{Tea diaries}

This is the truth of my sad living - while I pretend to be enjoying the high life of eating out at the hottest and trendiest restaurants all the time, I actually spend most of my day and night in the office. I recently took a tally on my daily intake - and realised how pathetic it is. 
B: Tuna bun & choco milk L: Chicken spaghetti & Milk tea D: Pork ribs with veg rice & milk tea

Am a milk tea addict - the Chinese local diner's style, "Chachanteng version" - in general I down at least three to four cups of milk tea a day. This is the full strength original, using condensed milk and black tea brewed with broken egg shells, not the watered down Western version. I generally buy them at meal times, one at breakfast, one at lunch, one in the afternoon and one at dinner. This is the bare minimum. Sometimes when my colleagues order breakfast after I have enjoyed mine, they'd always be kind enough (!) to swing in an extra milk tea for me.
My craving is so bad that on the occasional mornings when I didn't have time to buy my milk tea, I would be grumpy and edgy and whining non-stop to the people sitting around me about the lack of my morning brew. Sometimes they'd get so frustrated or tempted that they'd order a couple to be delivered to the office. 

Many times I have tried to stop - but every time I get sucked in again after a mere sip. For example, I lived without it for 5 days last month when travelling and was perfectly fine. But then once I got back to HK, I just had to have my usual.

Was reflecting on my bad luck in the month of July on my flight to Taipei over the weekend, and realised that I was probably jinxed...
- Another scary horse riding incident involving a thunderstorm, an irritating classmate that provoked my horse, an agitated and out of control horse, and almost toppling over on cement grounds. 
- The absolute WORST flight ever when returning from Singapore - this deserves a proper entry another time.
- Cutting short my long-planned weekend trip to Taipei abruptly at the last minute, causing havoc for all my friends.
- Fell out with a friend.
All I could say is, having reached the absolute trough, August can only turn out better!

Was cleaning up my gmail account when I notice the following email from a "Wu Chong"~ while the name didn't register in my brain, I assumed this was from a real person and started reading it and discovered it was another con email and decided to expose him~ if you are reading this, Wu Chong (I suspect this is not your real name anyway) by chance, I know that I am no longer considered young, but am not old enough to be an aunt, ok? That obviously ticked me off...
I wonder what would happen if I indeed email him asking how I could pay that USD$60~ but really, I couldn't be bothered...---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Wu Chong <WuC@ocbc.com.sg>
Date: May 18, 2005 2:58 PM
Subject: Thank you for the wreaths
To: Xxx

NEWS FLASH~ Update on June 3~ For those interested, I got progressively MAD at the way I was treated by the custsomer services desk, and started calling my friends who have mastered the art of complaining asking for advice. In fact, one claimed he has gotten three free flights and numerous upgrades from this airline in the past by complaining at every single inconvenience. Anyway, to cut a long story short, today when they called me back and told me they're sorry about the incident and that it was very rare that it would occur WITHOUT offering any compensation, I got on the offensive and attacked them for the injustice and how unacceptable it was that someone else who went through exactly the same thing as I did and screamed at them afterwards managed to get an upgrade voucher. Finally they succumbed  and gave me the same thing... although keen to highlight that this is an exceptional situation. Cannot believe these people. Am seriously thinking my efforts at trying to renew my silver membership are really worthless. Am happy nonetheless with the voucher  Just proves that being "mean" has its advantages...
See below for original blog...
How unfair is this? When we came back from Seoul, our flight was delayed by well over 2 hours and we landed in HK at like 00:45 in the morning. Obviously, that was way past Airport Express' bed time and we were told to wait for the one bus the airline had arranged for all the passengers, which was to depart in around 90 minutes' time.
At checkin at Incheon when we were told of the delay, we already highlighted that our workday starts at 7:15am in the morning, and getting back to HK as early as we could was was the top priority. Given two of us were silver members and that we were told there were plenty of seats available for both coach and biz, we requested for an upgrade, not because of the perk, but because we could have a much better rest than in coach. This was declined and we didn't make a big fuss about it at the time. However, we were outraged that another friend of ours who was catching the same flight was offered the option to take another flight that would get her back to HK by like 10:30pm at the latest. This was never even mentioned during our discussions.
We did reason with the lady sorting out the buses that could we take a taxi reimbursement, considering if we waited for the bus, we'd probably not get home until like three or four in the morning (the bus only stops at Causeway Bay so we'd have to scramble for taxis from there...). This was again, declined. We opted to take the taxi still and share the cost amongst the three of us because we were dead tired already...
But the worst has yet to come.
My two "dear" friends called up to complain afterwards about the whole treatment. One of them got an upgrade voucher for his next travel, and the other got free airmiles. I called up today and was offered a measly taxi reimbursement (which was taken back when I told them I didn't have the receipt). What's got me so MAD  is how different each of us were treated and how unfair that was. This is just unacceptable~ just by being a bit more forceful in your complaints you get an upgrade voucher, even though we were all subjected to the same delay?!!!
Have been a die hard devotee of this airline in the past in spite of its many faults~ can't say the same for the future!