This Insane Life

Tehran - The Weight Loss Challenge

2006-06-15T16:48:00.000+08:00

Readers of my blog will know that've I've been on a campaign to reclaim my waist line and reuse old clothes. Logging my daily weight and learning how my body reacts to food has been a revelation - I've been eating much more than I need to. Instead of counting calories and denying myself food I really wanted to eat, I've been practising portion control.

Prior going to Tehran for business and a wedding, I was wondering just how I was going to cope with all the fantastic food on offer - would I blow it completely and go back to 62.0kg? I put on weight by just looking at it; losing the kilograms is much harder.

Now I've been to Tehran before and I can tell you that the food is just wonderful! It's the sort of food I used to have when I was a girl; tasty, natural, unprocessed and plentiful. It only costs the equivalent of AUD$2 for a typical Iranian lunch! I was convinced I was going to come back fat.

To get to Iran, I had to fly from Perth to Dubai and then Dubai to Tehran. Flying Emirates is always a good experience and the food and service are wonderful. Because of the time differences and two flight, breakfast was offered twice. The meals served are just huge! From Perth to Dubai we were offered

Asparagus Omelet, roast potatoe and tomatoe
Croissant with jam
Roll with jam
Fruit salad
Muesli bar
Tiramisu
A piece of chocolate
Orange juice, coffee or tea

Considering I was sitting on my bum for over 8 hours, I ate a third of the omelet, ate the fruit salad and drank the orange juice. Later, we were offered a chicken roll which I passed up.

From Dubai to Tehran we were offered a similar breakfast, and again, I had a third of the main meal on offer and half the tiramasu (couldn't pass that up again)!

Amazingly, I never felt hungry during the flight. The guy sitting next to me on the first flight woofed his meal up and looked longingly at my tray, so I told him to help himself. He did.

The food is Tehran is the very best. Breakfast every day was a plate piled high with freshly baked flat turkish bread served with fresh feta cheese. I asked Ahmed to just put one piece of bread on the plate and halve the amount of feta. He said, "You not like?". Well Ahmed, the problem is not that I don't like it - I love fresh turkish bread and could easily eat everything served up.

The meal of the day for me was lunch. The chicken kebab is the best you're ever going to taste! It's served on a plate of safron rice glazed with ghee. The local salad is so fresh and crunchy and tasty - we don't have that at home! All topped off with fesh yoghourt. Last time I visited Tehran, I ate everything on on the plate. This time, I put aside one piece of chicken, a tenis ball size of rice and ate all the salad and a small serve of yoghourt and never felt hungry. Dinner I normally skipped.

Even at the wedding, I ate something of everthing but just a small amount of it. When I got home, I stood on the scales and was amazed that the same rate of weight reduction had continued. It proved to me that portion control can work wherever I am. I'm down to 55kgs now.

While I wasn't ablt to do any running, the oppressive living conditions in Tehran made a very good subsitute. It's averaging over 38 degrees celcius every day in Tehran, and while men parade around in cool slacks and short sleeve shirts or t-shirts, the women must wear long black trousers, coats and head scarves as a minimum. I saw many women painfully trudging up the hills of Tehran, carting their shopping and wearing black all covering chadors while the men ambled happily and cooly in western atire.

There really isn't anything to do after work in Tehran, so people work long hours and go shopping in the evenings for enterainment. The coffee shops are a popular place. Most of the time, I just couldn't be bothered putting up with the heat and humidity and having to wear approved clothing, so I just stayed in my hotel in a pair of very un Islamic short and t-shirts.

The national obsession is food - there isn't much else for people to do and alot of middle aged iranians are as overweight as we are. Men play all sorts of sport while I didn't see much for the women - how on earth can you play sport in that gear? I wondered alot how the men could subject the females of their family to wearing such unhealthy restrictive clothing? When discussing it with men both in Tehran and Perth, I did notice a certain amount of male satisfaction in practice. I think it makes men feel privileged and superior in Tehran to wear free clothing while woman suffer - they were certainly not going to start a revolution for women's equality. I wonder if the roles were reversed, would the men in Iran happily wear the all black chador? Would they change the situation if they had to wear it for even a month? Would women, knowing how it feels to wear it, impose it on other? It's an interest proposition.

We'll Meat Again

2006-05-23T13:43:00.000+08:00

I've loved fishing ever since I was a kid and one of the pleasures of being an adult is being able to afford your own fishing gear. It's great to be able to go to the water when you want and not when someone has time to take you.

