Tuesday, April 16, 2019

...and now my watch begins

My final expense, tonight, was an iHerb order for psyllium-husk tablets—easily enough to last me a month. Starting midnight tonight, and going on to May 16 (my next payday), I'll be on a no-expenditures regime: not a single won to be spent. Pas un seul sou. I've got one more batch of food to cook up (breakfast sausage, to be eaten with oatmeal and scrambled eggses), and then my food calendar kicks in. The calendar isn't accurate, though: I'd forgotten to account for my upcoming three-day trial of terror, i.e., my 60-kilometer walk that will start this coming Friday and end sometime Saturday evening. I'll be staying two nights at the River House Motel, and since I won't be lugging along any of my home-cooked food, I'll have no choice but to shell out for both the motel and whatever food and drinks I consume while away from Seoul. I won't be eating on Thursday, and I probably won't eat anything on Friday, either, so I ought to have a thoroughly empty stomach by the time I start the walk around 9 p.m. Friday night. Upshot: no food Thursday or Friday, nothing home-cooked on Saturday and Sunday, which already wrecks four days of my thirty-day meal plan. Not to worry, though; I'll improvise, adapt, and overcome. I'm looking forward to seeing whether I really can get through the next thirty days spending almost nothing. I'm wiring $3200 to my US account tomorrow, which will leave me with a few hundred bucks in my Korean account—just enough in case of emergencies. But for the moment, it's simply a matter of buckling down and powering through this austerity: night gathers, and now my watch begins.



1 comment:

John Mac said...

Yikes, didn't realize until now just how austere it's gonna be. And a long hike on an empty stomach? At least you are taking a big set of cajones with you!

Will look forward to following along on this adventure...