"... I was only a few dollars away from having to rummage through Dumpsters to find my next meal. I was -- by conventional first-world definitions -- poor ..."
I was talking to a mate while working on his property ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157621928042355... and the talk moved around to some friends we'd gone to school with. One in particular, "R" went to medical school, expensive anywhere. He mentioned the lecturer asked "R" one day why he wasn't writing anything down and found out he couldn't afford a pen. Now "R" saved for all the required medical books, clothed & fed himself but had nothing left for things like pens & paper. It didn't stop him from becoming a surgeon and rotating as an Army surgeon through the ADF.
"... To me, the van was what Kon-Tiki was to Heyerdahl, what the GMC van was to the A-Team, what Walden was to Thoreau. It was an adventure. ..."
I was talking to a mate while working on his property ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157621928042355... and the talk moved around to some friends we'd gone to school with. One in particular, "R" went to medical school, expensive anywhere. He mentioned the lecturer asked "R" one day why he wasn't writing anything down and found out he couldn't afford a pen. Now "R" saved for all the required medical books, clothed & fed himself but had nothing left for things like pens & paper. It didn't stop him from becoming a surgeon and rotating as an Army surgeon through the ADF.
"... To me, the van was what Kon-Tiki was to Heyerdahl, what the GMC van was to the A-Team, what Walden was to Thoreau. It was an adventure. ..."
"Kon-Tiki" ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki is a papyrus boat sailed from Morocco to Barbados by Heyerdahl as shown the film, "The Ra Expedition" ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThorHeyerdahl#TheBoatsRaandRaII