0 Expectation = 0 Disappointment

A conversation with a friend who recently threw a lavish party lead to these and I wonder....

1) When you throw a birthday party, do you expect your guest to bring presents? 

2) When your guest brings a present, does value of the present have to be more or less the amount you spent per pax on the party?

3) When you throw a wedding banquet, do you expect to make some money out of it?  Meaning, total angpow received will not only be enough to cover the banquet but hopefully, enough to cover for a little honeymoon too?

4) When you gave someone Christmas presents, do you expect them to give you something in return?

5) When you buy dinner/lunch, do you expect the next time it would be them buying?

It was hillarious for both the husband and I as we listen out his laments.  Probably cause he is a Mat Salleh (Caucasian) and not familiar with our culture here.   Then he asked, "Does this kind of things happened to you?  Do you have friends like that?  That don't bring anything attending parties?".  The husband & I just blurted out 'plenty' without second thoughts and we laughed.

1) We have invited friends for birthday dinner who not only didn't bring presents but added remarks like... "Do we have to pay for the dinner?!" (Though they are not expected to, but harlow?  Do you speak like that?).

2) Our wedding event was a deficit of RM100k.

3) Year after year, we gave Christmas presents but we hardly getting anything.  That's ok. Cause we wanted to give.  Really, I couldn't resists.

4) When come to dinners/lunches, miraculously, we are always the one fastest with our wallets.  We are so tired of this kind of crap that we decided to split the bill there and then however uglifying that is.

So, this Mat Salleh friends of ours was so surprise!  Lols... The next thing he said was, "You should stop all that.  You are being taken for granted!".  Lols... The thing is, I think it is like this in this part of the world.  People simply don't understand the term 'give & take'.  They only understand 'take & take'.  Hehehehe...  I even shared with him an experience when I put in a little less effort, a friend got disappointed.  Lols.... His eyes almost pops! Hahahaha....

Life is just like that la... there are so many different kind of people in this world, how can we expect everyone to respond or react exactly how we expected them to be?  Don't worry, there is remedy to this. And this is, DO NOT EXPECT ANYTHING IN RETURN.  Then we would not be disappointed. :)  Like what I posted on my FB status yesterday... '0 Expectation = 0 Disappointment.  It's happiness all over again!".  There you have it. :)

So, how is it like for you guys?  What's your expectation?  Do you get something in return when you give?  Or like us, you have friends that conveniently forgets? :D This is one interesting topics.  Let me know!

p/s: It's 11:30pm now, and the husband said this.. "Go to sleep. It's your bed time." o.O.  All because he wanna watch how a cobra swallow a rattle snake on tv which I refused to see. :p  I have this thing about reptiles.  They give me nightmares and goosebumps.