Sometimes it suffices ...
and sometimes it really screws you over.
This time it did the latter.
I wasn't able to make my flight to Vietnam in time and thus missed out on an entire 2 week vacation in the warm tropics of South East Asia.
All the while I'm feeling my lips and fingers go numb from the cold snap that is hitting Korea.
Usually, when I face a setback of this proportion (or less at times) my first reaction tends to be to
- stress
- Then panic sets in as I pull out all stops and become desperate to make it work.
- Finally I become despondent and fill my cup of self-pity.
However, thanks to a great motivational piece from a friend I snapped out of the rising self-pity mode and decided to make due with what I have.
In his words:
"My unsolicited advice would be to call it a loss and a lesson learned and find ways to make a useful and productive vacation in Korea. Don't spend money you don't have and worse still borrow money that you should be saving for after you are done in Korea. Perhaps this is a good chance to work on something else. Sometimes things happen "for a reason". Exercise, take care of yourself, work on something creative, sleep early, avoid drama and take advantage of this incident to do some quiet contemplation without feeling sorry for yourself. Travel is great, but the things we like about it on an emotional or spiritual level can be found within and in the little things we do everyday."
Could a person really receive better advice than this? Well said friend and thanks!
So now I need to make a to-do list of things to accomplish this week
- Clean house
- Finish TEFL paper once and for all
- Budget
- Do taxes
- mail out gifts and postcards
- Go to the gym!
- Sell stuff
- Start planning for March
- Find a light-weight, good quality laptop for travel
Is there anything else you would add to the list?
Buy a roll of ducktape and tape your phone to you head. Prior to the taping. I would suggest setting three alarms (and vibrate) & paying an ajumma to call you constantly from a given time until you pick up and give the secret word "Kimchi-seki-ya",even then she should expect you to call up ten minutes later and issue the closing password "mianni-seki-ya".. this point you are awake and don't miss your flight out of this stinky shithole.
ReplyDeleteSadly. Truth be told I've done most of all of these things minus taping the phone to my head and actually talking Korean. But that wasn't the main reason I missed, I just wasn't packed yet. Waited to the last minute. Anybody that knows me well knows that I tend to really HATE packing. In fact..in my last two trips I don't even think I packed my own bags. >_<
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