Mating game, waiting game

I've survived SARS, bird flu, the rise of the boy bands and attempts by several Asian women to nudge me into marriage during the last decade. Now I'm either a fat old loser or a roaring one-man success story, depending on your point of view.

If you saw any of those girls on the street, your heart would skip a beat. Mine did. But 18 months down the road, when they are karate-kicking your front door at 1 am (Korean ex-girlfriend) or telling you they want to have a baby yesterday, because at 24 they are already over the hill (Chinese ex-girlfriend), you have to ask yourself, "Are we really on the same wavelength?"

(The issue of cross-cultural marriage is discussed tonight on International Channel Shanghai's Culture Matters, a sister program to our column.)