Blind Date: Rope technician Sam and hospitality worker Alicia pushed their tolerance for heat to the limit

Alicia, 26, says:

We arrived at the same time, so we said hi, sat down.

I said to him: “Let’s play a game. Look at me and tell me how old I am. What you think I do for a job and then I’m going to do the same for you.”

I said office job just because he was saying how he was pretty tired at work. I thought he was about 28. Because he gave me a little hint I said I work with lots of people, then he went straight to customer service and we eventually got there. So that was actually a nice ice breaker.

His job role was really interesting because here I was picturing this guy wearing a suit in an office. And next thing you know, he’s a boilermaker hanging from ropes.

We had so much in common. We started talking and I kind of felt like I was talking to someone that’s been in my life for longer than a few minutes. We had our dogs in common, our lives revolve around our dogs. We both had characteristics of ADHD of always doing so many different things and always needing to keep busy. He’s also a gym person and likes to keep fit which I also like to do and he likes to eat good food which is exactly the same for me. Honestly, it was a really good match.

We went to order food and he was saying he likes spice and I’m a sucker of jalapeno poppers. But they had sold out so we made the rash decision to go for some hot wings. The bartender said, “look, we do this challenge if you want, where we chuck in some random, ultra-spicy ultimate wing”.

We were eating them one by one and Sam ate it and goes, “nope, that wasn’t it”. And then like a minute later he’s like, “oh, God, that was the one”. He was sweating, like the veins in his forehead were popping out.

He added me on Facebook. He wants to catch up with the dogs because dogs are obviously a big part of our lives.

Verdict: 10/10

Sam, 30, says:

It was a bit unnatural at first, obviously, catching up with someone you have no idea what they look like or who they are. But we have a lot of things in common, namely our dogs, and just I think our general personality, it was very similar.

I like to try everything at least once. I’m not new to Perth, but I’ve been working a lot of FIFO hours so I guess I am sort of still new to Perth. I moved from Darwin about two years ago. You definitely don’t get this whole blind dating thing in Darwin.

I got to Varsity first. She wasn’t far behind me. It was packed in there, but a really good atmosphere. We sat down and I think we had a couple of drinks to sort of loosen up. We just started with the formalities of “so where are you from? How long have you been in Perth? What do you do for a living?”

And then Alicia thought was a good idea to get starters and she got some hot wings and there was a super, super spicy one hidden in there, like Russian roulette. It was ridiculously novelty-level spicy. I was sort of bragging at one point saying, “I’m pretty good with spicy food. I’ll be fine.” So we were eating the wings and I knew immediately I got it, and I just started uncontrollably sweating. I was sweating profusely. It was pretty funny.

I think we were there for about three hours just talking, getting to know each other. We both share the same enthusiasm when it comes to our dogs. We share the same opinion on most things and we managed to keep the conversation going the whole time. There weren’t any awkward silences or anything.

We had a good time. We had a few laughs and I enjoyed myself and I’m pretty sure she did too. We exchanged Facebook details and we’re probably going to catch up for a puppy playdate when I’m not too busy.

Verdict: 8/10