20 $

With only $20 in my pocket, I would be a poor soul!

BTW! Are we talking Hong Kong dollar or the other ones dollar. US I think it is?

With only 20 Hong Kong dollar in my pocket?

I think I would go to the rat alley and get a nice steaming portion of the fried chilli noodles with a couple Sui Mei and beef balls. After that I must have a couple of dollars left. I would save them and hope for a better day, week, month, anything to be better in fact. Maybe wake up and find it being a bad dream.

Man, suddenly I remember back to the days as I was a poor student in Århus, Denmark.

Sometimes I only had maybe 50 kroner or something for a whole week. 

I remember one time I was addicted to cigarettes, but I didn't have any. Didn't have any money either, Danish money that is, coz I did have 10 D-Mark - yes, that is so long back that the D-Mark still was the official currency or the Bundesrepublik Deutschland/ Germany - and those 10 D-Mark was equal to about 38 Danish Kroner and if I went to the bank to exchange that note, I could buy myself a package with 10 fags. 

Off corse I went to the bank and asked to get the money changed and the man just looked at me with a sad face. He told me, that I would loose so much of the money in exchange fee and that I would get less than half of what it was really worth. I was just so much longing fora drag of a fag that I told him to give me the money.

He did. I went out and over the street  to a nearby Kiosk and got those bloody fags -still some coins in my pocket- came out, ripped the package open and lit up one and immediately felt better. For a while. Just until the next time the pocket was empty and yet still to early in the month to go to the bank to ask for an advanced payment of the monthly student support. Also that was just so embarrassing yet frequent.

Suddenly I remember a slogan or motto I pretty much lived by in student times and it was something like this: " a good smoke can better help you through times without money than money can help you through times with no smoke".

Good old student life. How that could be miserable. Yet it is still the time I sometimes think back at with some kind of envy. But not that part with the money or the lack of them. The freedom, the youth and the possibilities. Even with only 20 kroner in your pocket. 

What do you think? Yes, you. You have just read this. Have you ever been a poor student, who sometimes had to live from hand to mouth?

If you have, you must have some memories of the hardship to make ends meet, and yet, still remember life, back then, as a student as some of the most glorious and exciting days of your life.

Disclaimer.

If someone should be waiting for me to explain what would do if I only had 20 US dollar in my pocket?

Sorry to disappoint you. I really do not know what I would do as I don't really have a clue what I could get for 20 US dollar. Well, at least not in the US. Probably I couldn't even buy myself a gun for that kind of money.

This Easter I travelled in Iran. There I could fly from a town called Shiraz and all the way north to Tehran, about 800 kilometre away, for what's equal to 34 US dollars. In that case I suspect that I could fly from Isfahan to either Shiraz or to Tehran for about 20 US dollar. But then what after doing that?