Greets/acknowledges those around him (when appropriate).

Time is a precious commodity many don't have the luxury of wasting. Why spend the next month dating someone who turns out to be egotistical, selfish and rude?

Set a low bar

If the first dating works out, you'll be going on future dating with this person. Spending a lot of money on the first dating will make it more difficult to impress him/her later on.

Remove the money factor

Money can't buy Happiness. Even if you are well-off, going on an inexpensive first dating ensures that your partner comes back for you, not the money.

Have easier anniversaries

Women love to celebrate anniversaries. They even like to re-create important dating by doing the same thing again. If the first dating with your wife was a $150 dinner, that can be a costly event to re-create when you have 4 kids. But if you went on a picnic or met at a small cafe, it's easy to relive that special moment.

Bowerbird

I begin the year by interviewing two particularly interesting -- even confounding -- specimens for a weekly newspaper column I write about New Yorkers and their dwellings: Reiko Gomez, an interior designer who practices feng shui, and her husband, Peter Kaplan, a trader and financial advisor.

Uh-oh.

Having recently moved, old mattress and all, into an apartment in the East Village, I'm curious about what sort of a prescription Reiko might give for my new habitat.

Stuck Energy

Reiko arrives at my apartment one Friday afternoon with her lo pan, a compass that functions sort of like a sextant does for a celestial navigator. Its readings help feng shui practitioners arrive at an equation that is the energetic blueprint or diagnosis for you and your Home.

Possibilities

"That's a poison arrow," she says, alarmingly. "Not so great for health. Cover it." Cover it? A massive steel beam wrapped in 75-year-old plaster?

Too Much Change

She is not helping the situation, either, as she has just fixed up her children's 25-year-old babysitter with one of her own discards.

Tattoos

Tattoos used to be the colouring of soldiers, sailors, mafiosi and punk rockers. About ten years ago, they became fashionable. The lower-middle classes started taking them up.