5 Days Left...

Only five days to go before I catch the boat to France and approximatly 17 hours later RV will be fresh off the boat (FOB). These last few days I have been training by cycling up to 40km per day and trying to figure out what I need to bring. The training was easy I just commuted to and from the train station by bike, but figuring out what would be useful and what would not and rounding up these items was no easy task. A side effect of these two activities was that I learned a few new facts about my routine and my country.

Lets start with my routine, every day I get up at seven AM I have a shower followed by breakfast then I cycle to the train station. When I get to the office I work nine hours spending half my time on my feet and half at my desk. At the end of the working day I return home and after I have finished all the necessary miscellaneous tasks it is late in the evening and I am too trashed to do much else except talk to my girl on skype and watch crap tv. Pretty much everything I needed to do to accomplish this trip or anything else for that matter had to be done on a Saturday. Only one day a week to do what I want, I started to feel Ive been conned. I think i deserve more than one day a week. What this showed me was that I would never be able to accomplish all those little projects I dreamed about if I continued to live like this.

I also learned that there is nothing you can get here that you cant get cheaper on the internet. Every single item can be bought for less online and I dont have to waste my time running around a poorly laid out city. This country is way too expensive, I have noticed this more and more as I prepared to leave my job and I started to shop around for the bits and pieces I would need. I dont plan on working in any conventional sense for the next year so things like this have become more important and apparent to me.

It has always been obvious that the nine to five routine is a bit of a waste as I could be spending my time doing what I want for a greater proportion of the week. In a way it is a viscious circle, never paying enough to make early retirement or prolonged absense from work a reality due to the high cost of living and making it extremely hard for anyone to break loose and try something different.

I suppose my point is that the majority of people here are stuck, they are trapped by the accumulation of material wealth and its associated debt due to the rip off republic and a routine that does not give you time to even consider something different. If you are open minded and adventurous this life might start to get you down, escape is possible but difficult. And so RV is leaving this expensive cage for greaner pastures and the ability to pursue a variety of crazy dreams.