How often have you been rifling through your bookcases or CD collection looking for a fond favourite that you have suddenly recalled due to some happenstance memory triggering a moment of impulsive nostalgia, only to discover that it is not there? And then you remember that it's not there because your ex-girlfriend has it. And not just any ex-girlfriend, but that one you never talk about. The one you never speak to anymore, the one who still makes your stomach tie up in knots and the blood boil behind your eyes when you think about her. The one you hate and just the thought of her being in possession of that album - which a moment ago was filling you with a warm and fuzzy feeling deep inside - just makes you hate her more, because not only does it mean you can't hear that particular song that you've been humming to yourself slightly off-key for the past hour, but too much time has now passed for you to ask for it back.

So when is it too late to go asking for your stuff back? Do you only have that one moment to perform an emotional break-up trolley dash through the apartment and grab everything that is yours? After that, does everything you turn your back on now belong to her?

I think it's a given that if she dumps you and does a shoddy job of throwing your garbage out with you then you should be allowed back inside once to give her apartment the once over. She should be duty-bound to arrange a rendezvous and hand over whatever of your stuff was left behind enemy lines. Of course, the only question that ever pops into your mind when she hands it over and you pretend to not really examine it all very carefully is ‘What did she keep?’

A year or two ago I was dating a girl from Shenzhen. She had actually spent the last eight years in the UK and was only in Hong Kong for about four months, so we knew our time together was limited. Even so, it wasn't long before she started behaving erratically, throwing tantrums and generally behaving like the spoilt little brat that she was, so I decided to call it quits. She was leaving soon anyway so there was no reason to try and work things out. The night of her imminent dumping arrived and she must have been suddenly struck down by guilt or had a flash of that mythical female intuition that I've heard tell of, as when she arrived at the bar, she had a gift for me.

‘Happy belated birthday,’ she declared with a smile. Now, my birthday was a couple of months ago now, in fact it was before we had even met. But hey, I remembered what my parents had taught me about always accepting gifts graciously no matter what it is, so I smiled broadly, muttered a couple of half-hearted ‘Oh you shouldn't haves’ but opened it to find I was clutching a new iPod. Result! Mine had died on me just a few weeks back and the Care Centre had simply shrugged at me and told me to go buy a new one. What a great gift.

But then it dawned on me – how could I dump her now? I really wanted this new iPod! I did a little calculation in my head and deduced that if I knuckled down and just put up with her for a couple more weeks she'd be back to the UK and out of my hair for good, leaving me free, single and with 80GB of hard drive to fill. So she got another shot and I got my iPod.

But in the end, we didn't last the two weeks. The very next weekend we got into an almighty row after she stood me up on a Friday night, only to get the hump when I made alternate plans. I had endured enough and I called it off. A couple of days later she sent me a text asking if I could drop off her things from my place at her apartment building, which I gladly obliged the very same evening. It was nearly midnight when I got her text message: ‘I see u kept the ipod then.’

And you know what, that burned me. I had been in a real emotional quandary about whether or not to return it and only after a solid five minutes of careful deliberation did I decide ‘Screw her, she gave it to me, it's mine.’ After all, what would my dear parents say if they saw me returning a birthday present? This wasn't about the iPod, this was about her being a tiresome cow. I was not going to get the iPod involved, it was an innocent pawn in all of this.

So she left and I kept it and I have no regrets. Sadly, though, it is rarely so cut and dried as that. In all likelihood I'll never see my original pressing of The Stone Roses on vinyl or my personally autographed copy of Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho ever again. But you can't win them all. This is the price you must be willing to pay when entering into a relationship. As the old saying goes about Love and War: One involves a lot of physical and psychological pain…and the other one is War.

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