In my thirties I fell in with a group of friends who loved to fish. I enjoyed nothing more than to pack my custom built beach rod, Alvey reel and Esky containing a beer and a chicken and avocado sandwich. The West Australian coast line is long and the fish are hungry. To be able to stand on the beach bare footed with your toes digging into the sand, the warm waves washing up to your knees and the orange sun dropping off the horizon is something wonderful I can only dream about these days.

Let me tell you about Ken. He was an excellent fisherman, but hated work and married only women who could and would support him in grand style. We seldom came back from any trip wihout a bucket of silver herring or sharp tooth tailor. I even enjoyed gutting the fish and preparing them for the freezer. Ken always caught the most fish but would never take any home to eat. He didn't like chicken either. The only food he wanted to eat was meat, roast or steak, and we wanted it every day. I asked him one day why he wouldn't eat fish or chicken, he didn't have a reason except that he preferred meat.

The Neighbour from Hell wanted her steak premium, expensive and rare and would not accept my dinner invitations unless I assured her that what she wanted would be provided. On one ocassion I bought two steaks, one slighty bigger than the other, and after she poked around with the bigger portion, I said, "It's okay Rose, you can have the bigger one".

She flapped her hand very affectedly and said in her twangy American accent, "Well that fine, you can always buy a steak whenever you want and I can't so I'll haved the bigger one". While the thought of bird flu made her aprehensive about eating Soya Chicken in Sesame Sauce from the Jumbo Chinese take away, the prospect of Mad Cow didn't bother her one bit.

I can understand why you'd want a piece of steak at a restaurant, especially if meat is not something you'd eat in the home. Another friend of mine lives for her steak lunches. On Good Friday this year it was a toss up between fish and being a good Catholic, and a nice juicy sirloin - the fish never had a chance.

I recently read an article on the "supersizing" of America which could well apply to Australia. It claimed that the steak house was the ultimate in masculine cuisine - to order a big steak was a sign to everyone that you were successful and masculine. I can understand the cultural effects to some extent; while I've seen advertisement on TV with a hunk exhorting viewers to "Feed the Man Meat", I've never see a macho type extolling the virtues of vegan.

Is our desire for spare ribs a hangover from our cave man ancestry where the brightest and best conquered the mastadon and bought home a haunch to be shared by the fireside? Did this induce the females to breed with the male who could provide the most regular supply of haunches? Did the luckless caveman who presented fruit or a handful of nuts have a chance against the hero hunter?

I never understood why poor old Cain got his offering of grain rejected while Able's fat portions were far more acceptable. Poor Cain couldn't help being a farmer. Obviously, God loves the smell of a BBQ - who doesn't?

Meat costs more, helps you put on more kilos (especially if you eat the huge American serving), and is harder to digest and yet some people prefer it above chicken, fish, vegetables and fruit. Taste is a onviously a part of it, but I wonder if there is some hardwired DNA programming that encourages us eat meat to satisfy our primal urges?

The Joys of Paper and Pencil

2006-05-22T14:25:00.000+08:00

I've worked as an accountant for 20 of my 46 years and it feels like a life sentence (probably because that's about the time you spend in jail for murder). I'm not complaining; it's had some really fun moments but it's also been stressful. The mountain of planning and organisation required just to stay on top of the job can daunting.

During all these years of working (and part-time studying), I've had always had some sort of organisational tool.

I started with a Day Runner, upgraded to a Time/System and then I went digital. Over the last 15 years or so, I've used:

Casio B.O.S.S.
HP 95LX
HP 100LX
HP 200LX
HP 360LX
Palm Pilot 1000
Casio E-10
Palm III
HP Omnigo 100
Newton Message Pad 130
Psion Series 5
Jornarda 680e
Rex Professional
Palm IIIXE
TRP Pro
Palm m500
Palm m515
Clie NR70
Clie SJ22
Palm Tungsten
Palm Tungsten 3
Palm Lifedrive

More money than common sense huh? I've had a great deal of fun with every PDA but now I've gone back to the traditional loose leaf planner. I got sick of having to monitor battery life; over the years the battery life of PDAs has decreased from 1 month for my first black and white palm pilot to 4-6 hours for the colour Lifedrive.

My latest choice is a nice Filoxfax A5 City in bonded leather with a Mont Blanc pencil. I forgot what a pleasure it is to go to the bookmark and see a real week to a view. I've pruned by address book from 600 to the 50 or so that really matter. Nothing beats the joy of ruling a real line through an item in the action list!

