What I Could Have Bought with the Money I Spent Absentee Voting
I just mailed my Emergency Federal Write-In Ballot yesterday. I had to send it express mail, which cost me 186 RMB. Adding to that the 40 RMB I spent to send my ballot application by priority mail (not knowing it was useless for it to get there early, because Indiana won’t send out any ballots until almost October anyway), the total cost for my voting was 226 RMB, or U.S. $27.30.
Here’s what I could have bought with that money. This list is individual, not cumulative (i.e., I could have bought this or that).
75 fried noodle and tea dinners at a restaurant near my old Shenzhen U. apartment
36 cafeteria lunches at ECNU
28 plates of jiaozi (dumplings) at another restaurant near my old apartment
113 cans of Coke or Pepsi
282 stamps for local mail
2,260 pieces of gum
1,130 bike tire inflates at the local pump
15 - 32 DVDs or CDs
1 very nice bicycle
1/2 month’s rent on my SZU apartment
About 10 boxes of copy paper (A4, 500 sheets)
About a month’s worth of groceries