My Greatest Weakness

When I went to exchange my last batch of physical foreign money about two months ago, I ran into a bit of a problem. The bank I visited refused to accept my two-hundred-euro banknote – apparently too unusual a denomination to safely rule out its possible falsification. Having relied not to an inconsiderable degree on this two-hundred to carry me through the rest of the semester, I was a little put out. My American credit card had just expired and I had forgotten the pin code to my new Czech card; I could, of course, find out what my pin was at any time, but at that point I felt too invested in this new experiment on whether or not I could make my limited funds last me after all.

The biggest game changer, it turned out, was that all the money I had loaded into my metro card towards the beginning of my stay in Taiwan was not money thrown down the drain. As I discovered while buying a torch from a sports gear shop, the card did not just work for transportation but also for purchases at certain shops, including Seven Eleven. During my last three weeks in Taiwan, therefore, it turned out that I had about twelve-hundred more TWD ‘in the bank’ than I initially expected.

However, my funds have been adversely affected by a new bad habit of mine. For many months, I have prided myself on mostly eschewing the comforts of Western cuisine, except for my glass of milk and cereal for breakfast. However, on a shopping trip two or three weeks ago, I discovered some imported Grana Padano at the supermarket. The ghost of commercialism had attacked me at my weakest spot. For a few weeks now, I have been trying to cut out all unnecessary expenses from my life, only to be set back by my love of cheese. We shall see how this all ends.  

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