This week we have visitors from England. Apparently there is a heat wave in England as well at the moment, so actually they should have come next week, when there will be torrential rain there - but these things cannot be predicted ahead of time with any degree of accuracy.

Spending a lot of time with my best female friend on-line. She is the one that is wanting to lose weight, and we are aiming to find her the best diet pills, so that she can start to get some weight of.  I am permanently amazed at how many different sorts of preparations there really are aimed at the weight loss situation.

She would also like to stop smoking, but is afraid that if she does that, she will gain more weight, and there is probably some truth in that idea, as smoking tends to work as an appetite depressant and people who quit tend t find that eating becomes more pleasurable and food tastes better. Still feel that stopping smoking would be the number one priority for her health overall, but at the moment all she wants to do is lose weight.

Best get her to walk the dog up to the lighthouse twice a day, that should be starting the shifting of a few ounces at least.

I once bought a GameBoy, and played SuperMario on it. I remember it very well, because at the time I was the night sister at the University Health Centre, and had a lot of time after doing my administration work, to sit around and watch television. If no patients came, we were even allowed to go to sleep, which is what I did before I acquired the GameBoy. I became a complete addict, I wanted to beat my best score, get to the next level, free the princess etc etc. I thought I was doing well, until the five-year old child of some friends of mine showed me how it should really be done! He was fantastic, he knew where all the secret bonuses were, he was much quicker than I and he managed to beat my best score by miles.

Eventually I took a different job, and did not have time to play anymore, and now I have no time generally. Last night however, we were invited to a friend’s house for dinner and the children were playing on their PS3.  I have heard of PS3 players before obviously, but never seen one in action! What advances, what graphics, colours, sounds - absolutely thrilling. I was allowed to have a little go too, but what they had made look so easy was in fact quite difficult for an old person like me, and I think the kids found it really amusing to be able to beat me so easily. Apparently, their father often does not come to bed till late at night, and is found playing on their console.

I know that we brought my GameBoy with us when we moved, but at the moment just cannot find it, probably just as well for now, as I will probably be playing the night away again when I do.

Anyone could be forgiven for believing that it is easy making money on-line. After all, we are bombarded with adverts day in day out, stating that this ‘automatic system, once set, will make you a millionaire in one or two weeks’, all without any effort on your part.

Anyone who has been trying to make a living on the internet for more than six months, knows that the reality is not quite like that. The only sure and steady way to make money on the internet is to sell either a product or service (your own or someone else’s as an affiliate) and of course to find buyers for that product.

Selling is not a natural born instinct in most of us, and for that reason there will always be people who do ‘all the right things’ but still make no sale, whereas others within the same company seem to be doing much better.

My guess is that the people who do best on the internet are those who understand that selling, like any other profession, takes learning.  Sales training is a good idea, it will help you market yourself, your opportunity or product and your service. It will teach you to follow up with your clients, to understand what makes someone buy from you rather than from someone else. We would not expect to become doctors without any training, so why would selling be any different.

There is a belief that acne only affects teenagers. This is incorrect, some people develop acne later in life, in their 20s or 30s, and a few very unlucky people have it most of their adult life. However, for teenagers generally acne is a total nightmare, which blights their enjoyment of life, makes them extremely self-conscious and it not treated properly, can lead to permanent scarring if the acne lesions are picked and get infected.

Dermatologists can prescribe medication that will alleviate the problem, but none of the treatments are without side-effects and some of them are actually quite dangerous, and should only be taken under the supervision of the dermatologist and with proper monitoring of blood levels of drug etc.

There are also topical treatments available over the counter, and these tend to be less harmful, though again caution needs to be exercised when choosing the treatment. Parents and teenagers are therefore often looking for the best acne treatment available. This will partially depend on the severity and spread of the acne lesions, are they only on the face or do they cover the back and chest as well, how large are the lesions, are there infected lesions present. All these factors need to be taken into account when choosing the best treatment.

I am not usually given to vanity over my appearance, since my looks are at best mediocre and I am a firm believer that if you are healthy and clean then the rest is probably a minor matter.

Therefore I do not tend to spend a long time each day looking at my face in the mirror. It came as something of a shock then when I accidentally caught a glimpse of my face in a mirror whilst shopping and noticed that I have wrinkles!! I do not know how long they have been there, but now that I have noticed them, I cannot stop looking at them. I guess at the age of 54, living in a hot climate and having dry skin, wrinkles were something that was always going to happen, but I was just not mentally prepared for them.

So I think a little research and shopping expedition is in order now, to try and obtain a quality wrinkle cream that may help reduce them somewhat, or maybe just stop them getting any worse. In other words, time to join the ‘grown-up’ generation of my mother, who creams and cleans and tonics and whatever else she does. Do not really want to ask her for advice though, as I know I will get an ‘I told you so’ reaction.

