小男人，大男人

Recently I have been tuning in to Channel 8 when I reach home after work. On show is this drama serial about men in various stages in life, portraying the different situations and issues men have to face. Pride, ego, freedom from marriage, family responsibilities, infidelity, temptations – these are but some of the main themes running in the show.

In the first case, there’s the middle-aged man (played by 黄文永) with a caring wife (played by 陈丽贞) but who is also a career woman. At times the wife places career before family, but is still generally concerned about her husband and her young boy. This man faces the typical middle-aged scenario – middle manager level at work, faced with possible retrenchments as there are younger and more driven chaps at the workplace, and also has young sexy ladies as colleagues. There is one such divorcee who actually likes mature 40 plus year-old men and who teaches this man yoga at her place. So, as you have guessed it, the man starts falling for the sexy divorcee (played by 宋怡斐) and from here onwards, the serial will progress to show the development of their relationship and how the man’s marriage gets affected. (But don’t get the wrong idea, she’s actually a rather nice and rational lady in the show.)

I find this scenario very real. A vulnerable man (oh in the show 黄文永 got erectile dysfunctional) falls for a pretty and sexy lady colleague. This could be due to fading of his relationship with the wife, and due to the appearance of a Great Temptation. But you can’t quite blame the man either… a man is a man.

The second case – a young couple married out of shotgun. Both only 22 years-old, and currently living with the guy’s parents. Wah, this case is truly reflective of real-life case and I can somehow feel its genuineness. There are conflicts arising between the young wife (played by 李芝怡) and her mother-in-law, especially when both are stubborn beings. The young couple are quite poor things too, having only a small room to themselves and their baby, where only there can they have their privacy away from the rest of the family. I suppose life for most back then, where couples have to live with their parents in HDB flats, were not that easy after all. So, the young wife, being the modern and hip young lady, started her own business with a friend and insisted on moving out to a condo of their own. However, she faces strong resistance from her mother-in-law (for obvious reasons) and the poor husband is torn in between the two women of his life. The story progresses from here..

The third case – a young executive with the looks, the drive, the car, and termed a “designer good” by his current girlfriend (played by 傅芳伶). But this guy does not believe in marriage, runs away from committal ladies, and does not curb or watch his spending when he sweeps his expenses away on his credit cards. Eventually, the girlfriend, who herself is classy, beautiful, good in character, and all ready to settle down, decides to leave this guy if she is not given the status and stability. So at the end of the serial, she is supposed to get married to another guy, though in her heart she longs for the designer good. Similarly, the handsome chap loves her but is unwilling to give up his freedom for love.
I wonder how the outcome will be.

Linking to reality, if you read the Saturday papers, you would have came across these comics portraying the plights of men at various age brackets – 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60+s. It just seems to get sadder as the age bracket advances. All these responsibilities, car and house loans, debts, marriage woes, heavy workload, stress from fear of retrenchments, saving up for retirement, children’s education, healthcare bills.. and the list just seems endless. Is life really getting this sad? The case gets aggravated when men bottle things up and think they can solve them all somehow. At least women cry out them within their women network, take up some boliao hobby to let our minds concentrate on more minute tasks or take solace in human relationships – the warmth from friends or other family members.

If really life has only this one path for us to head towards, where comes the motivation? Why not look forward to setting up own business successfully sometime in our 30s, working hard and reaping rewards for our seeds planted, seeing our business take off and manage an early retirement? Then head off for some 环游世界, seeing beyond our local lands, contributing to the needy by doing volunteer work, donating to charities and get non-literal headaches from thinking of how to enrich own and other’s lives instead of how to foot their snowballing bill.

Sometime down the road, say 20 years later, how will life turn out to be?