Pen on paper beats stylus on screen anytime - I can read my own handwriting which beats having a PDA misinterpret or just plain reject my graffitti. I love the smell and feel of real leather, I just wonder why it took me so long to come back to paper and pen!

Mother's Day is okay for some

2006-05-14T13:44:00.000+08:00

There are two days in the year I don't much care for - my birthday and Mother's Day. Don't get me wrong, I know many people who have wonderful mothers and I admit to being reasonably envious; as far as I can know what it is I missed out on.

I knew my birth mother for about one week according to the records - before she abandoned me in a Hong Kong orphanage. As I'm 46, there's every chance she is still alive today. Considering most of the abandoned children in HK were girls, I wonder if my mother dumped me for being the wrong sex? Is she celebrating today with a family consisting of boys and congratulating herself for getting away with dumping me? Alot of adoptees fantasize that their birthmothers were princesses or movie stars; I just hoped mine was a good and decent woman as unlikely as that may be.

If my adopted mother was alive today, I wouldn't bother being hypocritical enough to send her a card and to be honest, she wouldn't expect one from me. I know it's hard for some people to show affection and I can't ever remember my mother telling me she loved me. Today I know how terribly difficult it is for adoptive parents who have children of their own to adopt strangers and not be biased to their own. I think she tried but it was too much. She really enjoy putting me down, especially in front of other people.

It's tough to reflect on 46 years of life and know that everything that I've suceeded in has been despite both mothers. My birth mother wouldn't have cared, in her culture boys are the only children worth having and my adoptive mother would just be appalled. She would have *hated* to see how well I've done; in her view, adopted children should never surpass your own children. In her view, abandoned children were there to be used and abused, and why should they even dare complain or want some equality after being rescued from an orphanage. She predicted I would never succeed at anything and tried to help her prediction come to fruition in every way she could.

I may have destroyed my birth mothers view that only boys can succeed and have wealth to support you when your teeth fall out.

I may have destroyed by adoptive mother's view that adopted orphans can never succeed at anything so why spend any money on their education or encourage them.

Both of them forever destroyed my view that mothers are there to love and care for their children - to me they are your worst enemy.

Does God Love a Cheerful Giver?

2006-05-10T13:22:00.000+08:00

I've never made a secret of the fact that I was raised in a Catholic orphanage in Hong Kong until I was 2 years old. I can't remember anything much about the orphanage and that's not unusual considering my age at the time. I'm also grateful for the truly wonderful, inspiring and compassionate education I was given by the Sisters of St. Joseph from grades 1 to 7. As a child I gave them alot of trouble by acting out - in return I got nothing but unfailing faith that I would "do much better one day".

I've tried to return some of the good childhood experiences by helping out with accounting services, computer fixups and anything else I could turn my hand to but I must admit it's currently begining to wear thin.

There's this constant expectation that the secular types will do all the giving - especially if it's perceived you have money.

I was setting up a small network for a convent down the coast and a stronger antenna was required for the wireless system. Certainly, I could buy it for them but when it was delivered and installed, there was just an expectation that it would be provided free. Two laptops were required and the nuns wanted this purchased through my company. I was terrified that would not pay (knowing them the way I did) and I voiced my concerns to Sr. M1.

I said, "Look, I'm not willing to put anything on the account that I can't cover myself. There's no gurantee they will repay".

Sr. M1 said, "Well you can afford $2,000 if they don't pay".

Essentially, I don't care how much money gets spent but I do mind when it starts becoming expected. To make matters much worse, I was freely giving of my time and other things in supporting Sr. M1's ministry and was even thinking of moving from Perth to Sydney to assist when she told me that I would have to sign a letter of indemnity so that the congregation could never be sued by me. I can see Jesus asking his followers to sign a letter of indemnity!

In any case I protested. Sr. M1 said, "We have to protect ourselves". Sr. ME also agreed with this stance. Considering the flow of goods and services were going from me to the congregation, it was more appropriate that I would need protection, not them. Considering the current clergy sex scandal, I would like to ask who needs protection from whom?

I said to Sr. M1, "Okay, if I sign your indemnity, will you sign my indemnity?". She was shocked that I would even ask - we could be so happy once I signed your indemnity and you signed mine. How on earth could you work with someone on a voluntary basis when they required "protection"?.

