Tommy's story

Life Dating & Relationships
41

I think Tommy’s got his head screwed on very well. He absolutely doesn’t need any warnings from others, whether well intended or not, about the potential dangers of pursuing his relationship with this young lady. His eyes are wide open to everything that may or may not happen, and he’s happy enough to take whatever risks of monetary and other losses his adventure with her may entail.

As I see it, his relationship with her has at least as good a chance of turning out well as 90 percent or more of other couplings, regardless of their genesis or conventionality.

I was a fool for love many times in my bachelor days, and there were plenty of times when it didn’t end up well for me at all, but I don’t regret a single one of those adventures that got those precious endorphins flowing through me, no matter how fleetingly or at what cost.

1 Like
42

[quote=“Omniloquacious”]I think Tommy’s got his head screwed on very well. He absolutely doesn’t need any warnings from others, whether well intended or not, about the potential dangers of pursuing his relationship with this young lady. His eyes are wide open to everything that may or may not happen, and he’s happy enough to take whatever risks of monetary and other losses his adventure with her may entail.

As I see it, his relationship with her has at least as good a chance of turning out well as 90 percent or more of other couplings, regardless of their genesis or conventionality.

I was a fool for love many times in my bachelor days, and there were plenty of times when it didn’t end up well for me at all, but I don’t regret a single one of those adventures that got those precious endorphins flowing through me, no matter how fleetingly or at what cost.[/quote]

Omni, a knight of the Order of the Garter ! A fellow journeyman on the Holy Grail of Love …

43

Anyways, dating Filipinas ain’t so hard.

Just cut them in half and count the rings. :idunno:

44

[quote=“Omniloquacious”]I think Tommy’s got his head screwed on very well. He absolutely doesn’t need any warnings from others, whether well intended or not, about the potential dangers of pursuing his relationship with this young lady. His eyes are wide open to everything that may or may not happen, and he’s happy enough to take whatever risks of monetary and other losses his adventure with her may entail.
[/quote]
Isn’t that the problem? He seems to have all his bases covered??? We have a saying in Hindi which transliterates into ‘the smart crow ends up falling in the cow dung’. As in, the crow who is cautious, gets by but the over adventurous, over smart crow invariable gets smeared in cow-poop. And it does happen, and really what worries people here, is Tommy’s brave face. Everyone can see he is vulnerable, and everyone knows he won’t take the rejection well and worry about that.

Yes you’re right,on an internet forum, one can only say so much. But the good thing is people are trying to reach out to him! :thumbsup:

45

Thanks Divea, you are right… about the cow dung. Been there (many times) done that.

But hey, one has to play ones cards. I am a soldier of fortune, I go where it takes me.

But to go back to the gist of this thread. My buds always said that if one gets involved with a philippina, pretty soon one is supporting her whole family. And bringing them all to the USA. LIke if theres one thing a pinay living in the phillippines wants, its to come live in the USA. USed to say that bout TW girls. Which we know not to be true.

Probably isnt bout pinays either, but the fact that a great many of them are going to be quite poor will figure into the equation.

And obviously dating indonesians carries the same. If you get a lady friend involved with you, you likely will be paying for quite a bit of what goes on in her family.

Iv had to spring for a new water pump for her folks (200 bucks) , 80/month for one of her younger brothers for bus to/from school, and 40/month for his lunch.

She has 3 older sisters who helped her pay for school (until she met me,then i have taken over) but shes now committed (with my money) to help one of her two younger brothers go through high school and college. Her other sisters are helping the other younger brother.

So yeah, im already forking over to help the gang.

Whereas my GF of the past have basically been all TAiwanese. And iv never had to spend one dime to support her folks or her. Course iv paid for all meals when we go out and movies and what not. And that all adds up too. But iv never had to support them.

So basically if you date a person from a very poor background, you will be asked to help, if not immediately then quite soon after.

46

It seems to me Tommy knows what he’s doing. This is NOT intended as a dig to those offering advice, who I think are acting entirely appropriately, but I find it significant that he’s not asking for advice (unless I missed it.) Sometimes you got to go with your gut, and sometimes playing long odds is the right move. Only the man playing the hand can make the call

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47

A lot of people in Taiwan support their parents or siblings education or help with their debts and they are not well off at all. Also I have known a few older or richer guys to support their younger girlfriends or their families. Plenty of relatively poor people here too. As long as go into it with your eyes open and set a limit on it you should be okay.

1 Like
48

The thing that surprises me is that given the amount of money that flows to the Philippines as remittances, you’d think they’d be able to build something there. That is, unless all those remittances create a culture of dependency and inefficiency.

49

Yes, thats what i think. Its a culture of dependency and inefficiency.

