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Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

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Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#281

Post by chantelles »

300bps wrote: post #209
RobertRoberts wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived with my wife in a van for months. We dumpster dived behind bakeries, pizza places and ate very simple food. Even now 24+ years later we live a very simple life with few things. (I left home at 17, and lived on the streets for a time as well, so a van was luxury to me) My hope is that if nothing else, the current situation opens people's eyes to past indulgences with no thought toward the future. I wish I had…

My hunch is dumpster diving works well when food is plentiful and people are throwing perfectly edible items away willy-nilly. Get a depression-style food shortage and suddenly what you find in the dumpster won’t be as appetizing as the donuts that Dunkin just didn’t sell that day.

That's true. I mean, I mean the best dumpster diving is in rich neighbourhoods. Food banks also dry up in hard times. I lived in Nelson BC for a time when most people there were on welfare (it was at about 80%) and the food bank only had apples from the harvest and those decorative gourds so I got them and tried to cook them ( I was house sitting a Doukabor cabin for a Buddhist couple ) and even ate a few bowls of what was THE MOST BITTER thing I ever had even with a zillion sugar packets. But lets be real, what happens when the dumpsters dry out is folks steal. That's why it's safer to have a social net, for everyone.

Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#282

Post by chantelles »

kinkora wrote: post #266
chantelles wrote: post #106

I left home at 15 and some adults who worked together let me move in with them and be their maid. I paid $150 a month in rent and got $10 a month to live on. I worked out how to live off Milo (a Jamaican malt supplement), Chips Ahoy cookies (1/2 a cookie a day for a treat) and dumpster dived vegetables (mostly cabbages and carrots). I lived like this for years, when I got my first real jobs I made sure to save at lea…

Interesting story! Side note - i am Australian, have traveled the world and I find it funny in many countries (particularly Asia), everyone thinks Milo is from their own country. They are suprised when I tell them it's Australian and hilarity ensues when they looked it up online. Oh and don't feel bad cause Aussies have loads of brands too that we thought were local but are actually from overseas. For the longest tim…

That's wild! I learned about it from a friend from Jamaica and I was able to source it so cheaply. How weird that a rural Canadian girl from a town with a Jamaican mayor (who was the only West Indian family in town ) ended up living off Australian meal supplement.

Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#283

Post by chantelles »

emerongi wrote: post #137
chantelles wrote: post #106

I left home at 15 and some adults who worked together let me move in with them and be their maid. I paid $150 a month in rent and got $10 a month to live on. I worked out how to live off Milo (a Jamaican malt supplement), Chips Ahoy cookies (1/2 a cookie a day for a treat) and dumpster dived vegetables (mostly cabbages and carrots). I lived like this for years, when I got my first real jobs I made sure to save at lea…

My personal requirements are very low as well (maybe not as low as yours), but I think if I had a family with kids, my minimum requirements would increase substantially. All the material stuff starts to make more sense once you have a family to take care of.

Totally. It's certainly why I never had kids, I can't stand all the responsibility of that.

Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#284

Post by chantelles »

dirtnugget wrote: post #110
chantelles wrote: post #106

I left home at 15 and some adults who worked together let me move in with them and be their maid. I paid $150 a month in rent and got $10 a month to live on. I worked out how to live off Milo (a Jamaican malt supplement), Chips Ahoy cookies (1/2 a cookie a day for a treat) and dumpster dived vegetables (mostly cabbages and carrots). I lived like this for years, when I got my first real jobs I made sure to save at lea…

You must be the HN commenter with the wildest story around, respect.

I've spent multiple years in therapy trying to integrate just that - that this is wild. My normal prevents me having healthy relationships. Events like a plague are more dangerous to my ptsd work than my health (though I have asthma) because this stress feels like home to me. There is a relief of, like the shoe has dropped, because I've lived this. I've been waiting to say SEE I TOLD YOU ALL THIS IS NORMAL! My book is an apocalypse memoir not to be facetious but - everything is true. Every event and thought is me in the late 80s, how I perceived every non-grandparent age adult as a horrible threatening monster who could without warning rip you to shreds and then never explain why. And I was lucky. I was born white and in Canada and I met some really kind people who (because I look non threatening ) saved me - not with money or food - but by just being nice, opening up to me. Saying nice things and laughing at my painful jokes and forgiving me for being really fucking bizarre. That's really why I wrote it - so folks can empathize with marginalities and the struggles between class/race/gender/sexuality and education and identity and then see you don't need to donate money or time to make a revolution. Just like be there, emotionally. Listen and expect nothing. And, that easy, you healed part of my identity.

Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#285

Post by chantelles »

joenot443 wrote: post #114
chantelles wrote: post #106

I left home at 15 and some adults who worked together let me move in with them and be their maid. I paid $150 a month in rent and got $10 a month to live on. I worked out how to live off Milo (a Jamaican malt supplement), Chips Ahoy cookies (1/2 a cookie a day for a treat) and dumpster dived vegetables (mostly cabbages and carrots). I lived like this for years, when I got my first real jobs I made sure to save at lea…

Wow, what a story! If you don't mind me asking, what was your path like going from dumpster-diving vegetables to retirement at 35?

Yes well many wanted me to write a tips to retirement book and not an apocalypse memoir. I can't write some of it, or am not ready to. But, no one should do it. It's just total privation and lack of self care, or would be to someone coming from a healthy home. I started in stripping for seed money to start buying houses, but it's such boring work and dangerous too (I ended up being an activist and helping nurses immunize strippers from Hep B ) You obviously cannot drink or use drugs - I never tasted alcohol until I was 35 (retired - still don't like it). When I went out I never took money. Ever. I lived on powdered milk and horse cereals while I was making very good money. I worked constantly (various business from pools to landscaping, tenants, house flipping, production company, and went to university part time and had no hobbies except running and I started that by just running in what I had. I only buy cars with all cash and they are always old. I mean, feel free to ask questions. TL;DR: Be a hustler, but not like one from the movies. One that is really boring, hated by everyone for seemingly being aloof and judgey, eccentric and annoying.

Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#286

Post by chantelles »

hoka-one-one wrote: post #109
chantelles wrote: post #106

I left home at 15 and some adults who worked together let me move in with them and be their maid. I paid $150 a month in rent and got $10 a month to live on. I worked out how to live off Milo (a Jamaican malt supplement), Chips Ahoy cookies (1/2 a cookie a day for a treat) and dumpster dived vegetables (mostly cabbages and carrots). I lived like this for years, when I got my first real jobs I made sure to save at lea…

I just got laid off and I'n trying to live cheap until I find work.

Do you have any money to apply for? I'm in Canada and my friends who've applied have all gotten it. This is the last time anyone should have to live cheap, it's the time when all the taxes you've paid do the job of taking care of you.

Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#287

Post by [deleted] »

gridlockd wrote: post #272
ForHackernews wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rich people are going to get their eggs either way. This bootlicking fatalism is the real problem, imho.

Clearly, the biggest sorrow of the socialist is not that the people are starving, but that the rich aren't starving alongside them .

[deleted]

Re: Eat for $1.50 per Day – Layoffs, Coronavirus Quarantine, Food Shortages

#288

Post by nuclearghost »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #273
_bxg1 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California is and always has been an outlier when it comes to using government resources to help and protect people.

California is an outlier in most ways viz-a-viz the US. Population is ~40M, which is more than Canada (~38M) or Australia (~28M). If California was an independent country it would be something like the 9th largest economy in the world. It's a massively productive farming region on top of having the high-end of US technology, and has other national or international-tier industries like Hollywood. If I want a barometer…

Ohio had to close all their indoor trampoline parks. It's getting real out there folks
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