I implicitly became a madam ("Cee Nine" in Cantonese) yesterday night.

Even though I always joke about how tedious madams do to just save a penny while wasting hours waiting in line for some discount products, deep inside I have great respect to madams, for it's madams that brought up you and me. Think about it: you only have limited budget (either from your part time job or from your husband) to run a family. Providing your family member a good dinner, a clean living room or a quite learning environment is your best way to show your love to your family, not to mention the satisfaction you get from getting job well done. So madam is basically the CEO and CFO of the family, and no good CFO will causally spend money on items without evaluating all the options, bargain with the vendors (hawkers, supermarket staffs...) and pick the most cost effective solution. So next time before you poke fun of madams collaborative collect point to exchange for cookware from supermarket, or waiting in line for 2 days to get Twins (HK pop star) for their daughters, think about the love they have deep down inside.

And nothing better to understand madams then being like one of them, walking in their shoes.

That what I did last night, and ironically, after I came up with the idea poked fun on whether there will be madams to do exact what I was thinking.

And that is: will you use your Octopus card to get in and out of the gates at the same station(thus being charge for the lowest fee, which is about HK$3.8) to jack up the travel count on the card, thus qualify you to earn a free single trip ticket (worth HK$12 if you use it to take the longest trip)?

I did just that. It was Sunday mid-night 12:10 am. I was at Tsuen Wan MTR station. After checking the status of my Octopus card, I realized that my MTR traveling count is 9, one short of earning a free ticket. Suddenly an idea popup: I have a need to take the longest trip with MTR a few time per week, and it's not bad an idea to gain $12 by paying $3.8.

So there I did it. It felt corny, but from now on when madams chat about how to save nickels on soft drink from Supermarket, I can join the discussion.