Jc days

I was poor when I was in Jc. Its amazing how none of my new classmates then realized that I was broke. It wasn't a deliberate attempt to conceal the truth on my part. I saw no shame in poverty, so there were no reasons to hide it. It was just a situation I found myself in. There were more important things to be concerned about. It just never occurred to me to seek their help. I hope to, without exaggerating nor understating, try to convey the extend of the poverty then. I'll do away with the explaining of why or how I found myself to be in that situation, since it serve little to provide an insight on my life then. All one need to know, for now, was that at that point of time, I was living alone.

Back then, my dad tries to send back 150 dollars every month. It wasn't a secured amount though. Many times it wil fall short of that amount, but sometimes when i'm lucky he'll send back more. I try to not to ask for more, for I knew that he had a hard time raising even that sum of money. Transportation to school took up almost half of that amount. I need to change two buses and a train ride just to get to school. There were many instances when I had to walked home from the train station, for I couldn't afford to take the bus. To be fair my house wasn't that far away from the station though. A 15 minute walk. Still it was pretty sad to cannot afford a 50c bus ride. I couldn't buy a cup of 30 cents coke without worrying if I had enough money to go home. It goes without saying that it was impossible to pay the school bills. Or to pay for those miscellaneous fees. Was it 17 dollars a month? Whenever I did pay up, it would only mean that there was less to eat.

There was the dreadful issue of providing food to eat. I wasn't left with much money after spending on transportation. The only food I could afford was bread. A loaf of bread for my 2 meals. Before and after school. In the beginning of the month I would still have the luxury of buying a can of kaya to go with the bread. I would go to the supermarket and gather all the different brands. The next thing is to compare the nutrition values found in each brand, and more importantly, the weight of the content for each brand. Its amazing how a few grams of kaya can become so important. However i was 17 then, and a loaf of bread a day wasn't enough to keep me full. Far from enough. All it does is to assuage the hunger for a couple of hours. And when the bread stock runs out, and when night sets in, the hunger creeps back in. It is a torture to try sleep with an empty, growling, hungry stomach. You flip and turn but can never get to sleep. It is then that feel your hunger most. It is then you realize how hungry you really are.

One of the cheapest food in school is mashed potato. It cost 50c per serving. Although it was a small serving, I reckoned that potato and the butter in it would provide some form of carbohydrates. And it tasted so good. I couldn't afford protein anyway. On those good days when I received my allowance, on top of having only bread (which wasn't filling anyway), I would treat myself to 2 addtional servings of mash potatoes for breakfast.

Very often however, I would run out of money. That means that I couldn't afford food. This means that I couldn't even afford some stupid plain bread. It was a terrible terrible feeling. To go hungry for days. To be hungry the entire time in school, and to come back and continue the hunger spell. To be able to do nothing about it. To sleep hungry, and to wake up hungry. The body will then become faint and weak. It is during those days when I will ended up drinking tap water to try to alleviate that hunger. To blot the stomach.
I hate that feeling of water filling my empty stomach.

I was on the phone, talking to my friend, on one those nights. I haven't had food for some time now. I was trying not to think about the hunger. I curled up on the floor, clenching my stomach. Then I started crying.

I woke up to the knocks on my door. It was 2am. I had fallen asleep crying. I opened my door to find my friend smiling. He had taken a taxi down to pasir ris to fetch me. To fetch me for supper.