Viewing apartments rates alongside internal examinations and job interviews for joy factor. Real Estate agents have a job to do, similar to flight attendants and that's to remind you that you are never going to have what you aspire to so let's cut the crap and send you down economy lane to your potential shoe box home. You always walk in with feelings of hope like a blind date thinking that this could be THE one. Then you leave with your sagging floor plan and feeling of no one understands me bewilderment knowing that it could never be. Today I saw an apartment which was so small I would need to throw away all of my furniture and lose at least 3 kilograms to live comfortably. And then I saw an apartment that was so filthy the tennant I suspect was raised by cockroaches.

When viewing an apartment with the remains of the current tennant still in place, I wonder how some people are actually able to dress themselves and put their own food in their own mouth. I visited one apartment today that still had last night's wine in the glass on the table alongside last night's take away food, half eaten and still in the box. The twenty or so sauce bottles on the kitchen bench were a mystery but the bathroom unfortunately wasn't. Oh My God. Not only was the lid left open to display a toilet never cleaned ever but left me wondering, what the hell are some people eating? So folks, it's a tough world out there when it comes to real estate match making, just remember not to look in the toilet or the dream is over.

Do Go To Tokyo

Facing five days alone in Tokyo had me a little nervous as I stepped into Narita Airport. Wizzed along by the monorail, finger printed and deposited out into what has to be the world's best service city. Do go to Japan it's enjoyable for every personality you possess. Don't try to read the maps, do work out the train system and don't try to convert your expenditure from yen if you have blonde hair. Oh, and don't try to understand why surgical masks are now the latest fashion trend.

I made an appointment for my first fitness assessment one Sunday at the local gym with a Darren or Damien or something. Neither was there, and that’s how I met my trainer. He knew a useless whingeing princess when he saw one but signed me up anyway. What’s wrong with my diet, I said to him. Lots of pasta dishes for dinner, toast every second night (what’s a vegetable?), plenty of iron in red wine etc. He said I need more food. I need more protein. I need fewer empty calories? I've been cheated.

My sessions with the personal trainer included everything. We went around the streets running. Well actually he ran and I shuffled behind stopping every few houses to pat a cat or smell a rose and recover. I would be running up and down the gym stairs, lifting things that were too heavy and pulling things things that seemed too hard. We did boxing. I don’t box. My trainer suggested that self-defence was good to have. I still think a lawyer is better. We did dead lifts and I was proud of the small pizza sized weights placed on the end of my bar bell until I saw a 15 year old girl in the corner of the gym lifting 50 kilogram barbells like they were tampons. I often wondered if you set your goal to increasing your load, what happens when you run out of barbells. Do you have to leave because the only things left to lift are caravans and trains?

I’ll never have to worry about this. I tried gym food. A sample of the latest protein bar, then spent the rest of my session picking it out of my teeth. Tastes like chocolate almost but I suspect it maybe tile grout. My trainer bless him, in an effort to encourage my cooking and better eating campaign gave me a recipe for Protein Powder Banana Muffins. I baked them and they even had the appearance of real muffins but they tasted so bad I think only NASA would know what to do with them. I was given the task of completing a food diary. I may have underestimated the wine consumption, but he was too young to understand. I continue on, 'go hard or go home' the poster says. So I'll be off then.