Joe Nguyen, a self-professed geek, is always showing off his latest gadgets when we meet. So when the man who crunches data for a living – he is senior VP APAC for comScore – told me last week, “I want to show you the biggest gadget of all”, I was intrigued, thinking he may be referring to himself and that he’d gotten himself robot-ised in some way.

I got even curiouser when he offered to pick me up for our meeting yesterday – not that Joe’s not a gentleman, far from it, he’s a gentleman in geekdom – but it seemed out of the normal pattern of behaviour.

So there I was, sitting and waiting for him, when a low, mean, red sports machine rolls up. Joe had arrived. In his brand new Tesla Roadster, the only registered one of its kind in Singapore.

He was beaming from ear to ear. I swear I’d never seen a man look so happy. Okay, I know I lead a sheltered life or I haven’t found the secret to a man’s happiness (yet) but if this was Male Heaven, Joe’s arrived.

Now I don’t know a Tesla from a Telstra or a Deathstar but I do know hot wheels when I see one. And anyway, Joe promptly filled me on the details – 2,400 of them sold up to September 2012, only three being driven in South-east Asia (two in Malaysia and guess who they belong to?), fully electric – Joe charges it at home like he does his iPhone, one charge lasts 200km, which is about as far as you can go in Singapore anyway.

It’s super low. You feel you’re sitting on the floor – ladies, there is no way to make graceful entries and exits in this car. It’s super fast in its acceleration – zero to 100km/hour in 3 seconds which Joe demonstrated on several occasions. You feel like an arrow being shot out of William Tell’s bow.

I will talk about money later because I tend to find that fact tends to spoil a good story.

I’d rather talk about love. So Joe fell in love with the car on first drive during an event he attended in Japan last summer – the Brands Summit or something. They were letting people test drive it.

He simply had to have it. And so began the process of enquiring and acquiring. It wasn’t easy. But then that’s part of the thrill, isn’t it, for a man? The first taste, the hunt and then the kill.

Another reason for Joe’s obsession was the story behind Tesla – the man behind Tesla Motors is Elon Musk, the South African-born American entrepreneur best known for founding SpaceX, and co-founding PayPal. He also oversaw the construction of a private rocket known as Falcon 9/Dragon – so truly a geek’s hero.

“It’s a true start-up, Tesla, and he wants to change the world,” said Joe, in the tones of a clearly infatuated.

I asked if it’s changed his world ie do more women come up to say hi these days? Who’s been the most interested (in the vehicle), I asked? “Mostly middle aged guys,” he laughed.

There are some who say Joe’s just going through his MLC a little early – he’s only 41 after all – you know the rule, first get a red sports car, second … “Whatever,” he shrugs. “This makes me happy.”

The price of happiness? Well, let’s say cars are not cheap in Singapore by any standards – this baby has a base price of US$109,000 in the United States – and so you’d be talking a cool half a million Singaroo bucks, with the COE (Certificate of Entitlement) and all. 

And no, it’s not because he got promoted to Senior Vice President Asia Pacific for comScore that he can afford such a set of wheels.

Joe tells me he dipped into his nest-egg for this gadget. “It’s like taking a second mortgage,” he rationalises. “I figure I get to drive it for a year and then sell it and I’d make more money than let the money sit in a bank.”

I am glad to see that even for geeks, math don’t matter sometimes and anyway, we all know that happiness is priceless.