I finished reading Graham Greene's The Quiet American yesterday night; I was pleased with it by the time I was done. At first, I dunno, it was a slow first 50 pages, but, coming to the end, I had really sunk my teeth into it and found I quite enjoyed it. I look forward to seeing Vietnam for myself someday, just hopefully not in the same way as Mr. Fowler or Mr. Pyle.

I started reading Love in the Time of Cholera today, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and 20 pages into it, it seems an interesting book. I've become all too familiar with the wording of good prose, thanks to a high school IB program which required not only the taking in but the appreciation of such literature. So, when I read a book now, I can tell almost within 2 pages if it's the kind of thing which belonged in my cirriculum, and as such, whether I'll be able to finish it in two days or two weeks. Perhaps, in some cases, not at all.

Both books have the effect of taking you back in time, and familiarizing the reader with a world that no longer exists, but moreover, taking place in other foreign countries, they make me feel a little less away from home. My life here, though lacking in the counterpoint of fictional masterpieces, is a story all its own, and perhaps some day looking back on this journal I will be taken to a similar world of the past, fictional in its own way for no longer being the world in which I live.

That aside, in 4 hours I will no longer be poor, constrained no longer to the confines of this apartment, waiting for the shackles of poverty to be lifted from my aching and bruised wrists and ankles. The interesting part though, is that, much like those freed from one form of servitute or another, I am faced with a psychological dilema. Do I continue, despite my freedom, to live as I have for the last three months, or do I, drunk with the exhilirating scent of money, live in wonton neglect for financial frugality, so as to in some way laugh in the face of my former encumberance?

Regardless of my choice, I really need to stop thinking in prose.