Back To Reality

It's what we usually say at the end of vacation time and we're back into the mundane routines of work. Truth is the vacation time was also a reality. It's a different reality, nonetheless a reality, one which I prefer though the rigours of air travel and adapting to foreign countries with different ways of doing things does take a bit out of you.

So now back to the reality of work, paying bills, running errands, and dealing with other mundane tasks..... until my next trip, which will be back to the Yucatan. Oh yes I am going back there to visit the Mayan sites which I did not visit this time. There are a lot of sites on the Yucatan. At this stage the return trip is set for the first half of 2018. Thanks to Cancun being not Perth I do have ample funds remaining and no maxed out credit cards!! Of course now being back in expensive Perth, away from the paradise of Cancun where you can eat well for a week on just $20. Here in Perth you'd be lucky to eat for a DAY on $20!!! You don't realise how expensive Perth is until you go overseas.

I am back at work tomorrow, earning my keep towards my next trip. As promised to myself I ordered a new hard disk for my laptop almost as soon as I gotten back from the airport, covering for the catastrophic hard disk fail that happened during The Three Weeks last July. Now just have to wait for them carrier pigeons to deliver the hard disk to me.

Next however is the air tickets back to the Yucatan, that is because the earlier you book the air tickets the cheaper they are. They get more expensive the closer to the intended departure time. So booking them 4 to 6 months n advance is ideal. This time my base of operations will be Merida on the other side of the Yucatan. It's a 4-hour bus trip between Cancun on the eastern side and Merida on the western side. There are more Mayan sites closer to Merida, it will be those sites I be visiting this time. Thankfully it be less than a month before I have the funds for the air tickets. Technically I have the funds now but scattered over different accounts, but rather the deal with the expense of transferring funds to one account I just concentrate on beefing up one account, and bar any catastrophes, it should take me less than a month to do so.

When in the most isolated city on Earth, air tickets are the most expensive part of any overseas trips. The next most expensive are the lodgings, though cheaper than in Perth, indeed cheaper than anywhere in Australia. That is why people goes overseas, a vacation overseas is cheaper than a vacation in Australia once you get past the air tickets!!

Then I will get my fridge. I do have a wage rise coming up backdated to July, so be about four months worth of backpay once the deal is ratified by my union. The vote to whether to accept the latest deal was put to us, and I voted to accept it. Hopefully at least half of us voted with me to accept the deal, and if that indeed happened, the union will submit to ratify the deal, then we get our much deserved wage rise backdated four months. This should be enough to pay for my lodgings at Merida.

And each year we get a Xmas bonus payment on the first pay date in December. That will pay for my fridge. Then I can work on saving the rest of my funds for the return trip to the Yucatan tentatively set for sometimes in the first half of 2018 prior to the summer season over there when it will be too hot. It's hot all year round there being the tropics, but hotter during summer. It's more the humidity that gets us there. It actually doesn't get as hot as it does in Southern Australia such as Perth, or Melbourne, or Adelaide when it gets over 40 degrees, it is dry heat. On the Yucatan it gets no hotter than mid 30s but the humidity is much higher, so it makes it feel like 50 degrees!!! So if I can get there by March or April it will avoid the summer, otherwise it will be October or later.

Of course I am now back to working on clearing out my storage unit, legacy of my bower bird wife who loved to hoard things!!! Hopefully I should be able to clear out my storage unit by January next year, this will free up another several hundreds of $$'s per month to add to my trip, as well as other shit that needs to be attended to such as a much overdue service for my car.

The storage unit is the last vestige of my more expensive lifestyle with Sally which is being removed for a more frugal lifestyle allowing me to free up extra funds for my trips and other things. Moving out from a house into an apartment was the major step towards a more frugal lifestyle. Next were rearranging my internet accounts and changing telcos, where I now pay half of what I was paying before. And on my recent trip, my new telco did send me timely updates on any roaming charges that I had been accumulating. So my roaming bill should be much less than with Telstra where I had to pay over $1000 last year!!! This time with Optus, based on their far more regular updates, my roaming bill should be less than $200, that will come up next month. So the last of my more extravagant lifestyle is the storage unit, and that should be dealt with by January 2018.

Oh yes I will have to renew my passport before my next trip. My current passport expires April next year, and you normally can't travel on a passport with less than six months. Indeed my Cancun trip was the last trip I had been able to take on my current passport, my return to Perth took place just two days before the six months cut off time to my passport expiry. So any subsequent trip will have to be on a renewed passport!!

Once I get my laptop up and going again, I be back to adding my comics and other goodies to my blogs...... so just have to wait for those carrier pigeons to bring me my new hard disk.

Thankfully no more of the catastrophe that is football for the next six months or so..........

So on this note..... time to get ready for my week back at work..... until the next update.......