Not that I have any idea of what the usual Spike column is, but I’m warning you in advance that this one will be far from that. If you’re not in the mood to read a feel-good, gooey, icky love story – a tale of redemption, if you will – then feel free to turn the page now.

I presume that most of my faithful readers (all 17 of them) know that I’ve been pretty bad in the past few years. No, I’m not going into details here. Just think of the worst you could possibly imagine and then multiply it by 10. That was me and, actually, I was quite proud of it. So proud that I detailed my daily badness in a blog that was the recipient of about 30,000 unique visits per month.

But as time went on, I knew that I was looking for something more. And those friends of mine who read the blog often commented that I just didn’t seem to be enjoying myself all that much. Of course I was making attempts to find love and a relationship. I’ve even been accused of using this column as the longest personal ad ever written. There were lots of dates, but most were with women who were, to be honest, horribly inappropriate for me. Women who were after my money, my passport or Buddha knows what else.

I began to develop a pretty firm idea of the kind of woman I was looking for. She was going to have to be someone who was educated, articulate, cosmopolitan and funny, possessed a wide variety of interests and at an age somewhat close to mine but still, in my eyes, someone who would be described as hot. And, last but not least, someone willing to put up with all of my major personality quirks. I knew that this combination existed, but I started to think that she didn’t exist in Hong Kong and, if she did, I didn’t have the vaguest idea of how to meet her. I started singing that Wreckless Eric song constantly, “When I was a young boy, my mama said to me, there’s only one girl in the world for you and she probably lives in Tahiti.”

At the beginning of December, I’d hit the wall. Coming off yet another failed attempt to establish a relationship with the wrong person, I called my mother one night and told her that I was giving up. I had no further interest in dating and was just going it alone. I’ve got my two dogs, my maid, my ridiculous CD and DVD collections and, when needed, Wanchai. My mother is 86 years old, has lived alone for 15 years since my father died and asked me what seemed like an odd question at the time: “Don’t you miss intimacy?” I’d actually never thought about it or perhaps I’d confused sexual intimacy with emotional intimacy.

Just two nights later, I was out for the evening with a friend. We had one of the most amazing Japanese meals I’ve had in my life (at Nadaman at the Kowloon Shangri-La) and then zipped across the harbour to enjoy Ice Box, the band at Amazonia. A lot of sake at dinner, a few more drinks at the bar and I was feeling no pain. But I was feeling restless. I left Amazonia and just started walking with no destination in mind.

I didn’t get far. When I passed Spicy Fingers, I saw another friend sitting at an outside table with a group of people I didn’t know. I joined them and it only took a few minutes for me to take note of the one woman at the table. She was seriously good looking in my opinion – fabulous hair and a great smile, thin and sexy, Asian but speaking with a slight British accent. But what truly got my attention was the confidence evident in her every word and gesture. She was, in short, everything I thought I was looking for.

And so, it took just a few seconds for me to convince myself that there was no way a woman like that could be single. And when one of the other guys at the table got some food for himself and her from the Boracay stand next door, I thought, “Okay, that must be her boyfriend.”

At one point, she did say something about how hard it was to find Mr Right and, even though I had enough presence of mind to finally speak up, saying, “I could be Mr Right,” in my befuddled state it never dawned on me that a woman saying she was looking for Mr Right actually wasn’t with any of the other guys there. Oddly enough, that did catch her attention and she finally noticed me.

Later on, a couple of the guys at the table were handing her their business cards so I joined in, giving her one of mine. (Two guys at our table asked her out that night and a guy at the next table came over to tell her she was the hottest woman in the bar.) Soon after that, she left. She was parked in the garage across from the bar, came down in her car, waved good night to everyone and drove
off. Alone.

After I finished smacking myself in the head several times, I decided I was going home too. I was still a little drunk, very tired and most of all I knew I wasn’t likely to meet anyone else like her that night.

Back home, I received an SMS from her saying that she’d gotten home safely. I assumed that she’d sent this SMS to everyone at the table (I later found out I was right). But I thought, here’s my opportunity, so I sent a reply. (She later told me I was the only one who replied.) She answered, and that began a two-day series of SMS’s and online chats that culminated in my asking her out
to dinner.

Of course I started anticipating problems in advance of the date. I figured that since I hadn’t spoken much at the bar, she probably couldn’t remember what I looked like. And I was convinced that she was under 35 years old and wouldn’t be interested in me once she found out my age. So going into this date, I expected that it would last about half an hour, and that soon I’d be joining some friends in a bar.

So we went out on that first date on Tuesday night, four days after we’d first met. And I was right, she didn’t remember what I looked like at all. I was wrong about her age though, it was much closer to mine than I’d expected. And I was wrong about the date itself – it lasted about five hours. We sat in the bar talking for four of those hours and then just walked around talking for another hour before I drove her home.

That night, I think I knew within 15 minutes, 30 minutes tops, how I felt about her. That she was the kind of person I was looking for, someone I could really be serious about. And apparently it didn’t take too much longer for her to feel the same way.

Since that first night out, we’ve been together almost every night. In essence, we’ve packed six months of dating into a month. We talk all night long, night after night. When we’re not together, the emails and SMS’s are still non-stop. I enjoy being with her and it doesn’t matter what we’re doing, I’m just happy when she’s next to me. I hesitate to use the phrase ‘soul mate’ but I can be completely honest and open with her and trust her completely. I suppose I never missed the lack of intimacy in my life until I had it again and could look back on those days when it wasn’t there. I’m so ridiculously happy every day that I’m convinced I’m going to come down with cancer or be kidnapped by terrorists really soon.

Yes, I’m sure some people doubt that this dog has learned new tricks. To you doubters, all I can say is that it just took the right woman to motivate me. I’ve found her now and I’m praying to every deity I can think of to help me not to screw this up.

So, to all of you who’ve made it this far, those who are still searching and especially those who have given up, all I can say to you is, if it happened to me, then it really could happen to you. Happy New Year!