ㅁ I sat in a small cafe found unexpectedly while the car was getting repaired. Small town.
– a cinquain.
Caveat: Poem #2439 “Time to kill”
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ㅁ I sat in a small cafe found unexpectedly while the car was getting repaired. Small town.
– a cinquain.
Comments are closed.
The spareness of the poetic form conceals whether you bought anything at the “small cafe” unexpectedly found. I assume you buy something. What were the prices like?
The prices were high by lower-48 standards, but reasonable for island life: I paid $2.50 for a drip coffee and $16 for a grilled sandwich with fries.
Am imagining an equivalent experience in rural Korea. Say, Hongnong. Although Ullungdo would have to be the better comparison, I am unsure what prices are like in Ullungdo but do have a sense of Hongnong-like area prices.
The grand total for a comparably “reasonable” simple meal and coffee in a place stumbled across in Hongnong-like area would be, I think, 7500 to 10,000 KRW today, about 30% the total you paid at the cafe near the car repair shop.
That puts small-town Alaska prices at 3.5x the small-town S.Korea rate (i.e., $10 needed in Hongnong = $35 needed for equivalent in rural island Alaska). Possibly reaching 4x if the exchange rate is pushing it at the time.
Cost equivalents for comparable simple meal
– S.Korea @ 100
– USA Lower48 @ 200 to 250+
– Alaska @ 350