Oh show me a home, where the cockroaches roam...

It has been a particularly stressful week at work, compounded by the stress and pressure of living up to my highly successful girlfriends who, despite their busy schedules, still somehow find time to prepare nutrious and delicious meals for their loved ones and get stuck into some home improvement while I, on the other hand, languish in a cockroach infested flat slouched out on the sofa in a work-induced coma in front of the telly eating my 3rd slice of Flora coated rye toast washed down by a single hawthorn jelly sweet which I bought at the Sanlitun Jingkelong supermarket over the weekend.

My feelings at the moment are therefore none too charitable towards those personalities that try to convince us into believing that it IS possible to juggle a stupidly hectic career, romance and domestic bliss. In fact it is perfectly normal to hold a 9-to-whenever job where you are barked at by unrealistic and ignorant clients, held back my well-meaning but underachieving workmates, and that you are expected to go back to a spotlessly clean home, open a well-stocked fridge while you crack open an ice cold beer to unwind for 5 minutes before you start to cook an elaborate home-made banquet for one which will take 2 hours preparation time plus marinating and 10 minutes to cool in order to get the flavour 'just so'.

And none of that TV dinner nonsense. You will sit at a perfectly set table (you laid out the silver cutlery and enjoyed a chilled glass of Chablis while waiting for your dinner. Oh, and sat in a hot bath, allowing the soothing water to wash away the stress while playful shadows from the scented candles all around you dance across your eyelids) and enjoy your lovingly prepared meal to the soundtrack of Mambo Kings. After doing the dishes and wiping down your kitchen work top, you slip into some comfy pink slippers and flip through the latest issue Home & Country till you decide that it's been a long day and retire for the night. So you snuggle into your immaculately crisp sheets, turn off the bedside lamp and fall asleep with just the slightest hint of a smile on your face, safe in the knowledge that it has been a good day that can only bettered by tomorrow.

In reality this is how my life goes: work for 11 hours straight, buy shitty RMB6 canteen lunch and eat it at the computer while I catch up on email. If I don't go to the gym, I drag myself up 4 flights of steps, kick off my shoes which land in the untidy pile of OTHER shoes at my door. I drop my bag down on the nearest surface (floor will do nicely), whip up a pasta with cheese dinner - my 4th consecutive one - made with the fastest cooking angel hair I could get at Jenny Lou's (4 minutes to al dente). While the dinner cooks, I quickly sweep up cockroach debris - wings, legs, eggs, droppings, decapitated heads - which has accumulated in the 12 hours that I've been out of the house. I tuck greedily into my dinner burning my tongue on my way there while David Fisher embalms another body on my TV. If I haven't been to the gym then I'm probably too tired to shower and pledge to wake up early tomorrow. I don't smell that bad yet anyway. I'm tempted to leave the dishes till tomorrow too but know all too well that my home will be overrun by an even bigger colony of roaches than it already plays host to. With all that done, I collapse into my unmade bed - it has been that way for the past 2 weeks and the only time I made it recently was so that my landlady wouldn't think that I was a complete slob when she came round to take curtain measurements - and find fitful sleep eventually after convincing myself that there's no point in worrying about what I can't fix till 9am the next day. Yep, life as I know it is a far cry from the glossy pages Good Housekeeping.