Believe it or not, when I was studying at the University of Malaya (UM), I lived on less than RM10 a day. Every single expense for breakfast, lunch, and dinner I write it down gituew. It wasn't because I was studying at the Faculty of Economics and Administration, but because I wanted to manage my spending carefully.
I remember my friend, who is now a bank manager and travels to Europe four times a year, and I deliberately walked back and forth in front of a Chinese bakery in Section 12, Petaling Jaya. We put on pitiful expressions, hoping the shopkeeper would take pity on us and give us bread that had passed its expiry date. He he he.
Back then, we finally understood why some people were driven to prostitution.
It was heartbreaking.
My father always made sure I had enough money. Yet it often became insufficient because I could never bring myself to ignore friends who were struggling even more than I was. Whenever I could, I shared what little I had.
Yet today, those memories have become something strangely sweet, priceless and beyond buying or selling.
Whenever I tell this story to my students, hoping they will be grateful and complain less, most of them immediately reply,
"Things were cheaper back then. RM10 was worth a lot."
That is always their quick answer, macamlah dia pernah ada zaman tu.
But what I really want to say is this: even in those days, we were genuinely poor. RM10 still was not enough to cover our basic daily needs. We still had to pinch every penny and be extremely careful with our spending. Anything we dreamed of buying could only be afforded after saving for a very long time.
Imagine receiving only RM16,000 to cover four years of university.
That money had to pay for tuition fees, hostel accommodation, books (we did not photocopy textbooks), and all our living expenses throughout our studies.
After deducting all the necessary expenses, only about RM1,000 remained to get through each academic year (satu penggal pengajian)
(Read that paragraph2 with a heavy heart.)
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| Asrama Seksa 17 |
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