As a nurse, I do a fair amount of walking each day, and it tends to be my feet that are the last thing I think of maintaining. Until recently that is.

I organized for some of my patients to have a chiropodist visit them at home and was astonished at the difference it made to them, not just in terms of being able to walk better, but also psychologically. Somehow, having someone care for your feet appears to have had an effect on their mood which I found a bit strange.

Therefore I arranged an appointment for myself with the same chiropodist, who looked at my feet, told me where my back hurts and which of my knees hurts, without me saying a word to her. She has diagnosed a slightly fallen fore-foot and correctly stated she would expect me to have pain in my big toe on that side.

I am a convert. I have ordered some decent shoes from an on-line company called Dansko, and am organizing an insert for the affected foot to help put the foot back into allignment. I have also arranged another appointment for six weeks with the chiropodist. There is a new lightness to my step, and I will be looking after my feet with renewed respect.

That time of the year again. Need to re-insure the car, and again shocked at how much it has gone up this year, despite the fact that we have not made any claims on our insurance and we have maximum no claims bonus.

Last year we were in a hurry to insure the car and that has cost us a bit of money. This year we have done some research into auto insurance, and have found a much better policy that at the same time saves us money, and provides a courtesy car if we should need one.

I guess my mum was right, and you should always get multiple quotes for everything you want to buy, because though that may take a bit longer (and actually with the internet generally it does not take any longer) it will save you money.

Well, I must admit that for years I felt my mother was a great pessimist. She always insured everything and anything ‘just in case’. But now I have my own business and of course I need to have insurance for every eventuality. I also have friends who have lost almost everything they had because their house was flooded and they had no cover for the contents of the house.

Then really it is just a case of finding the best free insurance quotes. Personally I would never pay for a ‘quote’ because as far as I am concerned I am a potential customer and need to be able to compare prices on various insurance options without having to pay in advance for that.

When comparing quotes also bear in mind that cheapest is not always best. Read what is, and what is not, covered by the different policies. Some people think they are insured for something and then when making a claim, find that in fact the one event that did happen was outside the scope of the policy. That could be a disaster. With the many on-line facilities open to us now, checking and rechecking that policies cover what you want them to cover is not such a long drawn-out process as in pre-internet days.  Also find out what the particular insurance company understands by ‘An Act of God’, as generally you cannot insure against that, and definitions of an Act of God vary from company to company.

When I worked as a Nurse Practitioner in a GP practice in England, we routinely saw patients that had weight problems. Most of them were overweight.

If counselling and advice did not help, in the end the doctors would prescribe some medication that was guaranteed to help the patient lose weight. One of the nasty side effects of this medication was that the only reason the person lost weight was because they had chronic diarrhoea and were not absorbing the fat content of their diet. Basically we were inducing a type of mal-absorption syndrome in the patient, who would definitely lose weight but feel dreadful at the same time.

A better option I think is to use a fat burning medication. This drug would increase the metabolic rate - increasing the rate at which the body breaks down nutrients. It should in the normal course of events not lead to diarrhoea and feeling dreadful, but may give rise to a feeling of euphoria.

Now it is just a case of finding the safest and the best fat burners. There are many on the market, and some have dubious contents, that will not only cause the person to lose weight but will also increase their heart rate and blood pressure. It is therefore a good idea to search around and find the safest and most affordable solution, and not just start taking the first drug you come across. Also, it is a good idea to let your physician know you are taking this drug, so that some assessment can be made on the potential interaction between the fat burner and any other medication you may be taking.

Before I moved to this country, I lived in many houses in different countries, but we always took our furniture with us. Then we moved here, where it is normal to rent a house or apartment that is fully furnished. In fact, getting a property for rent that is unfurnished is almost unheard of here.

This has certain advantages. It means we did not have to pay a huge bill to have all our furniture moved across the water. It also meant that we had ‘new’ furniture to look at. That proved to be a double-edged sword. We sold some of our old furniture and gave the rest away, but when we arrived in our first apartment the furniture that was in place was, to say the least, dire. It had obviously been put together at a garage sale and showed signs of not being clean. Bit of a nightmare that. Luckily, we soon found a house that was more to our liking and we moved in here. The house is lovely and big, and the furniture, although not what we would have chosen ourselves, is clean and big.

We have just been given a four year rent on the house (which in this country is pretty rare, as it gives a lot of protection to the tenant and most landlords prefer a yearly renewable contract) and so now the time has come to start acquiring some pieces of furniture of our own. If we are going to be here long-term then there are certain things I want to be mine, such as a bed and a comfortable settee. I can feel a shopping attack coming on!