I can see why the good sisters might need some indemnity against a volunteer suing them for services later, but I'm not an idiot and I know that such an action would have a hard time suceeding and would cost more in legal fees than it was worth.

I'm just too scared to go near any of them any more. Sr. DM wants a wireless router so that the internet connection can be shared in their house but again it's a case of you buy the gear and you ask us for the money if you want it. I'd rather avoid this.

I have to say that not all of them are like that but the honorable and moral nuns are thin on the ground. In the end, nuns are just as human as the rest of us and if they can get something for free they won't refuse. I just feel manipulated and I also have the feeling they're congratulating themselves in the process. The letter of indemnity is the real problem; do they only give this to people who they don't think they can't trust or does this go to people they are contemplating fleecing?

Well I've willed all my worldly goods to the congregation because I can't think of anyone better to give it to and I am grateful for the upbringing. They can have my assets when I'm dead - at least I won't have to sign any letters of indemnity!

Losing Weight - It's Ridiculous

2006-05-08T16:25:00.000+08:00

My weight has been hovering around the 58kg mark for the last three weeks with no downward movement. This is getting hard; I could hardly eat any less than I'm eating now. The amazing thing is that I'm not hungry and I still went for a 17km run on Sunday.

I wonder how I can not be losing any weight considering I'm eating only a fraction of what I use to eat. It seems the body likes a weight of around 62kg and doesn't want to get heavier regardless of how much I eat. On the other hand, I can eat barely nothing and it doesn't want to go below 58kg.

I'll bet my laptop I could go out and put down three pieces of fried chicken and chips and go up to 59.5 for the whole week, but starve and I won't lose another kilo below 58kg.

This is ridiculous.

Food, Greed and Fat

2006-05-02T15:19:00.000+08:00

Six weeks ago I started a diet to reduce my weight from 63kgs to 50kgs. As of today, I've lost some kilos and am down to 58kgs.

Here's the interesting thing: I now eat only two meals a day, breakfast and lunch. The only food that goes down my throat all day is an orange, a poached egg and muffin, ham sandwich and a pear. That's it and I'm not hungry. Why?

Previously, I had a big breakfast, lunch, dinner and lots of food in between. While I wasn't fat, it was obvious a little weight loss would be beneficial if only so I didn't have to buy new clothes.

Over the years I've had a raft of friends and acquaintances who loved to freeload - they had their hand in my pocket and wanted me to pay every time that we ate out. And all this culminated in my Neighbour from Hell who constantly wanted me to provide her with take-aways and dine outs and then became upset when I called a stop to it. You can read about her in my earlier blogs.

Hang on and you'll see where I'm going with this: it seems our bodies do not need very much to survive and yet food is one of the main motivating factors in greed and taking advantage of people. Folk who may never steal from you will happily make you pay for their dining out experience, over and over again. There is obviously some extra pleasure when someone else pays for your restaurant meals - I wouldn't know because it rarely happens for me because I almost always pay my share.

This is behaviour of the lowest basic instinct. The Neighbour from Hell would justify her actions as follows, "I need to preserve myself and reproduce, so I must have a lot of food. I don't want to die of starvation. Being a basic animal, the fact that I live in Australia and could hardly starve with Australia's social security system means nothing. I must eat and continue to eat and take from others to benefit myself". This woman actually kept a score of how many meals had been provided for her and told me I was "way ahead". Why bother when she was loathe to let me even have even a cup of coffee.

The love of money may be the root of all evil, but it's the love for food and the irrational desire to eat more than we need that's at the root of fat and greed - especially if you can get someone else to pay for it!

Parental Favoritism: Bias or Discrimination?

2006-05-02T09:05:00.000+08:00

There's quite a lot of good advice on the web exhorting parents not to play favourites with their children. In a perfect world, parents would have no favorites and would treat all their children equally, fairly and justly. But we don't live in a perfect world.

Today, the 46 year old adult acknowledges that my Russian mother, who adopted me when I was two, was always going to favour her own son and daughter for the very reason that they were hers, while I was Chinese and not hers.

I now know that I was adopted so that she wouldn't be alone in her old age and would have someone to take care of her.

People have asked me if I ever experienced racial discrimination in Australia. I can confirm I learnt all about racial discrimination right in my own home! Children know when they aren't their parents favourites. I longed to grow up and be an adult; outside of my house I knew I would be valued.

Her son received the majority of her love and financial support - afterall, he was her son and all mothers prefer their sons. Between her daughter Mary Anne and me, there was only nine month difference but the treatment and opportunities we both received defied any age difference. Recently she said to me, "I got everything and you got nothing".

