This and that

Ugh... have I mentioned that I don't really like coffee? I like the smell of freshly brewed coffee, but I don't really like to drink it. I've slowly developed to at least be accepting of an iced americano (watered down coffee) and now at Starbucks they have this vanilla sweet cream cold brew, if I ever go get coffee, that's about the only thing I get.

Once upon a time, just a couple years back, I got to gold membership status at Starbucks thanks to one incident: one of the bosses in the office (but not my direct boss) wanted to treat everyone in a particular meeting with coffee, his admin didn't know what to do, so I said I'd place the order while she arranges the driver to pick up (there would have been a little travel time involved, so it was better to pre-order for pick up, rather than just go there, order, and wait). Because of this one order (of 20-something coffees) I got bumped to gold membership, and I've been trying to maintain it since (yeah, status symbol and all that)

But the fact remained that, I never was much of a coffee drinker. I managed to keep the gold status in the past couple of years because they made sporadic promotions of "extra X amount of stars if you order 5 days consecutively" or "double star rewards when you order drinks with food".

This year, however, I guess because of the pandemic, there were not so many bonus stars promotions... so... I'm now on a 29-day countdown to get 16 more stars (averaging at 2 stars per tall coffee order). Should be able to make it, but I can only go so many days with coffee, because even if I only drink coffee early in the day... I can't exactly sleep well at night LOL. And I don't want to drink those empty calorie sugary drinks either.

This recent-frequenting to Starbucks has also put in me in a weird spot. I almost always order by mobile order, so, never any human interaction, and it was all going well until last week, when I went into the Starbucks intent to just walk past the pick up isle and take me coffee and go, one of the baristas went "Oh hello, good morning, Kat!"

OMG. Why. Whyyyyyyyyyy. Yes, on the mobile order tag they print out the name, but why can they recognize me by sight.....!!!! I'm always awkward, but I'm also polite. Because if someone greets me, I will always greet back. And then when I leave, they yell out a "byeeeee!" And while I enviously see other patrons just walk out, I automatically turn around, wave or tilt my head or even bow to say bye and go. Nun-run-school education and hospitality university training I guess. Weeeeeeiiiiirrrrrrddddddd.

Now I feel like I have to switch and go to another Starbucks.

On happier news...

Autumn is slowly coming! Despite next week being the "Mid-Autumn Festival", TODAY I finally felt the winds change. Because my apartment has North and South facing windows, so usually there's a breeze when we open both windows. Usually, it's a South-to-North breeze and it's usually hot and humid. But I woke up this morning and standing in my corridor, I felt a nice dry North-to-South breeze. Soon there will be no need for the air con. Nice timing too, because I just washed all my bedsheets on Sunday and i decided to forgo the comforter and decided that if I felt too chilly from the air con, I'd just use the dog fleece cover LOL (dont' worry it's washed and clean).

I'm booked for my fourth vaccine shot (Pfizer) for this afternoon, but the news just came out that they are rolling out a new vaccine from the US on coming Tuesday, though I asked my colleague that shared this news for her source and... she couldn't give me *rolls eyes*. I think I'm just gonna go ahead and get the shot this afternoon.

I was in a good mood all along until just 2 minutes ago, the dog shelter I volunteer for strikes again. I help them log all the donations they get, however, they are unwilling to give me access to their different finance things. They give me some, but not all. Like, they gave me access to the online banking of one of their bank accounts and to the electronic wallet statements (they have accounts in 2 banks, and 1 electronic wallet). However, it seems they are still receiving funds from an "old" electronic wallet. I've asked time and time again that they should only allow incomes to the "official" electronic wallet, but nay, they still accept donations to their "old" electronic wallet, because then there's money in it and they can "spend it on utilities easier".

So every beginning of the new month, when I've logged all the donations received and all that... and that's another nightmare because some people just donate and be done with it, some will screen cap their donations and send to us either by email, facebook, or IG, and I have to compare and see which donation belongs to who... because the donations shown on the electronic wallet report displays only partially the phone number of the donor (no name even)... so many times I have to cross check time of donation, donation amount, and all that. I send the finished report to them and THEN they say "oh, sorry, we forgot about these" and send me heaps other donations from the other accounts that I have no access to.

No matter how many times I ask them to send me the information before the end of the month, they still only send me the information after I've completed the month's report, and then I have to go back and do all over again.

An amusing side story: so one of our neighbours living in the higher floors talked to my Mom the other day. "Your younger daughter always looks so tired. Is she a lawyer?"

Mom's making fun of me saying I look tired and I should take care of my appearance more. She wants me to go dye my hair dark again. I'm really waiting it out to get a head of grey/whites. i look distinguished in that LOL, I know, because I used a color wax before and I know grey/white goes well with me LOL. I'm just going to push bedtime to an hour earlier, so... yes, I'll be going to bed at 11pm from now on. I'll try.

This post took the whole day to write. It's now almost lights off time. I got my 4th vaccine shot and this time the reaction is a bit different. The injection site itches like crazy, the muscle around it is a bit in pain, and I don't know if it's some kind of muscle-related reflex or what, but my wrist hurts like hell. It bloooooooddddyyyyyyy huuuuurrrrrrtttttttttssssss!