Yeah yeah, I’m stingy, I’m a miser, and very ungenerous when it comes to certain things.

Most of my friends know that I bitch a lot about the smallest things. Hmm. I’ve been here in Vancouver for 2 weeks now, and I have absolutely nothing to complain about. Nothing…other than my whines on the cost of textbooks. So. I decided to cut cost on textbooks, because I am a sore loser in the publisher-reader game. I don’t know why I feel so unwilling to spend so much money on textbooks here, to the extent of becoming a laughing stock among my housemates for making it to the top of their cheapskate friends’ list. Hmm.

Back in Fudan, I never photocopied a book, although that can be done so easily and inexpensively. All you have to do is pass the book to the staff at the shop and collect your book and photocopied version a couple of hours later or latest the next day, bounded with a cover page even, and pay almost peanuts. However, textbooks over there are already rather affordable (come on, S$4 for a textbook?), heavily discounted on several occasions (student perks), or the text is already a photocopied book available for collection in the teachers’ office.

Today, I stood in front of the photocopy machine for nearly an hour to photocopy 2 books — a novel and a play. They don’t have such a photocopying service here to copy a book, afterall there are copyright issues, and if I really wanna do so I have to pay 20 cents for every page, which will cost me way more than the cost of the book itself. I believe there will be more photocopying done by me over the next few days. Haha. The censored books below cost $10.50 (used book) and $13.95 each, exclusive of tax, but they were photocopied for approximately $2 each. I will be returning these books to the bookstore for my refund soon. Yippeeee!

Sorry venerable author and playwright, for depriving you, or your family if you aren’t around, for your fees, which I’m sure the publishers take a big portion of anyway.

Tomorrow, after asking my friend whether she wants to join me in hanging out at the photocopy machine to copy our TC text together (500+ pages, so I’m crossing my fingers that she’s as cheapo as me), I’ll be able to save about $60 on the TC text! There are some books I won’t be copying so I’ll be absorbing the cost, but the total savings for books I will photocopy is $100! Yay!