Tuesday, May 09, 2006
This is an artical i found quite interesting. Its from ydae newspp. I write it out esp for hamster to see. So enjoy.
WHAT WOMEN WANT...REALLY
Straight talk by Jeremy Au Yong
We need to talk- the four words that will make any guy's heart plunge into his gut- she said, after opening the gift.
Sigh, what did i do now?
To be honest, i wasn't fully sure if she would like the gift I had bought, but I certainly did not expect to have to "talk" about it.
As far as gifts go, I thought it was okay. It was something she needed and I thought she would appreciate it.
I had bought her a mobile phone charger.
I mean, she was always forgetting to charge her phone so I thought it would be useful to have a back-up phone charger she could take around with her.
But I realise now that I, like many men before me, had become embroiled in a bad gift disaster.
Nearly all men, I dare say, would have gone through such moments such as this- where a seemingly well-meaning gift was received with 'the look'.
The "look" is a non-verbal form of communication perfected by a women that delivers the message that the "lookee" is in big trouble.
We have terrible problem buying gifts for women- as if we were born without required brain parts to pick out gifts that women will like.
My brother, for one, is a fine example of someone completely devoid of the gift-giving sense.
He is, otherwise, a rather thoughtfulm considerate person but, for some reason or other, cannot bring himself to buy anything that doesn't need to be plugged in.
He once boughth my mother - the same mother who was then only coming to grips with the Internet - a flatbed scanner.
A year earlier, he had bought her an inkjet printer and thought the scanner would complement it nicely.
Even though she embraced the Internet wholeheartedly, the scanner still gets only the most minimal use.
She finds that it makes a rather handsome shelf.
Then there is Sidney, an uncle who bought my aunt a top-of-the-line PDA phone. The thing was twice the size of a normal phone and had so many functions, it was like a small computer.
We all thought it was seriously cool.
It took my aunt two months to work out how to change the ringtone.
She hasn't told him, but she doesn't really want a phone that can play powerpoint presentations.
She wants a pink one.
Then there is Martin, a friend who surely take the cake.
The chemist gave his girlfriend what he thought was a killer Valentine's Day present: a cordless steam iron.
She didn't talk to him for two days.
The main proble, you see, is that all of us were buying gifts that we personally wouldn't mind receiving.
Men like things witha lot of functions. They do not appear to be what women want.
American humorist Dave Barry once described the ideal gift for women like this: "The gift should not do anything, or, if it does, it should do it badly."
I suppose that's why women like diamonds so much: They are essentially useless.
But consider the following pairs of gift option.
GIft 1: A one-litre pack of aloe vera scented Shokubutsu brand shower cream in a handy plastic dispenser. Good for the whole family to use.
Gift 2: A pack of five small decorative soaps, shaped like fruit.
Or...
Gift 1: A table lamp witha 3M polarising light filter to cut out glare and also uses a special energy-saving bulb that can provide 10.000 hours of light.
Gift 2: A small hand-made scented candle in the form of an angel that the recipient will never ever light.
To a man, any of the two Gift 1 options is clearly superior, but should they buy it for a woman, they will find themselves in serious gift-giving trouble.
And even more when some of the more courageous among us try to adhere to this "useless gift" rule, we seem to mess things up.
A friend, Rachel, recently received for her birthday three jars of beach sand from her boyfriend.
They were taken from three different beaches in Australia. He is no doubt thought he had, in that gift, achieved the nirvana of boyfriend sensitivity.
As Rachel described the gift to me, the jars were not decorative ones but rather simple glass bottles with a label on them, not unlike a geological survey sample.
Her reaction intially was to pour out the sand from each jars assuming the real gift - possibly something with diamonds on it - was buried within.
When it become evidence this was not the case, she remarked: " Haha, where's the real present?"
I understand the relationship is now a little rocky.
But whatever it is men, I urge you not to give up. Just keep at it and one day I'm sure you'll but that one thing you think is useless in just the right way and she'll open it, look at you lovingly and say: " We need to talk".
-juan
noted at
6:22 PM
