$9.50

Let me start with an apology. My lack of posts for this past month is inexcusable. NEAR inexcusable, that is. It would be completely inexcusable and thus damn my soul to writer’s hell (writing for the National Enquirer) if not for one thing: pocket change. For three and a half weeks I lived off of pocket change, specifically $9.50. Being poor (I lost my wallet in the Christchurch earthquake if you don't remember) is a full time job, so writing, pub hopping, and anything else that required money or didn't go towards procuring me additional funds was put on hold. It was, as you can imagine, as shitty an experience as it sounds. Peanut butter and jelly (always called jam over here as jelly is associated with what we Americans call Jell-O) sandwiches became a constant staple in my already dismally bland diet. I lived off a bag of rice that I bought on sale and managed to stretch out its contents for nearly nine days. Razors and shaving cream suddenly became luxuries, so I stopped shaving. The old Max Stewart had gone out the window, and his place, a hero emerged. A hero this world (and his alter ego i.e. me) was entirely unprepared for: Homeless Man.

By day he is your typical university student, attends classes, daydreams in said classes, etc. But behind closed doors he becomes a scruffy, penny-pinching vagabond with the uncanny ability to find spare change and make a single meal last for an entire day. His enemy? The bank.

My bank tried to be helpful, I’m sure of it. They even came close once or twice. But like with the new Star Wars movies, I ended up profoundly disappointed. Every day after returning from my classes, I would sequester myself in my room and unleash a fury upon my poor laptop’s keyboard as I typed out messages to my bank’s online help center. As their help staff, manned by demons by the names of Scott, Sonya, Beelzebub, Dev, etc., taunted with me progressively useless solutions to my problem, my messages became angrier and less verbose. It got to the point where my messages pretty much became thinly veiled references to a number of particularly profane (but useful) four-letter words.

Then came the phone calls. These became something of a dilemma. I had, during my trip to the South Island, elected to put off topping up (the kiwi term is "topping up", not "topping off") my prepaid cell phone minutes until my return. I’m still kicking myself for that. My minutes ran out within ten minutes of the first phone call. I was in trouble. I could live as a peasant for only so long. Seeing as how my student visa dictates that I am not allowed to have a job in this country (and thus support myself) and the harsh anti-pimping laws here, I decided to call in the big guns. Like any real man faced with danger, I called my mommy.

Thing is, my mother is a force to be reckoned with. She can make grown men cry like little girls, and makes Guantanamo interrogators look like sissies. Only if you cross her, that is. And as a few people have lived (just barely, though) to learn, messing with the mama bear’s cubs is a surefire way to piss her off. So explaining my situation to her via the cyber wonder that is Skype, we devised a two-pronged attack. I would continue my unrelenting written campaign against the bank’s online help employees and she would visit the local branch of my bank and confront them directly. I have been told that the employees there now consider the day of her visit as “The Day That Will Live in Infamy”. Whatever she did, it worked. Well, sort of.

In a somewhat Pyrrhic victory, I managed to get both a new ATM card and a new credit card. I call it Pyrrhic because both cards were originally shipped to wrong addresses. That’s right, addressES, as in plural. Despite my specific instructions and multiple references to my New Zealand address, my ATM card was sent to my campus address at Rice University, while my credit card was sent to my home address in Tulsa. I believe that the online help staff had a hand in this business, probably due to discovering that my words, like sticks and stones, could in fact hurt them. My mother’s wrath, however, is infinitely more terrifying, so the head of my bank’s local branch was cowed into waiving all delivery fees. I had to assure both her and my father that I could survive perfectly well despite the delay so at to avoid any poor banker from having his soul ripped from his body.

So I waited with a growling stomach and an increasingly shaggy appearance. Some may wonder why I simply didn’t borrow money. The answer? I have my pride. I may not have shame, but I have pride. But more than proud, I was curious. Could I survive? My grandfather had grown up around the time of the Great Depression in a house where having dust on what little furniture they owned was considered a luxury. I’ve often been recounted with tales of his days as a college boy foraging for food. He would regularly go for weeks straight eating one meal every other day. If he could do it, so could I. I started looking at my financial situation as a gameshow. “Congratulations, Mr. Stewart! You are the next contestant on Stretch That Dollar!” I horded every spare cent I could find like a dragon, fiercely guarding it from the outstretched hands of merchants and food sellers. I barely eked out enough cash to purchase a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a bag of rice (all on sale) from the local convenience store. When I had amassed enough change, I would visit the local fish and chips shop at the end of Devon Street. Their English is poor, but their prices are unbeatable. A single meal from them costs the equivalent of $3 USD and can last for up to four meals. I am pretty sure that the old Vietnamese guys who run the place know me as “the poor kid”, “the boxing kid” (I would often stop by the shop with my boxing wraps still on my hands from class on my way back to my flat), or “the poor boxing kid”. Whatever they knew me as, they were always happy to see me and always knew my order.

