Loose ends

My brain these past few days has been a tangled mess of different countries and numbers, figures and names bouncing from point to point as I try to determine which flight to take, which hotel to book, when to send which documents, how much money to send to my bank account back home. Taiwan, Thailand, America, Japan; Hualien, Meinong, Green Island, Taipei, Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Phuket; Texas, Tennessee, Washington, Ohio, New York. Too many locations; too many numbers. They simply won't queue.

By today, at least, I have managed to bring a fair amount of them into line. Over the course of many hours, many websites, some help from Fonda, some help from my mom, an email from an adviser from my university, and a solitary trip to the bank, I am now assured of a place to stay in Hualien and Taipei; a flight to and from Thailand (internal flights are still sticky, though...); loan deferment sent; money transferred home; necessary items purchased.

And I even managed to make myself a complete meal tonight on a single burner!

One thing I will not miss about living in Taiwan is the immense hassle it is to deal with multiple financial systems, which collectively rely upon the archaic system of wiring money whenever it needs to be moved across continents and international borders. It's especially odd given how very open our world's borders seem to be to trade in general; I can only hope that businesses have better tools at their disposal than I do.

On the plus side, the bank's staff definitely recognizes me and invariably ushers me directly to the sole bank employee who speaks passable English.

This is rather a random post, and I must say that this is neither more nor less than a reflection of my current state of mind. Planning for multiple trips while planning multiple months' budgets from multiple bank accounts in multiple countries produces nothing if not a sense of scattered-ness. And with so many loose ends floating around, it's all I can do to grab at a few in passing and try to fasten them down before they strangle me.