I Have No Life
My mom called earlier today and asked me what I was doing, and after I got done whining about how I’d been sitting like a lump on my couch for approximately the last hour and how I have no money and I hate Bank of America and my life sucks and I’m bored and waaah, she said, “It could be worse.”
“Yeah, I guess it could be worse,” I said, “but it’s feeling pretty shitty right now.”
“You could be stuck in Australia with no money because your bank card expired,” she countered.
Damn.
Yes, Sammi tried to use her debit card to pay for something in Sydney the other day, and it didn’t go through. Because her debit card expired at the end of May. And her new card was sitting in a pile of mail at Family HQ.
Fed Ex wanted TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS to ship the bank card to Sydney. They ended up sending it through USPS Global Shipping or something instead (for a much more reasonable price), and they have to ship it to Canberra because it won’t get there until Wednesday or something and Sam’s AustraLearn group will have left Sydney by then. In the meantime she has approximately $50 Australian dollars. Mom was thinking about wiring her a little more to hold her over but I’m not sure what they decided on that.
Poor Sammi.
In other news, I want to share that I live with two creatures who regularly try to lick my face within nanoseconds of licking their own buttholes. If that isn’t love, then I don’t know what is.
An old girlfriend and I were stuck in a little surfing community in Costa Rica once. We decided to squeeze a little bit extra out of CR before heading back to Nicaragua and as soon as we got there and spent just about the rest of our cash on lunch, snacks and beers, discovered my card would not go through at the little hotel we were trying to book. Citibank messed something up and so, while trying to figure things out, froze my account until they could reconcile numbers coming in from Nicaragua and Costa Rica with my account in NYC. After walking around from place to place we finally got word that there was a surfer that had a little place off the shore and that he let ’em go for cheap. The guy let us stay at his place and pay at the end of our couple of days with the understanding that we wouldn’t have to pay anything if we found our bus tickets back wiped out our reserves. Outside of that one sentance, everything else from the guy was “Pura Vida”. That was his “yes”, “hello”, “good morning, night, afternoon”, “nice weather we’ve got, isn’t it?”
Othewise, we just got to know the surfers and found them to be really generous with beer and food so long as we just hung out with them and stayed close to the table/bonfire.
It was both miserable and wonderful.
i had $100 to spend during an entire high school band trip once.
$50 for a few days?
one should attempt to keep a little perspectve here.
1. everything is more expensive in australia
2. it’s $50 for at least a week, not just “a few days”
3. she is expected to pay for 3 meals a day plus any of the non-covered learning activities they’re doing in that time (like the zoo, which itself cost $30)
4. this is her first trip away from home and i’m guessing finding out that your bank card won’t work is probably pretty sucky.
no need to get pissy or judgmental or to make comments about “perspective.”