raises a few eyebrows and questions with old, established couples but, no doubt, if you tell any five-year-old when they come of dating age they will probably look at you with wonder and ask: "How else would you meet?"