We’re all trying to be more environmentally aware these days, and a great way to do that is to buy pre-owned products that are still in great shape. For businesses, that means buying used trade show displays instead of new ones. While new displays can still be eco-friendly, buying a used trade show booth means that no additional resources had to be used to create another display.

The only thing better than being eco-friendly is saving money, and with a used trade show display, you can do both. Pre-owned displays cost much less than comparable new displays, and the savings you’ll get from buying used can be put towards accessories like banner stands, literature racks, and flooring - all things that will draw more people to your display. Save your company some money and do the environment a favor by buying a used trade show display from Trade Show Joe. It’s a decision you won’t soon regret.

No, not me. As I said before,  I am terminally underweight and always have been. But my friend is still desperately trying to lose weight and has now spent a small fortune in search of the ‘magic bullet’ that will help her.

She exercises regularly, does not eat half as much as I do, she eats most early in the day and very little after 6.00 p.m., all in accordance with what most diet leaflets and clinics would tell you to do. She has been a member of innumerable programmes supposed to help you weigh and measure your food, but all to no avail. She belongs to a good gym, and works out four times a week, comes back looking like a boiled tomato at the end of her work out session, but the pounds refuse to shift.

She is now looking in to diet pills again, atro-phex, ephedrasil, you name it, she is looking at it. One pill promises more than the other, she reads about one and rings me up full of excitement, but when I do the research on-line and tell her about it, she gets despondent. Maybe there is no magic bullet, and our ideas of what constitutes a good weight are influenced too much by the fashion industry and what other people say about how much we should weigh.  Hope she gets to the weight she wants to be though, she would probably feel better about herself then and would come to the beach with me.

I have now been a nurse for 30 years, and though I tried different job before that (teaching and law) to me it really is the only real job I would ever want to do. There is immense satisfaction when you do work that you just know you were ‘meant to do’. It is hard to explain that feeling to someone like my friend, who would absolutely hate to do my work, because it is just not ‘for her’. I have always counted myself lucky that I found my perfect career fairly early on in life and have never suffered that feeling of hating my work and not wanting to do it.

But there is not a lot of money in nursing. The hours are long, sometimes the work is not pleasant and you can come home wondering what it was all about. Then I may contemplate a career change for something like two minutes, but I cannot really imagine ever doing anything else really. So I still always just end up looking at the health care jobs section of the career opportunities, and I guess if I ever had enough of running my own agency, I would still be nursing somewhere else.

Job satisfaction,though it does not pay the bills, is ultimately more important than the amount of money you can earn. I guess I would have been much wealthier had I stayed in law, but money ultimately would not have given me the same satisfaction and I would probably have had far more days off sick because I did not want to go to work. I count myself as one of the lucky ones doing what I want to do and what I am good at. The extra money, well we try to earn that on-line.

Apparently having to speak in public is more traumatic to most people than getting a divorce! The thought of having to get up in front of other people (whether just a few or a few hundred) makes their palms sweat, their mouth dry and their heart beat in their throats. Butterflies appear to be living in their stomach and they are absolutely sure that they will make a fool of themselves and forget everything they were going to say.

There are a few things that can help us be prepared for having to speak in public. Know what you are going to say, write a few small cards with the main points of your speech so that you have a framework in front of you that you can refer to when you are hopelessly lost. Rehearse the speech in front of people you already know and ask them for comments. Remember that the people in the audience are there to be informed or amused by you, and are on your side. The internet is full of helpful advice for those trying to overcome their reluctance and anxiety when faced with an occasion that calls for them to speak in public.

If all of the help available is not enough, people sometimes turn to their physicians for help, requesting either a Beta blocker or a tranquilizer, which in themselves unfortunately can cause a dry mouth and mimic the effects of anxiety that they are trying to conquer. It is therefore refreshing to see that there now is a herbal remedy that helps with speech anxiety. I think it may we worth exploring for those who become very anxious and who despite trying to calm their nerves find that the butterflies steadfastly refuse to leave their stomach.

I have my own little business, which requires no office, no stock, no supplies, just people power and a good line of communication. This can be a pity, because the cost of an office could be charged back against tax, so we are looking into appointing a room in our house to become an office, and claiming part of the rent back towards tax. This was thought up by our clever accountant, which I suppose is what we pay him for.

My friend is opening a shop, which is infinitely more complicated. He has recently arrived from England, and wants to open a camera and mobile phone shop. Not just any old cameras, but top of the range merchandise with mirror reflex etc, not stuff I understand really. He has to acquire premises, shop for wholesale electronics, hire staff, get electricity, fax, telephone etc connected. All a lot more difficult than running a small business from home.

I hope his business runs well, his wife is my best friend and it is great to have her here instead of in the UK, I am hoping she will come and work with me because she is a trained nurse and she will be a great asset to my business.