I just want to put up some examples:

I noticed there were volumes more photographs of Mary Anne than me. When I asked why, my "mother" said, "That's because everyone wanted pictures of Mary Anne". The unsaid statement was that no one wanted photographs of me (only as an adult I realised that she did not want photographs of me, it didn't me others shared her view).

The family policy was that Mary Anne always got new clothes and I wore only her hand-me-downs, despite the fact that there was always money for expensive clothes of Mary Anne's choice. If mother ever noticed my clothes were getting worn, she would say, "We better get Mary Anne some new clothes so she can pass some clothes on to you". This included underwear and my first bra.

Mary Anne's driving lessons were paid for by Mummy and I had to pay for my own. I was delighted to pass first time while Mary Anne had to do another test!

Mary Anne never paid one cent in rent. Mummy took $80 of my weekly $130 pay from my first job. It didn't leave a lot left.

I don't want to talk about birthdays and christmas - there really were far too painful. It seems like a lot of small matters but these are only the tip of the ice berg.

Mummy once said to me, "I don't think you'll ever amount to anything". I wonder what hurts more - having a parent with unreal expectations of you, or having a parent that writes you off as hopeless. She invested heavily in her son and daughter's education and didn't bother too much with mine - after all, I was going to be the full time carer.

I moved to Perth when I was 21. There were no regrets in leaving Brisbane - bitter and disgusted I swore that I would never return and have any further contact with my "family" ever again. I wanted an education and a career and I knew my mother would do everything to scuttle my ambitions for her own reasons, particularly in the light of Mary Anne dropping out after only 1 year at University.

During the twenty odd years I've lived in Perth, I passed my Bachelor's degree in Business with great results, became a CPA (now a Fellow) and have a successful career as an accountant. Two years ago I completed my Master in Business Administration. I'm proud to say I own my own home and car and don't owe a cent to anyone. All of this without any family support whatsoever.

My mother would not be pleased this - any success of mine would be an afront to her belief in how the universe worked. The ugly truth is that she would have prefered me to fall flat on my face and return to Brisbane peniless.

Six years ago, she passed away at the age of 88. I cried for her, I cried for me - for all the lost opportunities to be a child in a family. I cried for all the years of being unloved and unappreciated. And for the child who would never experience a parent's pride in their achievements. For all the unfairness and injustice learnt so early, learnt in the childhood home.

I can understand why it happened in my case, but I've read and heard stories from others who have been on the wrong side of their parents favoritism and it's perplexing. Why does it happen? I believe the parents know they do it and it's deliberate - they will never admit to it because they know its not politically correct to favour one child above the other. They know it's wrong and justify their actions in their own minds. They believe it doesn't matter and the unfavoured child will forgive everything.

I wonder how many other discriminated children have no contact with their family in adult life simply because it's too heartbreaking.

God bless the children who have to raise themselves and the wounded adults they become.

Just Being Dead

2006-04-27T10:51:00.000+08:00

I've been reading about the death of the first Australian soldier in Iraq and the foul up over the return of his body.

The press is working overtime to turn this guy into an Australian hero. Whether he died a hero in battle or as a result of a stupid accident, the fact of the matter is that he's dead. I can sympathise with the contractor who made a mess of the return of his body - I have to freight goods around the world and it's not easy complying with all the requirements of different customs. In the end, it doesn't matter which body got flown to Australia because this guy is still dead and inside the coffin is rotting flesh.

I can't see why anyone's death makes the news - it's ridiculous because in the end, that's the ultimate fate of all of us. It doesn't matter what we believe because we die anyway. The overwhelming evidence is that life is totally meaningless and all we can do is make the most of our time on earth.

There is no belief or cause worth dying for because we die anyway. How can deliberatly bringing forward our deaths change anything on this earth? I often hear "We're doing this so that 'so and so' didn't die in vain". We all die in vain.

The younger brother of football hero Pat Tillman's comments at his brother's funeral:

Thanks Pat. [toasting him with a glass of Guiness beer] I didn't write shit because I'm not a writer. I'm not just going to sit here and break down on you. But thanks for coming. Pat's a fucking champion and always will be. Just make no mistake, he'd want me to say this: He's not with God. He's fucking dead. He's not religious. So, thanks for your thoughts, but he's fucking dead.

We live for nothing, we die for nothing.

