Flyby Matchmaker: Chance Encounters and Double Dates

Russell Reed ’20 is a freshmen from Del Mar, Calif. who finds the Ec 10 enrollment laughable. Angel Navidad ’20, also a freshmen, hails from San Pedro, Belize and wants to study biology, but is not a premed. We sent them to one of Reed’s favorite study spots, The Fogg, to see if they’d hit it off.

Russell Reed '20 and Angel Navidad '20 pose for a selfie. By Leni M.G. Hirsch

Russell: My friends were like ‘Wow what a great idea. All of us should fill this out. None of us will get it, but it would be so funny if we did.’ I was kind of hesitant, but why not? It will be a funny story. And then, naturally, I’m the one who got it—It was very much a group message peer pressure thing.

Angel: I got there before [the café] closed. I didn’t know how [finding each other] was going to work so I was just hanging around, not knowing who he was and thinking I would just wait seven minutes and leave, but, fortunately, it was Russell.

Russell: [Jenny’s Café at the Harvard Art Museum] was closing at the time, but I went in and brought up my little coupon and was whispering to the people at the front asking ‘have you seen anyone else using it yet?’ They said ‘yeah actually we did’ and I asked if should I be concerned and they were like ‘no he’s super cute, wearing a blue polo.’

Angel: I was really stoked. I knew him before (from Opening Days) and knew he was cool and all.

Russell: We hugged and started.

Angel: We looked at [previous Flyby Matchmaker articles] to see what we should ask each other and we were like ‘oh shoot these guys seem like they’re having so much fun and we’re just being boring on a coffee date talking about concentrations.’ So, we tried to diversify.

Russell: We didn’t know each other super well so it was a lot of getting to know each other better which was cool. I didn’t even know he lives in Mass. Hall and I live in Matthews so we’re like right next to each other.

Angel: We talked about blocking groups and the housing and all that. And, his cool mom… [our conversation] just confirmed that he was a cool guy.

Russell: I got Lowell, so I’m super excited—the ‘Lowtel’ as I like to call it. He was blocking with his entire FIP family and a lot of friends did FIP so we had a lot of people in common to talk about. We ended up wandering around and talking about how Harvard is considering getting rid of blocking and how we both had really positive experiences with it. Harvard’s policies—my favorite date conversation.

Angel: He is going to be by the river so yeah [we’ll see each other again], Unfortunately. [laughs] No, he’s cool… I’ll probably see him again.

Russell: It’s one of those things where we were hesitant friends who would say ‘hi’ to each other, but now that we’ve had this funny experience together we’ll probably actually hang out and grab coffee by choice and pay for ourselves. Who knows? It really was fun; overall a very positive experience.

Interested in going on a Flyby Matchmaker date, but too scared to go at it alone? Now, if you and a friend both fill it out and mark that you want to go on a double date, we’ll try to make that happen!