A Karmic Lychee @ rah-kun.net

I am fairly exhausted. It’s not so much the amount of things that I’ve needed to do over the last couple of weeks – indeed, Plan was far in excess in terms of gross workload – but more the sheer diversity of issues I’ve had to keep track of all at once. I’ve already mentioned the bulk of it, really: managing my finances. In that corner, alone, I have a tangled web of bank accounts that will gradually congeal into a single account into which my foreign income will trickle, transform magically into USD, and then issue forth unto my loansharks. Then there’s my loans, which are still in a state of disarray – the bulk of the debt lies with a Rhode Island company that I, idiotically, went with at the suggestion of a former friend who turned out to be (ha ha!) quite crazy and unreliable. Surprise! Anyways, any time I try to log onto their site to get information on my loans, I have to literally re-sign-up. Every time. The first time I tried logging on, there was no record of me having ever had loans with them whatsoever while the last time I tried to log on, I got nothing but the internet equivalent of dead air – I hit the “log on” button and nothing happened. I even tried to manually set up a new account and the “accept” button did nothing. It’s a good time.

I firmly believe that if a company to whom I owe money is seriously demonstrating to me that they don’t really want it by virtue of circumventing any attempt I may make to give it to them, then I should be absolved of all responsibility of paying them. Seriously. Ironically, this crappy loan company currently has the best interest rates of all my loans, so there’s that.

Anyways, that’s a tangle of consolidations, refinancing, and equity. Very little of which I understand.

So far the talley is two – bank accounts (and funds transfers between them) and the loan situation.

Next is the afore mentioned China to the US bank wires. Between China’s banking regulations, the restrictions on trading RMB, and the prohibitive cost of wiring transfers (unless I have a minimum 100k deposit on an offshore account through HSBC, which I assumed were reserved for Bond villains and drug lords), that too is a mess. I don’t think I’ll solve that one until I get to China. So far as I know, the best I can do right now is to make sure that I’m doing my banking with someone who accepts foreign transfers in the States.

So that’s three. Bank accounts, loans, and foreign transfers.

On top of those things, I’ve also had to juggle my off-again/on-again work schedule as a substitute teacher with my Visa-getting activities in New York City (oh China and your annoying “in person only” restrictions) and Commencement ceremonies up in Vermont. That was about three weeks of trying to get as many hours as I could while still taking off for a couple days here and there to get my errands done (that’s right, graduation became an ‘errand’ in this mess of crap I’ve needed to get done). One of the trickier things to manage was the tendency for several of my substituting assignments to run several days, for continuity’s sake, making it necessary for me to know when and how my paperwork looked for my Visa applications, how to time visits as to not have to make more than minimum 2 trips to New York, etc. Oh, and then there was coordinating rides to get on the MTA during off-peak hours. Oh, and not to mention keeping close tabs on my budget in order to keep my costs down and income up – my budget for the coming 7 month sojourn is so tight that my 25 dollar round trips to the City and back for my visa (another 130 dollars) can mean two meals a day versus three meals a day while I’m abroad. I mean, it’s really tight.

Doesn’t seem like much, but keeping track of that along with bank account crap, loan crap, and reconciling banks on either side of the Pacific, it got to be a little overwhelming.

And then there’s my website, which I’ve been hacking together like a kid with a magazine and some glue, save the glue, in this instance, is my limited understanding of PHP and the magazines are bits and pieces of established Wordpress themes I’ve been stitching together. Oh, that’s right, I’m going to start blogging over on my site, www.rah-kun.net, as soon as I’ve updated the whole thing. I’m hoping for a combined sketchblog/travelogue for while I’m abroad. One of the things I’m worried about, actually, is keeping my LJ reader-base tuned into my new not-LJ blog. I’ve got a complicated idea involving twitter which might be neat. Anyways.

So. Fiddling with bank accounts, student loans, foreign wire transfers, the triparte pain in the ass of budgeting/errand running/working, simultaneously learning and scripting PHP… that’s like 5 things I’ve been juggling simultaneously for the last two months, or 7 things, depending on how you’re counting. Not to mention, the process of selling my computer, tiding up all my crap so that my stuff isn’t lying around the house once I’m gone, and making sure I don’t store away stuff that I’ll need to pack in less than a week, now.

In this mess of things, I have not had the time to really work on my artwork. Wait, that’s a lie. I have not had the wherewithall to do any artwork. Plenty of time, but the acumen just wasn’t there.

Ah, right, but there was a point to all this semi-pointless bitching, to underscore one of my more severe oversights:

Vaccinations.

I remembered, literally, like, this afternoon. I’m not even sure what I have, but I’m pretty sure I need… Hepatitis A, Japanese Encephalitis, Meningitis, um, Rabies, and Malaria.

Oops.

Oh, and there’s this snafu with the tux place about my payment – sent them a check that never got cashed, they cried foul to Si. I kept meaning to deal with it… eeyah. Either way, I keep having images of me standing next to the altar in my jeans and a black t-shirt between the other groomsmen in their wedding finery. Sorry Si.

[Imported from Livejournal]