I must confess though that my successful survival cannot be solely attributed to my own resourcefulness. Aside from my mother, my three roommates took it upon themselves to care for me during my times of poverty. At first it was in little ways. They would order just a little too much pizza and then claim that the one slice that remained would be discarded if someone (me) didn’t eat it. Sometimes one of them would cook up a meal only to “realize” that they made an extra serving, and would offer the food to the nearest person, once again me. I had courteously refused their offers of loans (they all offered separately) at first, determined to be self-sufficient. But after some cajoling from my parents, especially my father, I broke down and took out some loans at the First National Bank of Landcross Street. With cash in my pocket for the first time in weeks, I may have gone a little overboard. On the first night of relative financial security, I ordered a disgustingly large amount of food from Hell’s Pizza, and I made it rain on that poor delivery boy. Fortunately the full implications of my actions (spending most of my new loan money on a single meal) dawned on me as I gnawed on my fourth slice of Mayhem (Peanut Satay, Sweet Chili, Chicken, Capsicum, and Onions), and I made that order last until the week’s end.

The weeks of September flew by rather uneventfully until one day a knock came on our door. The pocket where my wallet once resided tingled. Could it be? I flew up the stairs like an Englishman out of an Irish pub on St. Patrick’s Day. I threw open the door, and lo and behold, there stood a delivery guy. His name was probably Rick or Murray or something, but to me he was the messenger of God. I think he could tell by the look on my face that this was no normal delivery for me.

“You okay, bro?” he asked warily.

“Sure,” I said, “Is that package for me?”

“Uh, this is for Max,” he replied, “If you’re him, which I take it you are, then yes. The address says it’s from a place called Tulsa. You’re not actually from there are you?

It was taking every ounce of my willpower to hold the pen steady as I signed for the parcel.

“Yeah, actually, I am.”

“Wow, bro!” he said, genuinely surprised, “You must be hating our winter then. You’ve probably been miserable, haven’t you?”

“You have no idea.”

I gave him my best ironic smile and closed the door. And then I danced with that package. I literally waltzed into my living room with a FedEx envelope. I tore it open gleefully and let the little piece of plastic fall onto the couch. I stood awestruck by its beauty for at least a minute before I was able to pick it up. It was so… so…. new. And wonderful. And fancy. I was like a caveman looking at fire. I ran my fingers over the slightly raised engraving of my name admiring its slate blue color. My financial troubles were over.

A few days later and my credit card was joined by its younger brother, my ATM card. My reaction was equally joyous, the delivery guy equally unsettled. My first trip to the ATM, however, was less triumphant. In fact, it was a complete failure. Some neanderthalic dickhead at my bank deemed it a good idea to change my PIN for security reasons. For added security, said dickhead decided not to tell me. So I stood in front of the ATM repeatedly typing in the familiar four-digit code only for the machine to politely tell me to go fuck myself. Thankfully I didn’t take its advice and instead went crying (once again figuratively) to my mother. She sorted things out in her usual Jack Bauer-like manner, and I was given the new PIN within hours.

I had money. My money. My first order of business was to pay off my debts. I may sometimes play practical jokes on my roommates, I may order food under inappropriate pseudonyms, and I may have carved my brother’s name into a bathroom door in an attempt to get him in trouble, but I at least honor my debts. After making sure my honor would remain intact, I decided to go shopping. After wandering its streets with empty pockets for almost a month, Wellington looked like a completely different city. I walked down Cuba Street passing families with laughing children, street jazz bands, at least two balloon animal artists, and three street magicians. I liked to think that they were all there to celebrate the new holiday of Max Regains Money Day, but it turns out it was just an ordinary Saturday. I was mystified regardless. That mystification, however, did not prevent me from going into a New Zealand Army Surplus (I am pretty sure their standing army is three guys with a stick and maybe one with a board with a nail in it) and making one of the best purchases of my life. As soon as I saw it, I knew we were destined for each other. I am proud to say that I am now the proud owner of WWII aviator’s cap and goggles. I am currently wearing the ensemble as I type this, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

Other than my financial pitfalls and woes, not much has happened. I continue to attend classes (less than three weeks left), I still box, and still perform various Maxtions around Wellington. Weeks passed and I survived on crumbs and, like Ringo, with a little help from my friends. I figure that while Ringo may not be the best Beatle to want to be, he is a millionaire and he did marry a Bond girl so I could do worse. I now stand tall and with pockets full, ready to go out into the city again. I was out of commission for a month, but I’m back with a vengeance. The universe tried to keep me down (and poor) and failed. The universe may be big, but I’m crazy. And in a fight between the two, always bet on crazy.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The criminal tardiness of this latest post is also due to my ghastly Internet connection. I haven’t been able to sign into my blog (up until now) and change anything about it, which includes new posts. The Internet is very fickle over here, fickle (and vain) enough to auto-correct the “i” in its name to a capitalized “I” in its appearances in this note.