I agreed with you. I would really like to be able to sympathise with the old man but this was not possible.
Living in Singapore, I had witnessed far too many cases of old men and women who had to wake up at 4/5 am to clean tables, office toilets and collect cardboards for a living. This included old people I knew of personally. These cases were also highlighted on SDP websites many times. They were real people and there were alot of them. Things were very wrong and sad.