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Yes, thats what I think. Its a culture of dependency and inefficiency.[/quote]

I tend to live by a philosophy in life that I would never lend money to someone who needed it (unless they had a very good plan for how they would use that money to create money, either through investing, opening a business, or improving their education and job prospects) because if they needed it, that would mean they didn’t have money to start with. As such how would they ever repay me? Likewise, anyone I would lend money to (because they’re sensible with money) probably wouldn’t ever need me to lend money to them. I’ve learnt this the hard way.

If you realise this also, why do you participate in enabling/encouraging/furthering the culture of dependency and inefficiency?

51

Dick is blind…oops! sorry I mean love is blind. Well it has one eye, but that doesn’t count :slight_smile:

52

Uh huh.
Just like assholes.

53

Uh huh.
Just like assholes.[/quote]

What do you mean by that?

54

I can generally see a problem in that once the dependency is established in a relationship, if you decide to leave that person then you are effectively saddling them with a lifestyle they can no longer afford to maintain. If you set them up with a monthly phone contract etc and then stop paying it, the girl is stuck with the bill. You start sending your partners siblings to a better school, what happens when you withdraw the funds? If you decide to play the wealthy sponsor you really have to see it through to the bitter end. There are two realities going on. And if it ends, one of the realities returns to being dirt poor, the other returns to affluence, but the dirt poor person is stuck with an affluent set of debts and expectations.

55

I can generally see a problem in that once the dependency is established in a relationship, if you decide to leave that person then you are effectively saddling them with a lifestyle they can no longer afford to maintain. If you set them up with a monthly phone contract etc and then stop paying it, the girl is stuck with the bill. You start sending your partners siblings to a better school, what happens when you withdraw the funds? If you decide to play the wealthy sponsor you really have to see it through to the bitter end. There are two realities going on. And if it ends, one of the realities returns to being dirt poor, the other returns to affluence, but the dirt poor person is stuck with an affluent set of debts and expectations.[/quote]

Some good points there pardner!

I still want to know what happened to the rest of the story of Tommy meeting her for the first time in Jakarta.

56

I think this is the other reason people are worried about tommy. Enabling someone’s feckless spending habits does nobody any favours, especially if/when it all goes pearshaped.

I dated a Filipina for a while, a few years back. She was a nice girl, and she never treated me like an ATM, but when I went to the Phils I was pretty shocked by what I saw. I grew up being poor, with lots of other poor people, and the Phils is basically an entire country of people intentionally being poor, doing exactly the same stuff that I saw people doing when I was a kid. It’s not that they’re stupid: they just don’t understand what money is or how to use it. I met loads of people there - families - where there was one “designated earner” feeding a whole bunch of hangers-on, who mostly sat on their ass doing nothing or (if female) cranking out kids. Three cheers for the sodding Catholic Church! The typical salary is actually not too bad: about NT$10000/mo., and living costs are correspondingly lower. The problems are caused by (1) an incorrect exchange rate, which (in my opinion) is entirely a result of structural and cultural issues, not because the country is actually “poor”; (2) a remittance flow that (because of the exchange rate) distorts the local economy; and (3) one salary supporting six people is inadequate, whatever country you’re in. And I might have mentioned the Catholic Church?

Getting a foreign bf was seen as hitting the jackpot: the whole family would simply leech off him. Usually this took the form of getting him to “invest” in some hairbrained project; his money would then be pissed away because nobody had a clear business plan for making profit, and employees and customers would spend the day finding ways to steal stuff. Not everybody is like that; it’s not even most. I know one guy who did actually start a business and make money, by the simple expedient of teaching people how to run a business instead of assuming the gf’s family “know the local business culture”. But there’s a large enough undercurrent of dyfunctional thought and behaviour to completely fuck up the entire country, and there are too few people savvy with wealth management prepared to teach their kids how it’s supposed to work.

Oh come on. :slight_smile: What do you expect happened? This?

57

I think back 30 years ago, Taiwan is much like that. If you can get one family member over to a western country, they will try to find a way to bring everyone over. They would also try to support families still in Taiwan.

I think it has less to do with culture, more to do with living in a country where the living condition and liberty in general is poor. For immigrants, I don’t care whether they are from Taiwan, the Philippines, India or Mexico, I think the story is the same.

58

I think this is the other reason people are worried about tommy. Enabling someone’s feckless spending habits does nobody any favours, especially if/when it all goes pearshaped.

