Issue 21 of The Voice is now available to read online here!

See your dining hall or the Science Center for a hard copy.

I’m lookin’ for some love. Or at the very least a KangoGift. Make me happy and send me something!

Name: Single

Interested In: gifts. and maybe other stuff.

Send a gift through Kango Gift!

It’s that time again! Time to get pretty, minxy, gorgeous, foxy, etcetera…just in time for Valentine’s Day!

The Voice has teamed up again with Carriage House Salon to pamper you for a day! See our December Makeover Contest for our last lucky winner’s makeover.

WHEN: Feb. 3rd, 11am to 2pm

WHERE: Carriage House Salon on Church St.

WHAT: Haircut, color, and makeup for FREE! (a $200 value!)

ENTERING IS SIMPLE! Email thehvoicemail@gmail.com with why you or your friend deserves this makeover by January 30th, 11:59AM.

If you didn’t win last time, please don’t hesitate to enter the contest again.

Note: The winner will be featured in our special February Valentine’s Day issue.

FEATURETTE: Voice editor Alisha Ramos ‘12 attended the aphrodASIA Speed Dating Event hosted by the CSA on Friday, October 30. These are her impressions of the event and the phenomenon of speed dating in a culture like Harvard.

Well hey. This is awkward.

Speed dating is the least romantic situation that exists. It is intimate in all the wrong ways. The bottles of San Pellegrino on the rose petal laden tables remain untouched by couples until the event is over. Like many of the heel-wearing, hair-gelled participants, the romantic fixtures and dim lighting can’t help but seem embarrassingly artificial. This is not a real date. The person across from you does not know you. You are sitting not in a fancy restaurant but in the empty, wooden expanse of Leverett Old Library. Yet you are given three minutes to rattle off everything you can about yourself without scaring the other person away. Soon, the questions become protocol rather than intrigue. “So what year are you?” a date asks me in unison with the guy next to him.

Speed dating requires endurance and agility. You must balance a calm demeanor while ignoring the fact that you are attempting to appear attractive to eighteen complete strangers. I have never been through a job interview, but I imagine this is what it would be like, but maybe eighteen times worse. What should be an enjoyable night of getting to know new people soon devolves into a frantic scurry to sell, sell, sell–yourself.

Also required is an amazing ability to focus. You are seated inches away from the couples next to you; the urge to eavesdrop on conversations (or non-conversations) is in constant battle with the willingness to listen to your own partner, however boring or intriguing. Before you can untangle the adjacent conversations from your own, the announcer harkens the end of another three minutes. Hands are shaken, and a new body sits across from yours. Read the rest of this entry »