March 12, 2007
It’s 2:45 pm, and it’s gorgeous outside. Sunny, blue skies, a light breeze, a pleasantly dry heat, fresh(ish) air, and I can hardly keep my mind on my work. My work that I abandoned for more than a week, mind you, and what kind of sorry excuse for a workaholic am I, that I can’t keep my mind from wandering to other things? I need ice cream to squelch the little kid in me.
There are multitudes of things I’d rather be thinking about, all long term goals, and none of which I can afford if I don’t corral myself, git to work and earn my wages!
House? Condo? There’s every reason to continue waiting to purchase any kind of real estate. I want to have between 50-100k for a down payment and be ready for the commitment of a home.
Marriage: Even though there are still a thousand considerations [who’s going to take care of my parents? Or rather, how much will I be able to continue helping them when I’m married? Can I be sure that they’ll be in a good place before I leave?] I can’t help wanting to move on with my personal life. Then again, I still feel really unprepared for making that leap into marriage.
Travel: This is one of those times in which finding a sugar daddy would be SO convenient: going wherever, whenever, without having to worry about having money saved up? Great! But since BoyDucky’s not ridiculously wealthy and he’s the one I pick, .
School: Same old same old. I’m antsy at the job and feel like I’m not getting paid enough, but I still can’t afford to quit and go back to school yet. And the idea of going to school while working fulltime (50-60 hours a week)? Ugh. I’ll probably have to do it, I just haven’t reconciled myself to it just yet.
We were driving behind one of these in Los Gatos, and I’m convinced that someone driving a car THAT outrageous can totally afford it. As a PF blogger, I know that I should be more skeptical before assuming that the person behind that wheel is wealthy, but come on! A Lotus? I can’t imagine a Lotus salesperson wasting their time on an unqualified buyer.
That made me wonder, what is the profile of your average Lotus owner? Does a six figure income get you into the club? Edmunds lists the Lotus starting around 46 grand so it’s not as ultra-luxurious in the world of cars as I would have guessed. It’s still a pretty flashy car, though.
but I keep waking up in a panic wondering, what happened to my mosquito net?!?
And then I slowly realize that I haven’t been eaten alive yet, because I’m back in America. *whew* Small favors, I tell ya.
I’ve already listed a few of the expenses of this trip, but I wanted to lay out the total for an overall look:
$2787 – airfare for two
$ 170 – visas for two
$ 200 – initial cash exchanged
$1000 – for PaDucky’s expenses
——-
$4157 total
I actually spent, of the initial 200, approximately $100 on cash gifts to my cousins, another $40 on cash gifts to a temple that my family has been donating to, and about $25 on clothes and shoes for myself. [Check out the shoes! They were about $6/pair. I decided I needed a pair that looked like heels for work, though it doesn’t, and the other pair was pure greed because they were so cute.]
I actually had about 750,000 Vietnamese dollars left when we were at the airport, so I left that with my dad for expenses and for my favorite cousin.
We probably spent about $75 dollars at both the Ho Chi Minh airport and the Hong Kong airport on almost a dozen gifts and souvenirs. Not too shabby, actually, considering the most expensive things were a book for him and a little mother-of-pearl handbag for me at $13 each.
Considering how much I thought it’d cost (~5k/person), less than 5k for 2.5 people isn’t half bad. Granted, I didn’t use my pocket money for lodgings as we stayed at Grandma’s, and food and transportation came out of the money I gave PaDucky, but I think the 1k that I gave him covers it.
There is one thing I wish I’d spent some money on before the trip, though. An extra battery for BoyDucky’s camera! Or a camera of my own (*drool, Panasonic DMC-FX07S*). An extra battery for him would be more affordable, though. We had his camera and my cousin’s little Fuji that used AA batteries. As usual, low-batt’ry problems kicked in by the fourth day and we had to be conservative about the photos we took. My cousin’s camera was just an evil piece of crap that would turn on, and then turn off when I tried to snap a photo. And it drained AAs like they were juice! No more than 5 pictures into a new set of batteries, it would start the shut-off-shenanigans again. My aunt will be disappointed, she wanted me to take at least 200 photos before I returned. I managed about 40, and another 20 on borrowed batteries, but it was incredibly frustrating. That camera’s a jerk!
Here’s the question: once I pay off the credit card with the airfare expenses, we’ll see how much the e-fund has been knocked back down. Should I wait until the end of the year to start refilling it again? Or should I reprioritize the house/wedding funding goal to start after this one? The mini-e is almost full, but the house/wedding fund is up next in line.
My feeling is that even though the gaping hole in the efund really bothers me, I should just let it be until the end of the year, and continue with the original plans for the year. If I get any windfalls in the last quarter or if I’ve accomplished any of the other goals and have extra money left over, it can start refilling the efund.
March 9, 2007
After that generally heart-stopping preface, the rest of the trip was almost anticlimactic. I arrived in Saigon with nothing but my carryon full of travel documents, the requisite book, and some cash. BoyDucky was immediately introduced to a city mall, and we quickly bought a couple country-style shirt/pant combinations for me to wear until my luggage was located and sent over. Apparently, my cousins wear jeans now. That was a little horrifying. Even if I’d had any with me, I still wouldn’t wear jeans in that weather; it was easily 90+ degrees everyday, breeze optional, and a helping of humidity was definitely included! My cousin had just bought new sandals that she lent me for the week so we could get on our way (and more importantly, onward to LUNCH.)
I think I learned more about the geography of the country in this one short trip than in all the nine weeks I’ve spent there over the years, combined. There’s something about translating and answering a new visitor’s questions that reveals so much you’ve taken for granted. And it was definitely a bit cleaner than I remembered, though the traffic was still as hazardous as ever. The one thing I missed that was prevalent in years past were the “sit los” (bike cabbies). I didn’t spot a single one all wee; the motorbikes and bicyclists have officially taken over.
