Culture Shock

I heard there is a thing called an initial culture shock when one transitions to a new country. I didn't experience it. Serious. More hypothesis on why in another post.

But now, I think I am experiencing the Culture Shock. My life is a fucking hardcopy. I'm losing my electronic-ism. eWL is going down the drain. I'm going psycho:
1) 3 out of 4 courses are exclusively hardcopy. My tablet is fucking useless. I don't have the proper tools (i.e. my book scanner) to digitize the material. And even if I did, 2 out of 4 courses have a bad habit of handing out lecture materials in hardcopy only during the lecture itself. The only way to counter this would be a portable scanner. Book scanner cost US$200, portable scanner cost US$140. I'm here for another 10 weeks. You do the maths.
2) My money is in fucking hardcopy. And the incompetent morons at Bank of Americum (note the sexual derogatory pun) are taking forever to mail me my Visa Check/Debit Card.
3) Because of pt 3 all my shopping needs are in hardcopy. Nothing can be bought online cause not many vendors accept a non-US based debit/credit card.

LESSON NO. 1 for Singaporeans coming here

Your Debit/Credit Card be it Mastercard or Visa is useless. ABSOLUTELY USELESS. The only shit you can do with it is to withdraw hardcopy cash from the ATM machine. Some help that is...

Screw the local advertisements of the universal acceptance of Mastercard or Visa. I repeat again, Mastercard and Visa are not universally accepted. I can testify in court about this man!!!

So now, to prevent myself from going psycho... oh wait I already have I have:
1) Placed money into my Bruin Card (aka UCLA matric card). Apparently the Bruin Card can act like a PIN-less ATM card, just swipe it and use it to pay for anything on campus. At first I wondered why would any idiot make such a redundant design when we can just use a Debit card. Now I know why. This in theory would make all purchases on campus electronic, and allow me to regain much of my sanity. Trouble is, it would not work for purchases outside campus.
2) Which brings me to pt. 2. I have decided to ship all the shit from Singapore to here using a 5kg Saver Box. As I mentioned, I don't know how to buy clothes, and I don't have time. Shipping cost SGD100... yes expensive. 6 pieces of underwear cost USD60. I'm shipping more than 6 pieces of underwear here. Go figure...

Did I mention I just lost my job at the School of Public Health (an Environmental Chemistry lab)? Apparently, they need longer term. Well at least I knew that was coming. The prof did say my qualifications are fine, but just need longer term. At least I got some consolation prize in terms of a nice word. OK, tonight we going to send out 10 emails for more jobs. WL need $$$.

I'm having a really bad today. It's PMS extreme. You DID figure that out by now right???