I dated a Filipina for a while, a few years back. She was a nice girl, and she never treated me like an ATM, but when I went to the Phils I was pretty shocked by what I saw. I grew up being poor, with lots of other poor people, and the Phils is basically an entire country of people intentionally being poor, doing exactly the same stuff that I saw people doing when I was a kid. It’s not that they’re stupid: they just don’t understand what money is or how to use it. I met loads of people there - families - where there was one “designated earner” feeding a whole bunch of hangers-on, who mostly sat on their ass doing nothing or (if female) cranking out kids. Three cheers for the sodding Catholic Church! The typical salary is actually not too bad: about NT$10000/mo., and living costs are correspondingly lower. The problems are caused by (1) an incorrect exchange rate, which (in my opinion) is entirely a result of structural and cultural issues, not because the country is actually “poor”; (2) a remittance flow that (because of the exchange rate) distorts the local economy; and (3) one salary supporting six people is inadequate, whatever country you’re in. And I might have mentioned the Catholic Church?

Getting a foreign bf was seen as hitting the jackpot: the whole family would simply leech off him. Usually this took the form of getting him to “invest” in some hairbrained project; his money would then be pissed away because nobody had a clear business plan for making profit, and employees and customers would spend the day finding ways to steal stuff. Not everybody is like that; it’s not even most. I know one guy who did actually start a business and make money, by the simple expedient of teaching people how to run a business instead of assuming the gf’s family “know the local business culture”. But there’s a large enough undercurrent of dyfunctional thought and behaviour to completely fuck up the entire country, and there are too few people savvy with wealth management prepared to teach their kids how it’s supposed to work.

Oh come on. :slight_smile: What do you expect happened? This?

[/quote]

hey? thats EXACTLY what happened ! How did you know?? Uncanny .

Cept we did manage to make it down to the lobby restaurant by 10pm !

p.s. I do hope this venture works out beautifully. And if not, I think im a gonna go back to twinkies (Taiwanese girls).

59

One way of finding out is to cut her supply of money. Maybe not the life and death things…but some non-essential items. Her reactions will tell you a lot.

To me ALL women are guilty until proven innocent. This rather cynical approach has not failed me in many years. One out of 10 usually prove to be innocent (or not as guilty).

Women by nature regard men as a resource. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but men need to be aware of this. A relationship is essentially a balance of power, you want something from them and they want something from you, all good. The problems arise when the balance is distorted badly in favor of one or the other. Men tend to delude themselves in thinking they can buy loyalty and affection. But in reality it very rarely works out like that and hoping and wishing never makes it so. If anything spending money is really a lack of discipline.

America, in particular, is a toxic social environment and there are countless examples of women who move there from poorer countries only to become “Americanized” in a relatively short time with little difference between them and the local women.

It is not about one nice person that Tommy undoubtedly is, but the nicer you are. the more you are likely to be taken advantage of…jump if you want hoping you won’t break any bones, but that’s just wishful thinking.

60

Let me tell you a little secret you may not have uncovered on your own. Women have the memory of two perhaps three elephants ! Any slight that i project upon her now , and when she marries me, as is planned, I am sure to have that come back on me at some later stage in some unpleasant way.

DO not mistreat them or have them perceive you doing so. They will come back to BITE YOU HARD.

They are “evil” little creatures but we love em. :slight_smile:

(after all remember Eve? God made Eve for Man. Thank you God. Yes Thank you God, in spite of Eve getting us all in a whole heapa major shit)

p.s. iv discovered you CAN buy love. You just didnt realize it yet that money matters, it very much matters. No money no honey is a trueism.

And if its NOT really love but synthetic? Its ok as long as it feels like love. Whats the difference if it performs just the same eh?

A good ,no great actress will work for me. Just make me think you love me honey bunny ! That will work just fine.

(and if not, im a gettin a nother actress)

p.p.s. She doesnt get mad at me if i dont give her the full money supply for the next week. She scrimps (and borrows from her sister). Iv already made that assessment about her character. You think im just blindly giving money away> >> ? HA, you do not know Scrooge McTommy do you?

I have scrutinized her spendings and watch it like a HAWK looking at a field mouse.

She has a daily report emailed to me detailing her EXACT, and i mean EXACT expenditure to the penny. I have the right to comment on anything i find excessive or unnecessary. But remember, I am generous to her. I do not penalize her in anyway.

I want her to have a nice lifestyle in JkT before she can come here. I encourage her to go to malls and eat whatever she likes and hang out with some of her best buds (two sisters from a wealthy JKT family). Shes able to keep up with them and im happy about that.

Shes going to Bali wiht them next month, and IM happy bout that.

Thats her new year present. sent her to Singapore for her bday.

She can buy whatever toiletries, vitamins and other health items she wants.

And she gets an article of clothing or accessory a month.

All the above do cost me money and its several times what she makes a month, so its not tiny.

but i feel its reasonable for a young lady such as herself and is a reasonable expenditure for her WEEK (and month and year as it may be).

She works hard and studies one nite a week and saturday afternoons (after working from 8am to 1pm) and Sunday mornings from 8am to noon.

Shes a hard worker and I am pleased with her and want her to have the support she needs and the things she deserves !

Shes earned them, in my eyes.