Some men split hairs!!!

Almost 35 years ago, my eldest brother shared with me an incident. His friend, Dennis, who was still a bachelor had solicited his help to introduce girlfriends to him. My brother obliged. One evening, a lady who had just been on a date with Dennis, called my brother and complained that Dennis was a real cheapskate! He did not take her to a restaurant.... only a kopitiam, and ordered some koay teow for her.
He then slowly took out a ten dollar note and placed it on the table. To her horrror, he lovingly stroked the note and mumbled, "Ten dollars gone.... ten dollars gone."

The lady was so furious that she just walked out of the coffee shop and asked Dennis to pack the koay teow for his mother. "Kee Yong, please don't ever recommend any ladies to this kiam kana (salted olive, meaning a stingy person). I was 18 and had just come to Singapore to do a Secretarial course. I thought brother was exaggerating until my sister-in-law verified it had taken place. I was taken aback because I had only seen wonderful examples of generosity by my papa and two elder brothers.

It is now 2007, 35 years later. Just the other day, I was reading a back copy of Her World (December 2005 issue). I came across an article, "Some men are too cheap for words" by Yvonne Kwok. I was horrified to read that some of today's men are even worse off than my brother's friend, Dennis. At least Dennis paid for the koay teow, albeit demonstrating his pain at parting with his money. Perhaps after reading Yvonne's article, you will agree with me. Read on....

"The ambience at Borders Cafe was just right - intimate without being too romantic; the conversation was light and easy and there was even a little chemistry going on our first date. When he trained a limpid gaze on me and asked if I would consider going on a trip with him one day, I was thinking: "Yes! We're going somewhere!"

Then the time came when the bill arrived. My eyes shot clear up to my hairline when my doctor date whipped out his digital diary and proceeded to total up every item I ate and divide the cost of a bruschetta we shared. The total damage, he informed me clinically, was $22.88 - after GST.

"It's okay. Give me $22.50 can already," he said graciously. Nonplussed, I handed him $23 and told him to keep the change - please. Till that very moment, I thought he was a keeper, a potential boyfriend I would be happy to bring home to mum and dad. But the whole billing fiasco left me with a sour taste in my mouth - this is a guy who makes at least $100,000 a year running his own family clinic, and he's counting cents on a date?

If this is the kind of treatment that his potential girlfriend gets on their first date, what else is he capable of? Get me to share the cost of his parking fee? (Don't laugh, it happened to a friend of mine). Ask that I pay half-half for presents that he intends to give my parents on first meeting them? (Come to think of it, I haven't received so much as a flower stalk from him). Demand that I go 50-50 on my own engagement ring?

The scary thing is, I'm not the only one who has gone out with men like Mr. $22.88. Guys are now rewriting the rules of modern dating - no longer do they keep quiet in the vain hope that a girl will offer to pay for her share of their mutual expenses. They are actively demanding that the girls cough up the dough. What's more, he'll split the bill cleanly down the middle with a calculator so that you can't say it isn't fair and square.

Sometimes it takes an extreme case to see things in perspective. A former colleague, Sheila, is a real looker with waist-length hair and an hour-glass figure who is out on a date almost every Saturday night.

After the administrative executive got engaged to Robert - a freelance graphic artist who lives in a Bukit Timah bungalow with his businessman dad and housewife mum - she was puzzled and even a little hurt by his continual insistence that they go Dutch all the time. She remembers one instance vividly when she invited him over to her place to hang out and asked him to bring along a bottle of beer.

"When he arrived, he brought a six pack instead. I drank one; he drank one and at the end of the night there were still four cans in the fridge," recounts Sheila. "Before he left, he asked me to pay for five cans of beer and when I told him I only had enough on me to pay for one can, he went to the fridge and took the rest home! I won't even do that to an acquaintance, and he does that to me, his fiancee."

Sheila went on to marry Robert, although all her friends advised her to drop the cheapskate, but Sheila kept insisting that Robert was not wrong to insist that they go Dutch. She only started questioning his sincerity two years into the relationship, when he began asking her to split the cost of condoms with him as well!

"I certainly wouldn't ask him to go 50-50 on oral contraceptives", she says, still needled by the memory. "His miserly behaviour was one of the reasons why we eventually broke up - if he cared enough about me, he wouldn't be so calculating about things".

Another friend had a pilot boyfriend who would play scissors, paper, and stone with her to see who would pay up. Another lady went out with a guy who often claimed he left his wallet in his car and would ask her to pay first. Often he would forget to settle oustanding accounts until he was reminded by his girlfriend!

I am sure the above write-up will elicit a lot of response from readers. We ladies are not asking that guys open their wallets every time for the girls they date. Don't they have the faith to know that eventually what goes around comes around? I am sure, ladies would also like to spoil the guys in their lives as well, whether it's in the form of a new Hugo Boss shirt or a spontaneous massage when we see them pooped after a hard day's work.

Granted, we may not be living in a fairytale or be real-life Princesses, but it would be nice if our boyfriends and husbands could behave like Prince charming once in a while. And nowhere in the fairytales did Prince Charming ask Snow White to pay $22.50 for a meal.

Truth is stranger than fiction, so they say. Have you had any experiences like the above? I believe that in life, it is often the giver who actually ends up with the most blessings at the end of the day. When one is kiasu, one will really "su" (lose out) at the end of the day. Yet when one is not afraid to give out, one actually benefits more, because what goes around comes around.

A friend shared with me how once her pen pal dated her and although he was quite disappointed that she was not as pretty as he expected, he was still very civil and gentlemanly. He treated her like a lady and was generous with his dinner treat on their first date. My friend eventually matchmade him to her best friend, a sweet and pretty girl.

I am often reminded of this verse in the Book of Luke, "Give and it will be given back unto you; good meausre, pressed down and shaken together. With the same measure that you give unto others,
God will give back unto you."