Early Retirement Extreme Forums

BRUTE wrote:she offered for Olaz to provide her free labor?

*Snorting laughter.*

Spend 6 weeks stretching your boundaries and learning from a true iconoclast. If the 25 YO is worth a time/labor investment, she'll still be there when you return and excited about what you've experienced. I'm not a male in my early 20's (RED ALERT!! THIS FACT MAKES EVERYTHING I SAY PRETTY MUCH BS TO YOU!!), but try to clear your head.

@C40 you broke the first and second rule.

C40's post reminds me of where I was March 2013- moving for school in August and split between 2 choices: volunteer teaching English in Thailand or spend time with this adorable girl I just met.

I fell more into the love and enjoyed that till I moved. I dropped out of school in 2 weeks and ended up still going to Thailand to teach English. After Thailand, enjoyed more of the love for a few months.

In the end, I got to explore both paths.

Did somebody just say "DO BOTH"?

C40 wrote:cool 25 year old girl that likes horses and wants help building a tiny house. And Zalo would get to fuck her.

citation needed

C40 wrote:I also thought while hiking today, didn't Fight Club seem to be set in a place like Detroit? Is 7w5 turning into a sort of female Tyler Durdan but with good intentions? (I'm picturing the part where all the project mayhen guys are fixing up the shitty house, making a garden, etc... but that's all they do, plus go help old engineer guys build gadgets, go volunteer, and so on)

brute believes Fight Club is set in Delaware

BRUTE said: she offered for Olaz to provide her free labor?

Sounds like a smart cookie.

@halfmoon: I appreciate your endorsement of my offer, but after my initial enthusiasm, I started imagining that Olaz's journal entries might look something like:

Detroit Day 2: This is worse than living in my Grandmother's basement. What was I thinking choosing this option over biking through Europe?

Detroit Day 6: Fill the cart with cardboard. Haul the cardboard to the lot. Spread the cardboard. Whack the grass. Haul the grass to the lot. Spread the grass. Dig. Dig. Dig. Dig. Dig. I do not think she is feeding me enough. I suspect she is feeding me the same thing her sister feeds to the dogs.

Detroit Day 10: I am huddled on threadbare, itchy orange burlap-covered cushions, attempting something like sleep, the whiz of the tiny solar powered fan offering feeble aid against the humidity of July in Michigan. Why am I not instead lying on some beach entwined with my new friend in the cool breeze off the ocean?

Detroit Day 14: The crazy homeless guy knocking at midnight. Again. The mangy cats mating in the alley. Again. The booming beat of Arabic Hip-Hop. Again. Why????

etc. etc. etc.

@7w5, such a poetic way to describe it.

In Thailand, I slept on bamboo sticks threaded together. Showered using a bucket of freezing cold water while fending off hungry mosquitos. Had to use filtered water for brushing my teeth if I didn't want to get sick.

And it was all worth it.

But I'm glad I enjoyed the love first.

how did Felipe acquire freezing cold water in Thailand?

@7w5 Why does that not seem like sacrifice to me? It sounds like my idea of a good time. I need professional help.

@Fish:lol- I started thinking the same thing when halfmoon described me as a "true iconoclast." It's entirely possible that I've wandered so far from normal at this point in my life, I can't return. Most of what most people consider to be normal seems almost completely arbitrary to me. However, there is a level on which I remain a sort of Mumsy Midwestern Good Hostess type who might fret a bit about suggesting that some poor kid should function as canary-in-the-coalmine-robot-worker-alternative at the fringe of my life-style design. Also, I must admit that one of my core motivations for making the suggestion is that I am extremely amused by the notion of Olaz (to the extent that I "know" him based on his writing voice) apprenticed to my quite rough, highly eccentric, septuagenarian, multi-millionaire friend. I think it might be kind of like a Jim Jarmusch take on "Scent of a Woman."

BRUTE wrote:how did Felipe acquire freezing cold water in Thailand?

I think Felipe took some poetic liberties here. When it is 100 degrees, taking a shower in 75 degree water may feel like freezing cold, but the thermometer would tell you the water is much warmer than freezing. In fact, nowhere near forming ice.

This sort of reminds me of the older person who claims, when they were young, walking five miles to school, with bare feet, through the snow, uphill both ways.

Zalo, you need to take 7Wb5's offer before she thinks about it for too long and retracts her offer. She seems to be having second thoughts. Hurry!

You know,.. as far as places to go for ~travel, I get the feeling that Olaz would love the locals in Paris. If plane tickets are really that cheap, it may be a very good idea. You could also read about Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and probably a lot of others who went to Paris over the last few hundred years and that could make it extra interesting.

RealPerson wrote:This sort of reminds me of the older person who claims, when they were young, walking five miles to school, with bare feet, through the snow, uphill both ways.

those old humans were lucky to even have a school!

The water was not literally freezing. Chiang Mai is northern Thailand, and we lived in the mountains there so much colder than the main town and especially the beaches and islands closer to the equator. Temperature was 40's Fahrenheit at night.

It was cold enough that one girl would smuggle the hot water used for tea for her showers, we'd sleep in sleeping bags while keeping warm clothes on underneath those, and at night nobody would walk around in a shirt and shorts.