The KL Bachelor Algorithm

Dr. Arjun Menon believed in data. Data was predictable, logical, and clean. As a leading data scientist in Kuala Lumpur, he had optimised traffic flow for the city and predicted monsoon patterns with startling accuracy. But his greatest project, Project Spouse, was failing spectacularly.

His method was sound: a 456-point questionnaire designed to filter for the perfect logical partner. Points 1-50: Dietary preferences and compatibility (a shared love of teh tarik was weighted highly). Points 51-150: Intellectual and professional goals. Points 151-456: Everything else, including a critical analysis of their opinion on the best nasi lemak stall in KL (Laksa Shack in Bangsar was the only correct answer).

The result of his three-year search? Zero compatible matches.

“Aiyo, Arjun! Your problem is you are looking for a robot, not a woman!” lamented his best friend, Seng, crunching on keropok at a bustling street food stall. “Love is not data. It is… chaos. Delicious, messy chaos.”

“Chaos is inefficiency,” Arjun stated, adjusting his glasses. “I simply haven’t found a subject with a high enough compatibility score.”

“Subject?” Seng groaned. “See? This is why you’re still single. You need a real person. Not a subject.”

Fate, that chaotic and inefficient force, intervened the very next day. To celebrate a breakthrough at work, Arjun’s colleagues dragged him to a newly opened, impossibly trendy rooftop bar overlooking the Petronas Towers. He was calculating the probability of a bird contaminating his drink when he saw her.

She was arguing passionately with the bartender. “No, no, you can’t just use any calamansi! The juice has to be from the limau kasturi from my Popo’s garden in Ipoh, or the entire balance of the cocktail is off! It’s basic chemistry!”

She was, by his initial visual assessment, a Category 5 Hurricane of illogical behaviour. She was also the most stunning woman he had ever seen.

Her name was Chloe Cheng. She was a third-generation heiress to the Cheng’s Consolidated fortune (think rubber plantations, luxury hotels, and the best popiah in the country) and a wildly talented, notoriously perfectionist chef.

Their meeting was a disaster of catastrophic proportions. She spilled an experimental cocktail (featuring the subpar calamansi) all over his meticulously ironed white shirt. He responded not with anger, but by pulling a pocket-sized stain-removal pen from his breast pocket and calmly stating, “The probability of this event was high given the spatial constraints of the bar and your gestural enthusiasm.”

She didn’t run away. She laughed. A loud, unselfconscious, joyful sound that cut through the lounge music. “A stain pen? Who even are you?”

He took it as a genuine inquiry. “I am Dr. Arjun Menon. My current project is the mitigation of this citrus-based incident.”

Intrigued by this strange, literal man, Chloe did something utterly irrational. She asked him to dinner. To critique her new menu.

It was, of course, a terrible first date by any logical standard.

• He tried to objectively score each dish out of ten (her har gau received a 7.2 for “pleasing symmetry but slightly suboptimal dough elasticity”).

• She asked him about his passions, and he presented her with a summarised slide deck on urban data trends.

• He criticised the feng shui of the restaurant’s layout for impeding efficient server movement.

Chloe’s gigantic, crazy rich family, however, was delighted. Her mother, the formidable Auntie Agnes, saw his lack of interest in their money (he once referred to her Rolls Royce as “a statistically inefficient mode of transport for KL roads”) as a sign of noble character. Her cousins started a betting pool on how long until he spontaneously combusted from social anxiety.

Project Spouse was in shambles. Chloe Cheng scored a negative score on his questionnaire. She was impulsive, emotional, gloriously messy, and her favourite nasi lemak stall was a “sentimentally illogical” choice from a roadside auntie who didn’t even have a hygiene rating.

Yet, he found himself thinking about her 83% of his waking hours. He diagnosed this as a likely virus.

The climax arrived at the Cheng family’s legendary Mid-Autumn Festival gala, a event of obscene wealth held at their mansion in Kenny Hills. Arjun, under duress from Seng, attended. He was promptly separated from Chloe and cornered by aunties offering him durian and marriage advice.

He found himself facing Chloe’s grandfather, the family patriarch, who was surveying the chaos like a sleepy emperor.

“So,” the old man said, fixing Arjun with a sharp gaze. “You are the one who makes charts. Tell me. What is the algorithm for making my granddaughter happy?”

Arjun looked across the room. He saw Chloe, trying to fend off a boring banker her mother adored. She looked stressed. Unhappy. In that moment, a massive data breakthrough occurred in Arjun’s mind.

He had been measuring all the wrong variables.

He walked over, interrupting the banker mid-sentence. “Excuse me. The data is conclusive.”

Everyone stared. Chloe’s eyes went wide.

“The probability of Chloe Cheng’s long-term happiness increases by 98.7 percent when she is not interacting with individuals who find the use of locally sourced limau kasturi ‘a frivolous detail’,” he announced. He turned to Chloe. “Your dedication to perfection is not illogical. It is your core algorithm. And it is… magnificent.”

There was a stunned silence. Then, Chloe beamed. The banker slunk away.

Later, under the moonlight, she asked, “98.7 percent, huh? That’s suspiciously specific for made-up data.”

“It is,” Arjun admitted, a small, uncalculated smile on his face. “I believe I have caught your affinity for chaos. My project is a failure. I am… comfortable with this.”

Chloe Cheng, heiress and chaos agent, kissed the data scientist then. It was, by every one of his previous metrics, gloriously, illogically, inefficiently perfect.