Mar/ Chapter 3: He's just not that into you

I was having a chat with a female friend the other day about a couple of interesting topics. Firstly why it seems that women have such a hard to dumping a jerk they've become emotionally attached to.

You may have heard of the book and movie "he's just not that into you". It's so hard for women to see the truth and tear themselves away from jerks sometimes that they had to write a book to point out the obvious. In fact, no need for me to explain any of this, if you're a woman then you'll know better than me how difficult it's to pull yourself away from a jerk that you like.

However, what's even more interesting or strange is that many women I've spoken to don't have nearly the same difficulty emotionally when breaking up with a boyfriend they find boring or if they're lost respect for the guy.

In other words if you're a guy you're more likely to be dumped for being a loser than for being a jerk to women.

Ok, so this doesn't seem to make sense, but if you've read some of the older posts on this blog you would understand that much of what we do in relationships isn't driven by logic and conscious thoughts, but by our instincts that we inherited and evolved from cavemen days.

In cavemen days, survival was the key. So women would pick the fittest males, the weaker ones would be more likely to die from getting eaten by predators, or from inter tribal warfare. Nice isn't part of the equation, survival was. So if her man treated her badly and she immediately left the man, then there was serious risks to the survival of her and her children.

Therefore the body (or a woman's genes) have a built in mechanism that avoids this. It makes women more emotionally attached to men they think are stronger, even if those men are jerks.

Men that don't show much value however are easier to dump, even if they treat a woman better because they aren't seen as possessing as much value.

The emotions that make leaving a jerk so hard is just part of a woman's natural instinct to get the best genes from a man, and also to ensure her survival. In the modern world however, it means that women are often emotionally attached to jerks who they logically don't want to be with, and require a book and a movie to point out an otherwise relatively obvious point.

Mar/ Chapter 2: HK girls and guys

Last week a very interesting program aired which focused on what HK men and women thought about each other. The first part of the show focused on how HK men saw some HK women, or specifically "Gong Nui (Hongkie girl)" and how these Gong Nui justified their choices and their expectations of men.

The show started off with the narrator stating that the status or HK women have been rising over the years, and some HK men feel that some HK women are too demanding. There are even groups and blogs on the internet where men complain about Gong Nui, with one group that has over 1000 members.

So what are the characteristics of a Gong Nui?

1) Too materialistic, the boyfriend must buy stuff for her as a sign that he values and is nice to her.

2) If the boyfriend doesn't dote on the girl then she'll get all upset.

3) They try to act like "a cute princess", especially when they take pics, with lots of V shaped signs pointing up. I go check my own facebook, and indeed, lots of girls pretending they're Winston Churchill! But to be honest, this is not the characteristic of HK girls alone, it’s been exported from Japan.

4) Girls don't need to pay for their drinks, in fact it's a guy's honor to be able to hang out with a pretty girl that he needs to buy drinks for.

5) Way too into their expensive brand named products.

Apparently there are 81 problems that Gong Nui have that HK men don't like.

The main thing HK guys don't like is that Gong Nui say they want equality and equal status with men, but unlike many of their Western counterparts seem to want a lot of materialistic perks. For example there's the "63.8 incident" where a guy took a girl out to a movie, and then afterwards they went to the supermarket where she bought something that cost $63.8 and then he waited for her to pay, instead of buying it for her. She got really upset she had to pay for this and posted her complaint on the internet about how cheap the guy was.

The second thing is that Gong Nui seem to want to be treated like a princess, or they'll get pissed off. If the girl buys a new item of clothing, or cuts her hair by an inch, HK guys are suppose to notice. Although to be honest I think this is a global phenomenon where men notice changes in women less so than women themselves.

The show then moved to an interview of a couple where the wife asked her husband after dating 6 months if he would give all his money to her after marriage. She had dumped an earlier boyfriend for looking shocked at this concept. When she posted their story on the internet, she got bombarded with hundreds of emails from men complaining that she was a gold digger, stealing, and controlling her man too much.

