In September, having lunch with friends on Scott’s Road, I was introduced to the girl of my dreams. I’ll marry this girl, I thought. The very idea I could have such a thought was enough of a shock to ruin my appetite. After all, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve snarled at my mother for naively telling me the right one is out there, and that when I meet her, I’ll magically know she is The One.

It was heaven with her for a while, but now I wander dazed through my flat, brooding over the debris of a dead romance – the bizarre bottles of girls’ things next to my razors and Right Guard, the dozens of CDs she brought over sitting forlornly next to my silent stereo, and the red silk nightie in my empty closet that I’ll never see her in again. And as if all this isn’t bad enough, now, at a painfully not-so-young 34 years, I have also to think of the future, and the future means dating.

A medley of my worst dates keeps marching past my mind’s eye. Top honors goes to a girl I took to the old Compass Rose some years back. Her first question: Does your company pay your rent? Yes, I lied, for if my company pays me, and I pay my rent, then doesn’t my company pay my rent? Her questions got worse, much worse: What is your yearly pay increment? Do you fly business class? How does your compensation compare with your industry peers? And finally: "Where do you see yourself in ten years?"

"Uh, on some island in Thailand with a seventeen year old girlfriend and a lifetime supply of cheap beer," came my reply, which I fear failed to impress her. My shining off of five white wines (compared with her single half-finished coke) also, I hazard to say, made a poor impression. Have a nice life, baby.

And then there was the stunner who I stupidly invited out to a soccer night with my friends at the pub. When she discovered a buddy of mine had a sports car she was in the sack with him before I could even give her the lie that my Ferrari Testarossa was in for repairs. And I’ll never forget the lovely woman that, during our second dinner date, abruptly informed me that she was married, that she wanted to be "just friends," and that it would be "simply smashing" if we could have a drink with her husband after dinner. "Oh dear!" I said. "I seem to have forgotten my wallet, would you mind picking up the bill?"

Nevertheless, you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them, goes the cliché, so I must get back into the fray. But how?

A friend of mine, a sales executive, says dating is like a sales funnel: the more fresh prospects you have going in, the more sales you’ll make. He spends his workdays trawling Internet dating sites looking for The One or, at least, Miss Hot-Enough-To-Sleep-With. He’s had little success thus far, despite carefully selecting girls with nice photos who also describe themselves as "cute, pretty, nice figure, etc." What are they supposed to describe themselves as, I wonder: "Ugly, dour, fat?"

Anyway, when all these crucial physical criteria appear to be in alignment, he emails the girl and suggests a drink at The Oriental Hotel. If she turns out to be, er, less than he hoped for, he can bail out at the cost of one S$11 gin & tonic. Otherwise, he can wine and dine her in The Oriental’s coffee shop, and if she’s a real keeper, she eats at Morton’s. That’s the theory, but he’s yet to make it out of the cocktail lounge.

So perhaps it’s time to suck in my gut, stand up straight, and head to Ladies’ night at Centro, Velvet, or Siam Supper Club, even though numerous visits to such places over the years have resulted, as my sales executive friend would say, in no sales whatsoever. Even if The One - who my mother, ever desirous of grandchildren, still insists is out there - were to enjoy the blasting music, the smoke, and the mob, I’m not sure a club is where I want to meet her. "What’s your name!" I’ll shout directly into her ear, and only after she’s told me five times will I properly understand it. By this point she’ll be annoyed, and if she isn’t, she will be after she’s had to shout five times to make me understand where she lives. If she does give me her email (good girls, supposedly, don’t give their numbers to strangers) and I write to her, she’ll only remember me as the big American guy who’s responsible for her partial hearing loss.

Friends have always been a great way to meet girls, but my married friends now outnumber my unmarried friends. There’s little worse then being invited to a party by, say, my married brother, only to discover that not only am I the only bachelor present, but also the only singleton, to borrow Helen Fielding’s term. Amid the discussions about prams, childhood development, and gory births, one of the smug marrieds (another nod to Helen) will express dismay that such a nice fellow as I has yet to find The One - or anyone else for that matter. A minute or so of chatter among themselves will inevitably produce the name of some aging bachelorette, but by this time I’m outside on my mobile begging my remaining single friends to meet me for a stiff drink – a lot of stiff drinks.

This is all a bit too much to think about right now, frankly, so perhaps I’ll hunker down at my computer, load up the latest versions of Warcraft and Command & Conquer, crack open a beer, and indulge myself until I feel suitably strong to face the trials and tribulations of the dating scene. Before any of this, though, I’ll pack my ex’s things away, but then again perhaps I won’t, and I’ll give her a call instead.

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