A lover with a slow hand

A recent poll by the people atRat Race Rebellionhas underlined what many of us know already: that the virus of hurry is taking a heavy toll on our love lives. Nearly 90% of respondents said that a high-stress, over-scheduled, always-on lifestyle was crowding out romance. This jibes with other research showing that more and more of us are now willing to interrupt the act of love to take a cellphone call or read an email. Christine Durst, one of the people behind the Rat Race Rebellion, sums it up neatly: “We’re turning everything on but each other.”

Chinese takeaway

If you think speed-dating is rushed in the West, just consider the hurry-up approach to romance in China. In the country’s bustling cities, young people are now so busy that they have no time to look for Mr or Ms Right. The solution: group dating. In China, though, ‘group’ does not mean 30 singletons flirting over scorecards in a pub. At a recent event in Zhejiang, 12,658 people turned up looking for love. That’s an awful lot of potential mates to sift through in an evening. No wonder some female participants report that the only phone numbers they come home with are those of other single women looking for a shoulder to cry on.