Some of the girls explained that it's not being materialistic, it's just being realistic. In this society you need money, and if you don't have money people will look down on you.

A HK director even decided to make a movie on Gong Mui. He said in order to research for the movie, he asked girls in Japan, China, Taiwan and HK if they would rather be with:

a) A guy that's fun and exciting to be with but ultimately a bad boy.

or

b) A good guy that's faithful, but is boring.

Girls from the other countries were willing to pick one or the other, but HK girls tended to want both or stay single. It seemed like the director was bewildered at such high expectations, although I think he should really try asking the same questions outside of Asia.

The things that I found the most interesting though were the things that girls spent so much time and money to maintain which they felt the guys needed, but the guys themselves were not too worried about.

For example when it came to brand names, one girl also mentioned that guys would naturally want to take a girlfriend out that wore or carried expensive brand names, since that would also make him look good.

What these girls don’t get is that unless we're friggin rich and needed that image, 99.9% of men couldn't care less if their girlfriends wore expensive brands. Women wrongly assume that buying expensive brands make them more attractive to men, it doesn't. It's more a women competing with women behavior.

When it came to weight, a bunch of gym instructors came out and said that women really shouldn't complain about being too fat if they're around or below 100 lbs. But the girls that do fret about being too fat explain they get a lot of pressure from their boyfriends checking out other girls, and commenting about hot looking female stars, and also they need to keep themselves looking good in case they go back on the singles scene.

Guys, especially Asian guys do prefer slim girls. But I think it's interesting that many HK girls are more concern about their looks than the men themselves, it's probably a product of all the marketing that's going on around them.

Overall I think the show did point out some valid complaints that HK men have about some HK women, especially when it came to materialism.

_____________________________________

A week later the second episode aired, and this time it was about HK guys.

What was funny though is that there wasn't nearly as many interviews with women about the problems women saw in men. The show just featured geeks, and HK guys that play too much computer games, and that was it.

I felt it was a real cop out, nothing about any guys that are still sexist or chauvinistic. Or the womanizing that goes on across the border, having a second wife in China etc, or guys hitting on multiple girls at the same time.

Then I realized.......The producers of the show must all be HK men.

Original clip of first episode on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u8Zs9nD32E&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJHHXC7EVP0&feature=related

Mar/ Chapter 1: Stuck in a time bubble

I just back from a weekend up in Shanghai, visiting my best friend because it was his 30th birthday. When I went to his apartment I couldn't help but feel envious. Out of all the friends I know he's done the best for himself.

He's got a lovely wife, who can joke around and party like one of the lads. Him and his wife both have good jobs, they have a big apartment in Shanghai which looks very comfortable, and they have a baby on the way.

Then I look at myself, and I feel like I'm a million miles away from such a lifestyle. Got an apartment, but feel poor, insecure because of the credit crunch, not married, and not comfortable taking care of myself, let alone a kid.

10 years ago, me and my best friend were at the same place in our lives, playing computer games and just enjoying life. We actually did the same when I went to Shanghai, on the Friday night I didn't even go clubbing, we just played Poker with some friends of ours and shot zombies on his playstation till 5am. It was the most expensive gaming session I've ever had.

Sat night was his birthday dinner, and clubbing at bling. Got a chance to chat to the Shanghai crew. My friend's group of friends up in Shanghai, but also friends of mine now that I've been them so many times.

One of the guys there sells lubricants to other companies, or LUB as he called it. A few of us stood there for 10 minutes cracking up jobs about lubricants and all their applications. I hadn't laughed so hard in my life. Then I looked around at all the thirty year olds (more or less).

Thirty is an interesting age because we can be at all sorts of different places in life by the time we're 30. Married with kids, or unsure about marriage, and joking about lubricants with a bunch of other guys.

I just hope the time bubble pops one day, because surely this can't be as good as it gets!