ROXANNE is a statistic waiting to happen. And sadly, it is she who wants it to happen ? actually longs for it to happen, as she believes it is the only way out of her present life of drudgery in a foreign country, which she had grasped at to escape poverty in the homeland.

A domestic helper in Hongkong for the last 12 years, Roxanne was thrilled when her last employer, an American, bequeathed her his laptop when he returned to Chicago. The laptop has been the vehicle to her dream and since then, Roxanne has been relieving her dreary life by surfing websites like Filipinaheart.com, Filipinakisses.com, Sugardaddyforme.com, U.S.military.com, Euromates.com, Ozmatchmaking.com and Cherry blossoms.com.

The websites are match-making hubs that many girls like Roxanne frequent, hoping for that one in zillion match with the foreign knight who will take them to his castle in Europe or in the Americas. It is a fantasy she shares with many other Asian females, and that in turn makes them vulnerable to so many kinds of disillusionment and even potential oppression and abuse.

As writer Duncan Rhyne, in his sexualfront.com blog, observes ?Asia is a fantastic sexual playing ground for locals and western visitors... Its potential for truly rewarding sexual relationships is enormous, provided one avoids places that have been affected by too much tourism, commercial sex establishments, and the presence of pseudo-intellectuals who continue to view all Asians as tribal folks who need to be protected from the evils of modern Western ideas.?

Some years ago, Time magazine wrote that ?A continent of 3 billion human beings is getting sexy and kicking the guilt. You can thank satellite television and globalization, and don?t forget a sincere hosanna to the Internet. There is, it seems, a chat room for anything and everyone ? spouses seeking greater satisfaction, singles who don?t want to wait until marriage...?

In the past few years, Roxanne had found, in some of those match-making websites, two main prospects: an Australian and a German. The former emailed that he was enroute to China on business and proposed a stopover in Hong Kong to meet her, and the latter said he was actively seeking a marriage partner and was willing to travel to Hong Kong.

Both turned out to be bitter disappointments. The Australian was booked in a grubby Kowloon backpackers? inn and only took her to cheap eateries for meals. She found him too ?kuripot? so she quickly wrote him off.

The German who planned to fly in several months later was divorced, but had a Filipina girlfriend with whom he had a child. He brought mother and child to Germany and continued to support them, he said, but was now searching for a new partner to settle down with and set up a beach resort in the Philippines. Roxanne didn?t find this background information nor his future plans too objectionable. But when he asked her to pose naked in front of a webcam a week before his arrival, she hastily severed that Internet connection.

Now 36, Roxanne is starting to feel desperate. Back at the old grind of slaving for her demanding female employer, who happens to be Pinay, she hasn?t given up hope though. Not while she still has access to the websites that matter to her ? and not after she has seen some fantasies come true for women like her.

There?s her present employer Linda, also a Filipina, who arrived in Hong Kong 16 years ago from an impoverished Pangasinan town to work as a domestic for an Australian couple with two small children. Because Linda is rather pretty and has a seductive air, it wasn?t long before she and her boss were on the marital bed during the times when his wife worked late. A bitter divorce followed, written up in the gossip pages of Hong Kong?s largest-circulated English-language newspaper. Soon Linda found herself both pregnant and with a coveted foreign husband. Today Linda has three children, a henpecked husband, and a cushy life in one of Hong Kong?s residential enclaves.

And then there?s Roxanne?s friend Cristeta. After years of virtual slavery for Chinese employers, Cris found an elderly Frenchman via the Internet. He traveled to Hong Kong twice to meet her and was so keen to take her back to France, he pestered the local consulate over a period of three years to expedite her fiancee visa. They were married in City Hall and flew to Burgundy. His grown children have yet to welcome her, as she knows they suspect her of being a gold-digger ? which of course she isn?t. She?s just one of thousands of women from poor countries seeking security in their lives and hoping they?ll find it in a foreign husband. As is Roxanne.

As ?Hemlock,? one of Hong Kong?s best-known bloggers, puts it, thousands of Western men who fulfill their dreams of having exotic and subservient Asian wives comprise what he calls the Association of Gweilos Married to Southeast Asian Women of Humble Origins (or AGMOSAWHO).

Roxanne is but one of those who would dearly love to link up with one of those gweilos (Cantonese for foreign devil).