Aug 13, 2010

Logging onto my match.com account, I create a search argument to find someone local who is of Asian extraction and has an interest in overseas travel. (I’m especially intrigued by anyone who has done extended trips of a month or more, though I cannot specifically search for this). I also want them to be within shouting distance of my age with no child commitments, meaning they can more easily shove off for foreign lands.

When I get the results back, it’s a letdown. In a city with close to one hundred thousand Asians, there are but six women who meet my criteria and have posted photos. One of them doesn’t look Oriental at all, so I’ll exclude her from the discussion. This leaves five, three of which deserve comment.

Asian #1, as I’ll call her, is Japanese who came to America in 1995. Her headline says something about wanting to see the world. So far, so good. But when I view her primary photo — a long-faced, halfway attractive woman — there’s a small dog seated on her lap. The same kind of yappy little mongrel that bit me down in Dallas last month while I was playing golf. There is nothing I’d like more to do to an animal like this than to swing my driver into it’s snout the second it snaps at me.

Asian #2’s picture seems to have been taken from a boat in Venice harbor, if memory serves me, which certainly gets my attention! Reading her introduction, I find that she loves Italy and is of Japanese descent. Again, very encouraging. However, one of her other passions is cats, making me wonder what she would do with her feline friends if embarking with me upon one of the long vacations I prefer — say, a late summer and early fall in Florence. Maybe she could find a temporary home for them?

I know already how Asian #3, a Taiwanese, would respond to that suggestion. In her introduction, she requests that men who are allergic to cats need not apply as there’s no way she is parting with her pet. In other words, she places a higher value in the companionship of an animal to that of a man. Little wonder she has never married. People with priorities like that deserve to spend their lives alone.

So here’s what I’m running into: my potential kindred spirits tend to be “pet people” and I am most definitely not, partly because I’m a neat, orderly person who finds them distracting and messy, and also because they get in the way of adventuring. To truly experience the world, one’s spirit (to quote Dickens), must move beyond the realms of its counting house — not to mention Fido’s dog house.

I’m closing my account on Match.

• Moving To Siam
• Sick Of Seattle