Foiled Again

I thought the Octopus card here in HK would be the answer to my dreams.
You see, I abhor change. It's heavy. it slips through the holes in my pockets. And it jangles all around when I climb the stairs (gotta exercise somehow...).
I probably have about 200 USD worth of change sitting in plastic ziplock bags in storage from years of dumping change out of my pockets every day.

The first day I got here in HK, my aunt brought me out to get an Octopus card. These things are great! The SF Bay area is only just begining to have something like this. BART JUST started their EZ rider program which is essentially an smartchip tied to your credit card. Unfortunately, it only works with BART. But in the months i used it, it saved me a few trips to the High Value purchase counter and always having to remember to go to the ATM beforehand because they didn't take credit cards.

But the Octo card is multipurpose and it's absolutely awesome at purchasing small items which are more likely to charge fractional dollars.

So my master scheme to completely eliminate change from my life (without just dumping it out, hey, I'm just a poor guy living in an expensive city after all...) was to re-charge my Octo card with it! What a great way to aggregate all my change! One problem: The add-value machines only take $50 and $100 bills. Bah. My master scheme has been foiled again. Now I have to buy some ziplock bags...