Premium Coupleness

Just recently, Air New Zealand had a promotion for their new Premium Economy seats - you may have seen it.

The new seats allow duos and couples to travel in a more cosy way and presumably to share the experience of their journey together.

That's all very nice but to promote the seats, Air NZ offered a very generous $500 discount on travel to London in these seats PROVIDED that two people travelled together - so together they saved $1,000.

I like to travel Premium Economy to London - where was MY $500 discount??

When I contacted them and asked about the terms of this very generous offer, they confirmed that it was only available to duos or couples. If two individuals happen to book on the same flight and end up sat next to each other: no discount for either.

The customer service team and I had several email conversations back and forth. Each time, I asked WHY this particular promotion was restricted to duos/couples. I was just after some honesty but each time, they avoided the question.

In the end I gave up asking. I look forward to a similarly generous discount promotion being restricted to singles only - booking together? sorry, no discount!

In for a penny, out with a million pounds

Our recent $26m Lotto winner turned out to be a single 34 year old man called Trevor.  Trevor fully expected to go back to work the next day. He apparently underestimated the interest he had generated – journalists were queuing outside the supermarket where he worked – and decided instead to disappear for a while.

I don’t blame him. I can only imagine the chaos that the attention would bring to his workplace, colleagues and the store’s innocent customers, and the intrusion on his own life would be intolerable.

I read that he has also started to receive money requests and interest from young ladies suddenly wishing to make his acquaintance. Where there is money, there will always be people who want some of it. I’m sure that Trevor will receive good financial advice as to what to do with his windfall and I understand that a counsellor is on hand to help him adjust to having such huge sums. I wonder, though, who will advise him on how to deal with the attention of the ladies.

I hope someone will help him to protect his millions. NZ law allows one partner 50% of the other’s assets in the event of a relationship breakdown after only three years. And the starting point of that relationship can be really early: the couple don’t need to be living together, they just need to be deemed ‘in a relationship’.

I truly hope that Trevor isn’t swept away by the new offers of romance and that he protects his winnings, three years is a very short time to give away so much.

Find anyone?

Recently was Fraud Awareness Week. We like to trust people, we like to believe what they tell us, we like to believe that they want the best for us in the same way that we want the best for them. Sadly, not everyone we meet is trustworthy, tells the truth, or has any concern for us.

This year, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs is focusing on online scams. According to their statistics, the computer virus cold-call was the most reported scam last year, but dating and romance scams caused the biggest financial losses. Scams are not pleasant, our own vigilence and knowledge are key to being aware and avoiding falling into the traps.

Kerrie Pihema is an ex-Police officer turned private investigator (I have heard her tales of online romance scams) and she is currently undertaking a survey of Kiwis' experiences of online dating services. If you are currently using online dating sites and you want to help with the survey - whether your experiences have been good or bad - then please go to Kerrie's website Rokez Investigations and click the link at the bottom of the home page.

Did I just step in some doggie-doo?

Last week I met my friend who’s just had a baby.  We had lunch together.  She and I have known each other for about four years and she knows that I run SaRC. 

For some reason she just can’t stop herself noseying into my relationship status. She invariably asks whether I’m seeing someone, whether I’m in a relationship, or how my love life is. I’ve never understood why it is so important to her to know. But she’s a nice person so I don’t want to offend her by replying with some witty and cutting retort.

This time I just replied that there was no relationship for her to know about. The look she gave me was fabulous – she tipped her head sideways and contorted her face into an expression that looked like I’d just stepped in some dog-mess and trodden it into her house.

I’m not sure what caused her to react so. I suspect she thought she was being caring and admonishing in the same look – and maybe indicating that she thought I was deficient of something in my life by not being in a relationship or actively pursuing one.

Isn’t it funny how some attitudes still surface despite having overwhelming information to the contrary?

New Resolution

January is usually the time for making (and then breaking) resolutions. The warm weather encourages us to get out more and to do more, but that starts to fade as winter approaches.

It takes a lot of spirit and willpower to keep going when your comfort zones responses are to give up.

Recently I was reading about the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969 (I'm far too young to remember it personally...). I read that the US had launched 20 manned and 6 unmanned space flights within a nine year period, each designed to test an aspect of space travel before aiming at their ultimate goal.

There was only a few months between each mission and I was amazed that so much had been done in such a short period of time (especially with the level of technology they had at the time). To me, it showed the tenacity and endurance of NASA to keep going, to keep pushing, to achieve what they set out to achieve.

It must have been a phenomenally exciting moment when Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the lunar surface. All that planning, training and faith in their own abilities to realise their dream were all wrapped up in that one step.

How often do we give up on something because it is too difficult, too much like hard work or we just can't be bothered?

Imagine if NASA had followed suit, we could all still be believing that the moon is made of cream cheese...

(unless you don't believe the moon landings happened at all)

Singlism

You've heard of sexism, racism and ageism but have you heard of singlism?  I hadn't until I read an article called All the Single Ladies in American magazine The Atlantic:

Bella DePaulo, a Harvard-trained social psychologist is America’s foremost thinker and writer on the single experience. In 2005, she coined the word singlism which she termed as “the stigmatizing of adults who are single [and] includes negative stereotyping of singles and discrimination against singles”.

In her book she claims that there is a marriage myth which proclaims that the only route to happiness is finding and keeping one all-purpose, all-important partner who can meet our every emotional and social need. Those who don’t have this are pitied. Those who don’t want it are seen as threatening. Singlism, therefore, “serves to maintain cultural beliefs about marriage by derogating those whose lives challenge those beliefs”.

There are many instances in our country when single people are given a worse deal than their married contemporaries and these blatant differences are often financial.

Have you ever experienced singlism? Have you ever experienced being pitied (however apparently well-meant) just because you are single? Please leave your comments below, or on our Facebook page. 

Cheats R Us

I was amazed to hear on the radio recently that someone has launched their website in NZ that encourages people to cheat on their partners! I forget its name but apparently around 40,000 people have signed up to it in its first few months.

The online world can be a dangerous one, but to actively encourage people to cheat on the people they are supposed to care about - and presumably make money out of them at the same time - leaves me without words.

There is an image of single life that it is uncool to be single and that there 'must be something wrong with you' if you are single but isn't being single better than being in one of the 40,000 relationships where your partner has signed up online deliberately to cheat on you?