Gullible?? How 'bout we say trusting...

So... yesterday we got scammed.
We were walking down the road when this lovely Italian chap called us over to his flash wagon and after a fair few minutes of friendly chat, me showing off all my Italian, Tim being his wonderful warm self and the stranger charming us utterly and completley, he explained that he fancied giving us a gift of some expensive Italian leather coats. (?!) Neither of us are the Giorgio Armani types, but, hardly wanting to reject our new friend's offering, we accepted the designer bag, albeit in a bemused kind of a way. After a few moments, Mr Mario got on to the fact that he just needed a bit of cash for petrol. Sweet as, no worries; we gave him a crispy note. He wanted another. After some squirming, we, er, gave him another. He wanted just the one more. We explained that, um actually, we were unemployed and clearly not loaded and HELLO YOU'RE DRIVING A BMW. Except the capitals didn't quite make it from our minds to our mouth, and we pretty much emptied our wallet into his sweaty paws. Fifty. Freaking. Pounds. (Yup, thats $150 kiwi golds.)
The exact second he started up his Bimmer and drove off we realized that whatever had just happened we had just done a very stupid thing. Our hearts jumped into our mouths and our jaws dropped meaning that our hearts were bobbing all over the pavement right there outside South Kensington Tube Station and we stared at each other in disbelief. We were in shock; we gasped, we laughed, we yelled, we ran (away from the police in case they did us for handling stolen goods) and we finally made it home to open up the bag. 'Till this point I wasn't too traumatised, even if they were off the back of a lorry, we could always sell them on e-bay and make back the dosh, and perhaps an extra bob or two. But oh, no. It was worse. They were 100% polyester, made in China, worth about 70p each and the tool of a worldwide rip off.

Obviously, we are gutted as we feel very ridiculous. However, we are glad to be able to say we have learnt some lessons (Being jobless we have much time to philosophise.) Ok, drumroll....
*However spiritual and unmaterialist we may feel at times, the truth is we are inherently greedy and our minds get whirring at the thought of getting something for nothing.
*Even though we feel we got majorly ripped off, it is absolutley nothing in comparison to the story of millions of other people. Such as this Sri Lankan woman featured in this article who paid a wonderfully charming con artist $600 to take her into slave labour, thinking she was going to a well paid housekeeping job to support her daughter.
*There is a fine line between being good stewards and being tight, which sort of leads to the last one...
*It is always better to trust strangers, even at the risk of having your pockets dishonestly unburdened.
So, lets go with trusting, eh, rather than any other words that come to mind. I will admit that so far as an artistic representation goes, this probably does sum us up best...