Random Realizations

Friday, December 19, 2008

First Random Realization:
I normally get my hair cut about every 4-6 weeks; I keep it short, and short cuts need frequent attention. This means I'm going to be getting a lot of haircuts on the road, and the idea of getting my hair cut by someone I can't really communicate with is sort of alarming. It's not like I'm particularly particular about my hair - it's a wash-and-wear style that doesn't even require a brush, just a dollop of some kind of goopy styling product. Still, it's an odd thought. I've contemplated taking my camera with me the next time I get my hair cut here at home, so I can get some pictures to show the friendly Chinese stylist in Beijing. Then again it's probable that I'll often be able to find a semi-English speaker for this task. Also, I guess I just need to get used to the idea that my hair will probably look different once I've been out there for a while.

Second Random Realization:
I don't eat out very much. At all. Maybe once or twice a month I'll go out for lunch or supper with friends. I cook at home a lot - breakfast, lunch and dinner. I make up recipes. I improvise. I bake stuff. I watch the Food Network (Alton Brown rocks!). I subscribe to more than one food blog. I have an actual vanilla bean in my fridge right now. So what I'm saying is I really like to prepare food for myself, which is something that I think I'll rarely get a chance to do while traveling. Yes, there will be a lot of hostel kitchens in my future, but I imagine those will be more breakfast oatmeal / PB&J kinds of places. I doubt there will be a lot of long-simmering pots of yummy goodness in my future. At least not ones I cook for myself. I think I'll really miss that after a while.

Third Random Realization:
Once I sell my house, even after I spend a big bunch of money on traveling, and even after I settle back down in a new city, I should be completely free of debt. This is not to imply that I'm drowning in debt right now; I've got the mortgage and a mortgage-backed line of credit, but my net worth is definitely positive and I pay off my credit card bills every month. Still, the fact is that ever since I got that first student Visa back in about 1989 I have never been completely free of debt. Sometimes I think about my first Visa purchase - lunch with a friend - and I realize that I really haven't actually paid that back yet. That Visa debt got rolled into a line of credit and consolidated and mortgaged and blah blah blah... but it's still with me. It's cool to think that my new life after traveling will start with a clean slate. Of course the flip side of having no debt is that I'll also have almost no assets, other than my personal belongings and a sturdy 1998 Toyota, but you can't have everything.

2 Comments:

Mitch said...

the top two pictures showed up in the flickr feed on the right earlier while reading some other posts. Those two images made really no sense at all without the text. Now I get it!

Anonymous said...

Three very good points! I am in the process of slowly getting my hair cut shorter and shorter so that when we're on the road it will be super easy to take care of. I just wrote a post about 'Eating Around the World' - one of the things that J and I are very much looking forward to. And we too will be debt free once the house sale is complete - like you, we won't have much in the way of assets but it will be a good feeling to not be in a deep hole!!

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