I’m right now enjoying a cup of coffee while blogging here at Starbucks Valley Point, feeling like Tim Harford for a moment. I finally tried the ‘Cappuccino Short’ here in a Starbucks in Singapore and frankly, at $4.80, I’d rather settle for a Tall. It is a very small cup when you do the takeaway – I haven’t really tried testing whether the takeaway size is the same as the one you drink on the spot. When I do try measuring eventually, perhaps I’d come up with an economic explanation for any discrepancies.
The usual take is that takeaways are smaller in packaging because part of the money you pay goes to paying for the paper cup as well as the cup sleeve (which is supposedly made from 45% less material than another paper cup – I wonder why this comparison is even made). I found no reason to disagree yet but if the amount ends up being the same then we could always explain that by drinking on the spot, the sum that would go into paying for the paper cup goes into paying for your spot in the Starbucks Cafe (sort of like a rental). Economists have this knack of explaining everything but it is likely that a truth is a mixture of the possibilities proposed in different sort of economic explanations.
GOH Gift
Anyways I just left the Hwa Chong Alumni Association from the end of the Hwa Chong Alumni Association Youth Chapter Investiture. This youth chapter, started a few months back, is now officiated and ready to take in new members to join us with activities to help our juniors still in school and also organize events for us to get together. Yi Da got me into the Youth Chapter and soon after that I got so much tasking I’m inevitably a committee member. In particular, I was made to write the gift for our Investiture GOH.
I guess it’s a fun experience working with those students 1 to 3 years our seniors (and the especially old ones who graduated from Chinese High like 20 years or so before we were even born). Another reason I’ve become busier these days. It’s 145 more days to go before ORD right now and having slogged hard for in-camp life, I’ve become really tired of army and hoping NS life would end soon. It seems to be the same feeling for my batch mates as well. I just hope all these busying in civilian life would help time pass faster.
