this article reminds me of the time when i was surviving on granola bars and tv dinners in Toronto:)
Down, but not out, in Toronto
Lee Wei Ling / ST / 30/08/09
Hardship builds character – hopefully, S'pore youth can learn similar life lessons
In 1992, I was training at the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children, a world-class children's hospital better known by its nickname "Sick Kids". I was there to learn about the treatment of children with severe epilepsy.
At that time, Toronto was one of the most expensive cities in the Western world. I anticipated needing C$2,000 a month for my expenses.
I arrived in Toronto at the end of December 1991. After getting my student identity card, I rushed over to the YMCA to join, paying the student rate of C$300 per year. I was able to exercise at the YMCA the very next day – New Year's Day.
I initially stayed in an apartment belonging to a friend who was visiting his family in Singapore then. I had had little experience in cooking but decided it could not be too difficult to use heat to turn raw meat into edible food.
I walked to Toronto's Chinatown and saw live fish being sold for C$1 each. I decided I could not possibly get a better deal and bought one. When I got back to the apartment, the fish was still wriggling.
I suddenly remembered I had never cooked a fish, much less killed and cleaned a live one. I did my best, used a meat cleaver to chop off the head and cleaned out the innards. It was messy.
Then I put the fish in boiling water and poked it every now and then to test whether it was cooked. When I was satisfied that it was, I carefully removed it from the pot, let it cool and ate the fish with light soya sauce, for I found no other seasoning in my friend's larder. The fish tasted awful, but I had my dose of protein for the day.
On Jan 2, I began looking for an apartment to rent near Sick Kids. I found one located between the YMCA and the hospital, a five-minute walk from both. It was a bedsitter, which I rented for C$650 a month.
My days would begin with me waiting outside the YMCA with a small group of regulars at 5.45am for its doors to open at 6am. During the winter months, waiting outside was usually a painfully cold experience. But exercise addicts are an eccentric lot.
By 8.45am, I would have burnt 1,200 calories on the step-master while reading a textbook on epilepsy, swum 2km, showered and changed, and walked briskly to Sick Kids. Work at the hospital was over by 5pm.
I planned to take an examination in both adult and paediatric electroencephalogram (better known as EEG). This is a test that measures the electrical activities of brain cells – a useful and at times crucial test to determine whether a patient has epilepsy, and if so, what kind of epilepsy.
I approached a neurologist at Western General Hospital who was knowledgeable about adult EEGs and he agreed to be my mentor. To save on bus fare and also not to waste time, I would run from Sick Kids to Western General Hospital. I counted the 20 to 30 minutes it took to do that as part of my exercise quota for the day.
I would then start going through the EEGs for the day before the neurologist came in at around 6.30pm. Then we would go through the EEGs together and he would probe my interpretations.
I never knew whether he knew who my father was. I was very grateful to him as I was not working at Western General Hospital and it was not his responsibility to teach me. Teaching me prolonged his day.
We were usually done by 9pm and I would run back to my apartment. This was why I cooked only once a week.
I skipped breakfast and lunch. For dinner, I adopted the following strategy to satisfy my nutritional needs:
I would buy seven pieces of chicken legs each week. On Sunday, I would roast all seven legs and store them in the refrigerator. It usually took about 45 minutes for the chicken legs to be properly cooked. During that time, I would do my laundry and clean and tidy the apartment.
The rest of the week, when I came home in the evening, I would defrost a chicken leg in the microwave oven – and that was my protein for the day.
Occasionally, the supermarket would advertise cheap salmon. These were tiny but contained enough protein for two days. I would ask the man at the supermarket to chop the salmon into two equal halves. I then stored about four or five of these pieces in my freezer. Before I left in the morning for the YMCA, I would take a piece from the freezer and put it into the refrigerator to defrost. All I needed to do for dinner was microwave the salmon and eat it with soya sauce.
In addition to protein, I needed vegetables, fruits and carbohydrates.
Chinatown was cheaper than my nearest supermarket. I would do my marketing there once a week, even when it was minus 20 deg C outside, and the distance from my apartment to Chinatown was twice that to the nearest supermarket. I never ate out except when invited to do so.
The reader can understand now how I lived on C$1,000 a month. I felt no hardship or deprivation living that way. But that amount was considered barely above the poverty level in Toronto at that time.
Fast forward 17 years: I observe with anxiety how Singapore's Generation Y seems to take the luxuries of life for granted.
It now seems the current economic downturn may be over sooner than initially predicted. Influenza A (H1N1) is still a concern, though not yet a serious one. I would not have minded if the economy had remained poor for a few more months.
Hardship builds character. Gen Y has never encountered hardship. What will Singapore be like 50 or 100 years from now if we do not have resilient citizens who understand that hardship is an inescapable fact of life? What will become of us if we became incapable of looking after ourselves, expecting that the Government will always look after us?