This life is so difficult, so contradictory, so dishonnest - we can never believe anything we're told. The Catholic Church is a prime example. Half their dogma isn't even in the Bible. If there is a day of judgement, any one sent to "Hell" should ask God to take some responsibility for the insane world we are born into.

Pathological Liars - they lie for the glory of it

2006-04-25T18:15:00.000+08:00

I don't often watch Oprah, but last week she had a program on Pathological Liars. Of course I'd heard of them, but really didn't understand what they were all about. It was a great show and threw some light on a male friend I knew for 10 years.

I met this guy in the workplace. His name was RP and he told me he was an orphan as both his parents had died in a car accident. Later on he introduced me to his "Aunty and Uncle" who he later told me were his biological parents. He had to cover up because RP was not his real name - he was on the run from a finance company for defaulting on payments for his video recorder.

That was just the start of a litany of lies - RP now known as SC, claimed to be a member of an intelligence organisation and he was in hiding after accidently killing some terrorists, he told me was a lawyer, he even told me he had been an army officer. He even doctored pictures to support this fake history. The really amazing thing was that when he was challenged and the truth came out, he thought it was a great joke and laughed and laughed.

Once he told me he had to go interstate when his father died suddenly. Of course, everyone was very sympathetic until we found out his father was alive and well. I remember saying to him, "Your father must have been a remarkable man... he is the first person since Jesus Christ to rise from the dead!". Of course, he thought it was funny too. It didn't bother him one bit.

I met his parents and I can see why he turned out like he did. His father was a pedophile and also a chronic liar - there was not one thing he ever said that was truthful. The mother? She knew that both her father and son were liars but preferred to ignore it.

Regarding her son SC, "Oh I know he tells lies and puts me up the gum tree". I think she actually preferred his lies than the truth that he was a loser. He told her he'd finished law school in America. That has to sound better than the truth which was he left school after grade 10.

She knew her husband had sexually interfered with some of the neighbourhood girls but prefered to do nothing. She said, "What was the point? If he went to jail, who would support me? The girls will get over it because all men do it".

Until I saw Oprah's show I never understood how SC and his father could lie openly and gloriously without any regard for the truth or who they were hurting. Were they encouraged by the mother and wife who prefered their lies and twisted truths? Did the father teach it to the son? After a period of years, I believe SC lied because he really enjoyed it and because it gave him power over people who believed his lies. Also, his parents never called him on his lies, so I think he believed it was acceptable to say anything he liked.

I don't know what became of SC because he moved interstate or overseas or wherever 10 years ago. During the whole time I knew him, SC claimed to be a born again Christian and regularly went to church. His father thought he was wonderful because he was a Master Mason and made it as far as the 30th degree.

I for one am glad we are mortal. There has to be an end to the lies sometime - SC's father really died about 7 years ago and I was pleased to hear there was one less pedophile and liar on the planet.

When you can't love thy neighbour

2006-04-25T17:33:00.000+08:00

My neighbour is a 60 plus year old woman who is recently divorced. For over a year this woman has played a really smart game of getting me to take her out to dinner and buy in take-away food on a very frequent basis. She loves the big servings at the Wok Box and will only eat premium steak cooked rare.

Of course I knew I was being screwed but I felt sorry for her. After a year of this - there really is a limit to how "nice" you can be when she repeatedly says, "When we go out you have to pay because I can't afford to pay" - I'd had enough and refused to have any more contact with her.

The last straw occurred in January when I had to go overseas for a week - she was paid $100 and a carton of cigarettes to water my small garden and take in any parcels and mail that arrived. I've timed how long it takes my pocket sized garden - 15 minutes. When I got back, the place was a mess and 8,000 euro worth of electronics was sitting out in the open back yard. It was a small box packed mainly with foam and anyone could lift it. Her excuse? "I just can't do all that". Well I paid her the money and gave her the cigarettes because I just couldn't be bothered not to.

After a couple of weeks of ignoring her because I was so mad, she came around demanding my time (and probably another free meal) and I'd just had it. You can't force people to be your friends and screw them at the same time.

My real bafflement is this... she always claims her first husband treated her "like a princess". As a single woman in her 40s, I don't think I want to be treated like a princess by anyone. What's wrong with paying your own way in life? I can't imagine continuously taking and taking and never giving anything back but maybe I'm just weird. After all, doesn't it make economic sense to get someone to pay for you?

I'm all for loving my neighbour as myself, but who wants to be screwed as well?