the road goes ever on and on

My relationship with YB has by no means come to an end. In fact, I'm expected to continue fulfilling my content-creation duties even while I'm in Seoul. This isn't necessarily a bad thing: it is money in the bank, after all, and it stanches the hemorrhage of money out of my account while I tool around Seoul. The fact that I've been going out to eat as much as I have is somewhat problematic; at the rate I'm going, food alone will cost me several hundred dollars by the end of my month here. Buying various household supplies and personal gear is also costing me; I feel as if, by the end of my 31 days, I'll finally be ready to settle down.

In any case, I'm working on stemming the outflow of money by (1) continuing to work for YB—work that goes ever on and on—and (2) finding some (sshhh! illegal!) tutoring work while I'm here. A certain Mr. Choi (pronounce it "cheh") is supposed to call me this afternoon, in fact, to talk about some private tutoring. I'm not sure he realizes that I'm here only until May 19; he may balk at taking me on for only a few weeks. Students crave stability, and switching out their teachers too often is never pleasant. (One of my YB students, Parvati, is a lot like that. She was upset when she found out I'd be gone for six weeks—not because she was going to miss me terribly, but because my absence represented a disruption for her. "Why can't I keep the same teacher for a long time?" she moaned upon hearing of my trip to Korea.)

Maintaining a certain bank balance is like finding yourself in hell, and having the Devil order you to piss constantly into a bucket with a hole in it, the task being to keep the piss always at a certain level. So you piss desperately, earnestly... but at some point you know your bladder's going to run out of piss. And what happens then? A similar anxiety, financial and not physiological in nature, haunts us inhabitants of this terrestrial realm.


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