So, we had $1036 all together, but Rob, Dan, and I finally got our payment for September teaching…all $601 of it. Our teaching schedules hadn’t yet matured, so while this could help stave off poverty for a bit, it’s certainly not a sustainable income and it doesn’t offer much comfort as we careen our way through October, anxiously awaiting Dan’s coming paycheck and our end-of-the-month paycheck.

Expenses:

$430: New housing in our new neighborhood, away from the frenetic Pham Ngu Lao area. Excellent! Unfortunately, this did require 2-weeks rent up front, though, so not being homeless took about 70% of our paychecks.

$100: 2 slick new bikes joined Bonus Hog, each at $50/month. They’re light, fast, and sexy, and they don’t plague us with engine problems or sear us with their blazing hot tailpipes. Rob’s in love with Bonus Hog, so the other bikes are shared by Brian, Dan, and I. One curious note about these bikes – the rental “company” (I think just a family that owns a bunch of motorbikes) required only our driver’s licenses as collateral…not an effective security measure, in my humble opinion…

Younger, sexier, sleeker than Bonus Ho

$25: Transit costs are going down, but some of us still take Xe-Oms to those classes requiring a brutal 1-hour battle through rush-hour traffic. We’ll brave those when we have more experience on the bikes.

$110: Our food budget plummeted, partly because we left the foreigner area, partly because new stable wifi doesn’t drive us to internet cafes, partly because I yell at everyone for spending too much.

$70: Cheap cell phones for Rob and I, plus sim cards for all four of us. Brian and Dan brought their own phones, so they didn’t need to wade through all the options to find that budget Nokia cell phone for $30. Man have I missed that classic cell phone game Snake…

I could knock a driver off a motorbike with this...

$40: Miscellaneous items, including a bunch of software from the totally legit software store. Using a totally legit commercial service called Bittorrent, they download totally legit software, burn it to CD’s, package it up nicely, and cell it for anywhere between $1.50 and $10. Dan got MacOSX Leopard, Brian got Bioshock, and we all high-fived for supporting the local pirate economy. Note: Jet Set Zero endorses totally legit software and supporting local economies.

So…$862. DAMMIT! Dan should get paid next week, but Brian, Rob, and I will huddle down for the long October winter until we get paid again…

With cultural integration comes understanding, friendship, peace, generosity, enlightenment and… roller coasters?

Thanks, guys.

It’s possible that this might have something to do with the FedEx shipping delays.  On the plus side though, you’re seeing an image of our tapes so you should be seeing episode six tomorrow morning, beer-supply willing.

Honestly, I keep expecting to crack open one of these resealed packages and get hit in the face with a bunch of red, white and blue silly-snakes accompanied by a note from the Department of Homeland Security that reads:

“Hah!  Gotcha!  But seriously.  We took your tapes.  For freedom.”

Word up, freedom.  Word up.

It's Laundry Time!

In a former life I was fortunate enough to earn quite a bit of money; it was actually so much more than what I needed to cover my cost of living that I didn’t really keep track of how it was spent.  My financial goals these days are a little more focused.  Focused on breaking even, mostly.

Although I didn’t start this project with specific monetary guidelines in mind like the field team did, my accounting is pretty similar.  So while Matt catalogs the team’s expenses in South East Asia I intend to do the same in the American North East.

I don’t have an “initial fund” to reference so instead I’ll try to break my expenses down by month, starting with this average of September and October:

Housing: $500/mo. for my share of an apartment, which also includes the “Worldwide JS0 Production HQ and Distribution Office.”  Housing me in America costs almost as much as doing so for any four team members in Saigon.

Utilities: $34/mo.  I actually list this separately from housing because as we enter the winter months this number will become an indicator of when Brian needs to STFU about sweltering heat.

Food: $181/mo.  It might be useful to break this number down even further into groceries ($161
/mo.) and eating out ($20/mo.).  Check that out.  That’s $6/day, more than $2/day lower than the field team members are eating for in Vietnam.  And even that number is misleading: it includes an initial spending spree to buy bulk staple items when I first moved into this apartment and also accounts for (relatively) inedible purchases at the grocery store like mops and toothpaste.  Adjusted to account solely for food it works out to about $3.50/day.  There are more impressive ratios out there, but this might be as low as I can go for now.

Drinks: $119/mo.  What can I say?  I’m single for the first time since the Clinton administration, and there’s no Bia Hoi in Northampton.

Transportation: $0.  I ride a bike.  That I got for free.  It’s a piece of shit.  Actually, I might do a post about it later because it’s sort of like a “Bonushog Jr.”

Clothing: $169/mo.  I have been spending a lot on clothes recently for two reasons: 1.) it’s getting cold and I am skinny, and 2.) again, I have not really been single since 2002 (see above).  I think some wardrobe improvements were in order.  Besides, one can purchase a near infinite number of almost-fitting shirts from the Salvation Army on a pauper’s budget.

So, for a total of ~$1010/mo. (counting unlisted miscellaneous and not counting taxes or JS0 production costs) I’m living in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, one of the more expensive non-urban parts of North America.  I’m always trying to reduce this number but I’m especially curious to see how my efforts compare to future locations JS0 chooses to implant itself…