"Stupid stupid stupid dating sites!" This was posted on Facebook by one of my gorgeous, creative, and super-smart friends.
She's in her early-40s, attractive, and amazing in every way.
She is a successful businesswoman but she has a real hard time finding someone special. And she is not the only one.
From my group of single friends in their 30s, 40s and early-50s, at least four are using dating sites and frantically searching for a suitable man to fall in love with.
At least two of them do this every single night.
One girl, who has recently separated from her husband, now spends hours and hours each night chatting to random guys.
She finds it a great way to waste her time. Fact is that the few dates that she has been on have been total disasters.
Without fail, all my female friends are bitterly disappointed with the outcome of their efforts on the dating sites so far.
Then again, one of my male friends is having much more success.
He's had no less than six dates in the past few weeks and assures me he had a great time. What are my girlfriends doing wrong? Or do men and women just have different agendas when it comes to hooking up?
Are there any people out there who have found their soul mate online? Our experience is the opposite and I for one don't believe this online dating stuff works very well.
So can anyone tell me where we can meet an eligible unattached man without too many hang-ups?
I know a whole bunch of beautiful women who'd love to get their hands on information like that! Then I could perhaps start a match-making business on the side. Could be fun!
I've got myself a brand new toy.
Soon, I will be adding photography to my list of my creative skills as I am now the proud owner of an SLR camera.
I love visual arts and photography in particular. There are some amazing photographers in the Bay, like Bob Tulloch, Ken Wright from Lightwave photography and Jo Miller from Capture-It.
I am going to take my inspiration - and lessons - from them.
Of course I am also lucky enough to work in the newsroom of the Bay of Plenty Times where we have some outstanding and award-winning photographers like John Borren, Mark McKeown and Joel Ford. While I learn how to use my new camera, I will ask them for advice and listen in very carefully when they are talking their stuff.
Along with eight other professionals from the Bay of Plenty and others from elsewhere in New Zealand, Mark McKeown was recently awarded in the prestigious Iris Awards organised by the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography.
You can find his and all the other amazing photographs on nzipp.org.nz
On Twitter, I asked if anyone had any tips for a novice photographer and someone pointed me to digital-photography-school.com. I found it very interesting.
As to be expected, there are lots of photographs to look at on this site, it has a community forum, and very useful photography tips and tutorials.
I soon found out that I'd much rather spend an evening on there than on one of those time-wasting dating sites.
Speaking of photography, we also had an amazing story the week before last about local woman Debra Treadaway who took a photo of a dolphin splashing in the water creating something that she believes is a message from the grave.
Debra Treadaway picked up her mother's ashes and drove them to Coromandel when she saw a pod of dolphins swimming in Wilsons Bay.
Intrigued, she took photos of the dolphins. When she flicked through the images that evening, she could not believe what she saw and was convinced it was a message from her mother.
I'm not very superstitious but I do believe there is more out there than we know about. When I saw this dolphin photo first, I got goosebumps. I found this story eerie and heart-warming at the same time, and so did our online audience.
It was, by far, the best read story on our website all week.
Believe what you want but if you haven't seen it, just put "amazing image" in the search bar on our website bayofplentytimes.co.nz and it'll show up first.