Johnny Cheapskate: Burberry and Ralph Lauren Upgrade

I wish I could wear t-shirts to the office; Work requires all my shirts to be collared. Unfortunately, you gotta spend a pretty peso on a really good one.

So I became very happy to find out that I could buy really good Burberry and Ralph Lauren polo shirts at the last place I’d expect to get them—S&R. You’d need a membership to shop, but it’s quite worth it. Obviously there’s not a lot of people going there for pique shirt shopping so you get dibs and a bigger chance that a random manong won’t be wearing the exact same shirt. Everyone already knows that Burberry and Ralph Lauren are of excellent quality and that they look good at the office. The slim fit and the custom fit shirts are perfect. They’re not becklette shirts—they’re pogi shirts. I’ve stocked up on them for work and play, so I might not be wearing my normal plain crew neck shirts as often as I used to. T-shirts still need to be only around 200 bucks, but I allow myself to spend a little bit more for the office.

Burberrys were at less than 800 bucks, Ralph Laurens at less than a thousand. They even still had their Neiman Marcus price tags attached, costing 125 USD originally. My crew necks just got upgraded.

Johnny Cheapskate: Half-price at Powerbooks

I like to purchase stuff but I hate spending a lot for it. Like a t-shirt should only be 200 bucks. There are certain things I just have to spend for, like books. I know that books can be downloaded or bought from a 2nd hand book store but I prefer my books to be fresh off the oven. I like it smelling of cut paper and fresh ink after I tear off the plastic. Otherwise, I should at least know who the last reader was if it's a borrowed book. American Gods was a book I bought from the garage sale and it smelled like a hint of storage, mold and male stranger. The residual energy was giving me rhinitis.

So I was glad to find out yesterday that i can use my Citibank points to purchase from Powerbooks! Half can be taken out of my points so I only need to pay half. There's this one hardcover (The Black Prism) that I wanted to buy but it's above a thousand bucks; thanks to my Citibank points, I get a 50% discount. I was already planning to cut my Citibank Visa; it's scary to have a 184,000-peso limit. What the heck am I gonna do with that?! But with this Powerbooks promo and the other promo where I get free movie tickets for every 1.5K make me think of keeping this card for another few months.

Also: Carpe Diem means seize the merchandise

“Life is what happens while you’re making plans” is how Kulay, my favorite OPM band of all time, would sing it. Work on a perfect now and tomorrow falls into place is how I like to think about it.

There’s a danger to enrolling in my school of thought though. Isaiah 22:13 quips the existential caution, “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die” to emphasize the impermanence of life. However, I for instance could sometimes take it differently and simply miss out on the future effect of my current actions. Carpe Diem has evolved a new meaning: seize the merchandise.

Thanks to Horace’s Carpe Diem, I am now a proud owner of a credit card debt that’s probably too big for a 25-year old dude like meself. Get now, pay later, is an American pitfall that I checked out and tripped into. I don’t even like most Americans that much.

 Apparently, this gold card is both my best friend and my worst enemy.