The reward points on one of my credit cards are about to expire in a few days so I tried to convert them into airmiles today.

I used to do this by filling in a form and then faxing it off. But the bank neither sent me a form nor a catalogue this year the tight bastards. As I have forgotten my internet banking username and password for this account and it takes 5 days to get that sorted out, I called the hotline.

Hotline means listening to a machine and pressing numbers on your phone. After trying to get through the said system for twenty minutes, I thought to myself, am I fucking stupid or what? How come I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do? The voice says "now, please key in your asiamiles code, then press #". So I keyed in my asiamiles no. FIVE times. Kept saying I entered the wrong code. What the fuck?

I was lucky. I got through to a real person after waiting for only 10 minutes. Person said asiamiles "code" means the code for the category of asiamiles redemption I am after, not my asiamiles membership number. Oh. Of course of course. Me so stupid. Thank you so very much. Sorry for bothering you. Thank you thank you.

Okay, so I keyed that in. Then out spilled very useful information about how ordinary cards can only redeem in units of 500 miles and gold and platinum cards can only redeem in units of 1000 miles. It instructs me to press ONE for the former and TWO for the latter. As I have a gold card, I pressed TWO. Then the machine tells me I've chosen to redeem 1000 miles, gave me a reference number, thanked me, and asked me to hang up.

What on earth?????????????????????????

I wanted to redeem 58,000 miles, not one bloody thousand!!!!!!

So I waited again for a real person to explain to me what the hell was going on. Waited for 15 minutes. A human picked up eventually and asked me to leave a number so they will call me back. I said, I don't want to leave a number. I just want better instructions on how to redeem my airmiles. Sorry ma'me, I understand. You want instructions on how to redeem rewards. Our colleagues will call you back. Thank you for using our services good bye.

No one ever called me back, and I knew this would happen for I detected disdain in the human's voice when I revealed to her what it was I wanted help with. So maybe I'm not so stupid afterall. Or am I?

I still haven't gotten over this, this being accepting that you will get regularly treated like an imbecile even if you clearly are not one. It drives me mildly angry, but more annoyingly, it occupies my thoughts and interferes with my normal daily functionings. Press ONE for 500 miles redemption, TWO for 1000 miles redemption.... so how do I get to make a 58,000 mile redemption???? What the hell should I press???? what what how how how??????

Okay so I got it sorted out in the end (turns out for EACH 500 miles you press ONE, so for 58,000 miles you press 116! Guess how long it took me to work that baby out). Okay okay. But what's in store for me in 10, 20, 30 years' time? When I am old and confused and has cataract and am deaf in one ear and has to wear a nappy? How the hell will I be able to function in this "society"?