Romance has no age. This edition will tell you why. Are you in love with your best friend? I have some ideas. Do you complain about work and other things in general? I have a solution! That’s not all! There’s a little butterfly effect that you can do in your life. Read on…

Stolen kisses have an unmatched charm. Remember those teenage years when you were not sure when to sneak in your first kiss? You looked around if anybody was looking at you. Your heart beat at an impossibly high rate! Those shy advances, those coy responses. Things changed when you grow up. When you have the liberty to kiss anytime you liked and in all probability anywhere, many lovers feel that the same excitement goes missing. But you cannot say the same about Frank and Eleanor. They are an aged couple, though married for just an year now. They have their families around, and I understand that they steer clear of public displays of affection. That does not mean that the romance has taken a back seat in their lives. They are very much in sync with the times and their own little moments of joy and affection.

I admit I have never seen Frank and Eleanor kiss. So I was curious to know if they retain this very important ritual of love. Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying older couples don’t kiss or something! I just wanted to know this couple’s story. I didn’t have to wait for too long. I was with Kong at their place for yet another cookie treat. I was sitting on the living room couch and Frank was getting the stuff from the kitchen. I wanted to get a glass and got up to get it myself. I reached the kitchen door and was about to step in when I saw Frank perch a cute little peck on Eleanor’s cheek! You may chastise me for hanging around to witness this private moment, but there was so much innocence and warmth in the gesture that my feet got planted. I kept wondering all evening how it must be to have finally made peace with the world just by finding love and comfort in the company of a beloved.

Friendship is sometimes the greatest enemy of love. It sounds odd because we are all fed on this clichéd notion that friendship gives birth to love and sometimes it’s the other way round too. I feel that’s just one side of the coin. Have you wondered about those times when you are in love with your best friend but can’t get it off your chest because you are scared that you may lose your friend forever? It could also be that your best buddy harbors the same feelings about you but doesn’t blurt it out, fearing the same outcome. That is when you begin to feel how you can convert your friendship into something more than that. Though critical, it’s not entirely impossible. The first step to do that is to stop calling your special friend with buddy names. Use the first name and cut out the buddy talk as much as you can. Steer the conversation towards topics which will make you engage in some soul talk. You need opportunities to display your sensitive side.

The next trick would be to hang out in different ways. Quit going to the mall and hitting gadget stores. Go to the movies, go out for dinner. Slip out your friend from some dreaded routine and do something ‘romantic’. Instead of watching television together, take your crush out to a dinner date. It’s normal for your mutual friends to keep commenting on how great the two of you look together. I admit that can be irritating when your person of interest doesn’t see on those lines. Don’t get this idea that this buzz will affect the person and make things easy for you. What your special someone thinks of the two of you together is more important. Concentrate on building that chemistry. But most importantly, be patient. If you try to push things prematurely, you might end up with a bad taste in the mouth. Care for the other person’s feelings at the same time. This is not a business proposition and must not be ruthlessly executed for personal gain only.

We all tend to have this natural tendency to be less than satisfied with things. The dissatisfaction is more apparent in the workplace than anywhere else. Look around at the blogosphere online and you can come across tons of webpages on how to cope with bad bosses, nosy colleagues, poor compensation package. Walk up to the office cubicle and you can hear your co-workers pan the latest HR policies in hushed, conspiratorial tones. It struck me with quite a bit of wonder that so many of us have nothing good to say about the place that we work in. I mean, it’s okay if you are over-worked and stressed and can’t have a healthy conversation with your social circle at the end of the day because of fatigue. Who is not working hard these days? If you ask me, I’m a bit of a stickler for discipline here. I firmly believe that if you have work pressure to cope with, the best you can do so is creating a to-do list and plowing determinedly through it. The sympathetic attention and chuckles of your buddies won’t get it done, that’s for sure!

A pet peeve for the workforce these days is the salary and perks that they get. If you conduct an anonymous survey, you would be surprised how many people would raise their hands to join the club. Ryan, our eccentric techie, has an answer: “I’d rather take a salary cut than a pink slip!” Perks are what the company offers you as a bonus. That’s a special privilege that you enjoy at good times. When your employers are on dire straits, would it not be better to forget about those personal travel allowances? It would be easier to do that if you think of all those people who got laid off. What I am trying to say here is that there will always be problems strewn on our paths. It’s up to us if we want to put them into context and cope with them or just go on a complaining trip. You have to take that call and take it soon. Good luck!

Friends are for real. Then it’s obvious that they will come with real issues that you do not find in candy-floss novels and movies that only glorify friendship. Of course, you are a really lucky bloke if you have friends, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t come across some issues that need critical handling. Take for example what Megan is going through these days. Megan has a co-worker, Carla, who loves going on these shopping excursions. Megan tells me that Carla has a very rich boyfriend! Apparently this guy gives out his plastic card to his special someone so that she can go for shopping after work. But the problem is that Carla persuades Megan to come along. In the end, Megan gets tempted to buy stuff that shoots up her budget well beyond her control. And the clincher is, as Megan said, “When I come home, I realize that I could’ve done very well without these expensive buys!”

Megan asked me if I can offer my two cents to this friendship peeve. I thought about it for some time. It was obvious that Megan would be tempted to buy something out of peer pressure. I mean, I was reading this article on the Internet which said that even 70-year olds fall prey to peer pressure! So the only possible way that I could think of was to avoid Carla after work. I advised Megan, “Make up some excuse about seeing a guy or something and slip out!” This sparked off a roar of laughter from Megan. I thought Megan was laughing sarcastically because she was single, not out of choice but out of compulsion, and I feared I may have touched a raw nerve there. But Megan set aside my feeble attempts at apology by booming at me, “What if Carla asks me to get the plastic card of my boyfriend as well?”

Here’s Thomas Carlyle giving you advice on stolen kisses: “If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.” Interesting, huh?