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If it's not too late and you don't already have one, apply for a Standard Chartered credit card. They're giving away NDS handhelds as welcome gifts. It sure has made my bus rides to and from home a lot more entertaining the past two weeks. Of course, there's a catch. There's always a catch. You have to charge like two billion dollars within the first three months or you must pay them back for the game. But hey, free game for three months. Yey.

Recently had a bad experience with American Express. It's been resolved now but I just thought I should warn people here about this company. Soon as I got my card back in June I received information about a triple reward points promotion. For $240 I can get triple reward points for everything I charge in the following 12 months. With my determination to land a free holiday in Malibu some day, I jumped to the chance to collect Asia Miles three times faster. I paid my $240 and charged away. It wasn't till early October that I noticed my reward points never got tripled. I called their customer service hotline to query. The staff told me that for some reason, "the system" never enrolled me in the triple points program. I found it funny that the system would forget to give me the points, when it had clearly remembered to take the program fee from me promptly. The staff said she'd correct the problem and adjust my points; and when the next statement came I got my triple points.

On last month’s statement I noticed yet again that my points for the month were not tripled. I called the customer service again, this time to be told that because the system had failed to enroll me when I paid to get enrolled and I had to be manually enrolled by a staff only in October—by when the triple points promotion had already expired—I could only be enrolled into the double reward points program which was then in place. I asked this customer service representative multiple times if I got this right. She confirmed that there was nothing they could do about my missing points; that because the program I had paid to enroll no longer exists on the system it wasn’t possible to give me the triple points; that neither was it possible to manually adjust my points; that if the system hadn’t had the error back in June I would’ve been able to get triple reward points for 12 full months; and that because of a system error at American Express, I will not be receiving what I had already paid for.

It was the kind of thing you just wouldn’t believe you’re hearing from a credit card customer service, let alone American Express. I hadn’t had such a frustrating telephone conversation since calling a certain conniving publisher to ask for compensation for publishing my Ex-Men article in his overpriced magazine without my consent. I got so worked up I thought I was going to have a stroke. Me being me, I’d risk getting a stroke any day to make sure that justice is served. So I asked to talk to the manager. The manager called me back within the hour, presumably after getting the scope of the story from the stupid staff who outright said to an angry customer that she’d no way get compensated. The manager assured me that my points will get adjusted manually each month and I’d get triple points till June next year. And June next year is when I'll stop using this card.