Speaking of roads, I was pleasantly surprised by some of the roadwork: there was actual asphalt laid outside of the city. Not much, but some!
We spent all of Saturday traveling between the home village and Saigon (2-3 hours each way) to pick up my wayward luggage, and I spent all of Sunday being sick. *Ugh* There’s nothing like running a 101 fever in 95 degree weather.
Most importantly, it took Grandma a couple of days to recognize me, which was really sad, but she eventually realized that I wasn’t a stranger and to understand who BoyDucky was. She even said my name a couple of times! She hasn’t been able to do anything for herself for some time now, and that as much as anything was overwhelmingly heartbreaking. But I think she knew we came back to see her. She may not remember, but it’s ok. It was just important to see her, and give her the chance to meet BoyDucky. I guess I’ve got to give up the dream that she might live to see my wedding now, but I did get to reconnect with my multitudes of cousins who are also all grown up now. It’s comforting to know that there are many many people who remember Grandma and what she was like.
March 8, 2007
I’m back! I’m still on hiatus from work, officially, but I’m back in the Bay Area enjoying a couple days recuperation time thanks to my booking fiasco. The trip was amazing. Amazing in itself, but also that it happened at all, considering the transportation gauntlet I ran just to get into my seat on the 767 headed for Hong Kong!
I planned to leave work midday on Tuesday, 3pm at the latest, in order to give myself time to be home an hour before I left for my first flight. The train ride should have taken from 320-420, point to point. Two stops before mine, the train slowed and the conductor announced an open door policy for the duration of the mysterious pause. I desperately turned to the man next to me to find out what the heck was going on and was told that there was “something wrong with the tracks” and that track inspectors would have to check them for safety.
I called my mom and asked her to come get me from this station, who knew how long the delay would last? After I repeated the directions for the third time and hung up, the conductor announced that the doors were closing: the train was going through! I dashed for the train and called my mom back to get me from the home station.
At home, my second (and last choice) suitcase which had already been repaired once, had come loose at another seam. MaDucky was sewing THAT up as I dashed through the house checking my cash and my carry-on situation, and calling my best friend’s cell phone. She’d left me a message saying she’d come to the airport with us, but I couldn’t get a hold of her.
Six o’clock, time to leave for the airport, came and went. Finally I called her house to discover she’d never heard her cell phone. Dangit, Verizon!! We raced to the airport, now late but not too late to check in for a domestic flight, to find that my flight had been cancelled and I’d been rebooked on the 8pm flight with an hour layover, getting me to SFO at 1140 pm. Far too late to collect my luggage from baggage claim and make it to check luggage and MYSELF in for the international flight at midnight.
Oh, and I had to pick up our tickets at the counter at SFO when I got in, because Cathay Pacific wouldn’t give me an E-ticket. That is, after I picked up my luggage from the domestic flight. So not only did I not have time to wait for United to unload my luggage before I could make the next flight, I didn’t even have my tickets in hand for that next flight.
The nice man at the United counter told me to drive to the airport 50 miles away, catch the 9pm from there, and get into SFO at 10pm with enough time to go from domestic to international.
Of course it rained all the way to LAX, but I made it there in time to get my new boarding pass and check my luggage. Unfortunately, this counter person refused to check my luggage through to the Cathay Pacific flight because the two trips were booked separately, not as part of one trip. And then my 9pm flight was postponed to 930 pm. And postponed again to 10 pm. At 935 pm, the counter lady sent me pelting down the hall a half mile to the other gate where the 940pm LAX-SFO flight was about to board. There was no hope for my luggage, they couldn’t pull it from the one flight or load it on this flight in time.
It was 20 minutes after we’d pulled away from the gate before we actually took off. I learned, reading a book about air travel on the way back, that “on time” departure only means departure from the gates, not actually taking off. *Lovely.* In my head, the rational part was thinking I’d still get in before 11pm and might be able to retrieve my luggage in time. The irrational but more often correct part was screaming incoherently for a while, and then said, yeah, that luggage is toast with a side of kippers. And NOT making onto the flight with you.
When we landed a stomach-clenching hour and fifteen later, I had two voicemails and a text message from BoyDucky saying that the boarding time was not at 1115, it was at 1045 and they would stop boarding at 1115 so I’d better move along as he held both our tickets and would wait as long as he could in line, but he didn’t know how much longer they would allow him to wait.
I had 7 minutes to get off the plane, orient myself and RUN to the international terminal. And I had no clue which terminal I was coming into or how to find the international terminal. 5 minutes later, I was running down the deserted street, running out of sidewalk, and nary a clue where to head next. 50 yards, an echoing chamber with escalators and a few cryptic signs later, I gasped into BoyDucky’s sight. Good job he spotted me too, because I was two seconds from staggering down the wrong hall. Thank the Lord for cell phones!
My 6th counter person just clucked and shook his head dolefully when I explained that though I had made it, my luggage was actually on a flight arriving in 20 minutes and could he do something about getting it rerouted when it came in? I had to go fill out paperwork in Saigon upon arrival, and they would make arrangements at that time. *sigh* At that moment, I realized that, imprudent traveler I was, I’d not packed a change of clothes, toothbrush or anything in case of luggage emergency. But, honestly, all I truly cared about was getting there, and if we hurried, we could get through security and board.
So, we did.
February 25, 2007
BoyDucky and I are totally nerds. We were trying to figure out if someone who’s upset with him would also be upset with me, or if she’s equally as upset with me as with him. But separately, because I’m sort of an integral part of the aggravation.
We thought that it’d be the transitive property at work but then we decided that it’s actually the distributive property:
A is upset at (B and C) = AB + AC.
