30 Days to a Better Man, Day 25: start a debt-reduction plan

Whoo-ee. Yesterday's playtime went very well indeed. I got my tax stuff done, though I had to wait around and sip a coffee frappé while the T.A. finished his lunch. He was quite thorough and efficient, having done tax forms for several other professors before me. It took him just 30 minutes to fill in and print my forms. I was out of there by half past one.

I hopped Line 7 to Line 9, and thence to Yeouido Island. I strolled down Uisadang Boulevard and through the long, echoing pedestrian tunnels under Yeouido Park. A young couple was learning to skateboard down there, their skin jaundiced from the glow of beat-up incandescent lights. Despite signs warning him not to, a scooter driver zipped by as I walked along, filling the air with exhaust fumes. Upon emerging back into the diffused daylight, I found myself across an intersection from the National Assembly. Standing near the guardhouse at the gates were four cold, bored-looking policemen in black-and-yellow uniforms. The grounds seemed dead and shriveled under the muted sky, the grass brown and the fountains bone-dry. The National Assembly building itself, however, was magnificent. Apparently it's the largest building of its kind in all of Asia. I made a mental note to book a tour there with Miss H at some point.

Then the real fun began. Hungered by my walk, I hurried back down the boulevard to a tiny little mandu shop I'd noticed earlier. I sat down at a narrow red table (with recessed steel trays for kimchi and pickled yellow radish) and ordered the ₩3,500 assortment. It was delicious, though the last two dumplings were so spicy that I had to gulp down some water. I retreated back into the subway and took the geumhaeng (express) train to the last stop, Sinnonhyeon (New Nonhyeon), just a block or three north of Gangnam Station. I entered the enormous brown Kyobo Building, delved into its basement bookstore, and purchased a copy of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka for ₩6,900. With the book between my knuckles I jogged across the road to the Urban Hive, which Miss H and I have nicknamed "the Swiss Cheese Building," and Take Urban, the coffee shop on its first floor. I sat down with a cup of Darjeeling and read Kafka's whole story, soup to nuts. It was fascinating, moving, grotesque, poignant, unexpected. I don't know why I didn't read it sooner.

I had intended to walk a few blocks north to the old Nonhyeon Station on Line 7 and catch a train for Gwangnaru and a little izakaya (Japanese-style pub) I knew near my apartment, but I got a call from Brant — you know, the fellow I brew beer with. A buddy of his, Marcus (born in Texas but attending college in Cairo, Egypt), was in town and the two were bumming around together. I'd challenged them to a game of billiards the previous evening. Brant told me to meet him and Marcus at Gangnam Station at eight o'clock. To while away the intervening hours I went to an old nemesis of mine, WaBar, a "western-style ice bar" and sipped their infamous saeng maekju (draft beer) for ₩4,000 a glass. To kill time I read Kafka's story "In the Penal Colony," which was even more disturbing and emotional than The Metamorphosis.

At 7:45 I wobbled down to Gangnam Station. Brant and Marcus showed up on time. We sipped Jack and Cokes for ₩6,000 apiece at a bar called Whiskey Weasel, jockeying for position amid a group of young foreign men and Korean girls having a language exchange. The three of us shot pool and eyed the sultry goings-on. Following my resounding victory, we adjourned to Woodstock, a nearby LP bar. We requested Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Who, Warren Zevon, Wolfmother, Led Zeppelin, George Thorogood, and many more. Bourbon, Scotch and at least four pitchers of beer were consumed. We went back to Whiskey Weasel and shot more pool, our aim now a great deal unsteadier. I vaguely remember getting into a cab at 2:30 in the morning and collapsing on my couch at three. Undoing the ramifications of this bender has been today's sole concern. 

Well, not my sole concern, truthfully. Today is Day 25.

I already have a debt-reduction plan. I fork over $114 every month to pay off my college loans, the total amount of which is now (thanks to years of hard work in South Korea) four figures and dropping fast. My first year at Sejong University was so remunerative that, a week ago, I paid off a whopping $1400 of my debt in one fell swoop just to expedite the process. For the sake of this challenge, I calculated that if I pay $500 a month into my loans, starting in February, I can be totally debt-free by this time next year.

...at least until I marry Miss H and take on all of her debt.

Whoopee. Welcome to married life, Postie.

Stump up for Day 26...