Grigory Lukin.com

It’s Monday night, and I may have found my zen. That is, logging off from work at 5pm sharp and diving straight into the fantasy ESO world, where I fish (while leisurely reading the world news), craft different things, and acquire gold while going on an occasional adventure. That may or may not be an idealized version of what I want to do once I retire…

It’s interesting that most of the world seems to be done with covid, and it’s only China, Brazil, and the US that generate all the disturbing headlines. It’s been officially confirmed: when the EU reopens for international travel on July 1st, tourists from the US won’t be allowed to visit. Canadians are allowed to fly in, though. Kind of confirms that I made the right choice when I decided to move here, eh? (The cut in salary was incredibly painful, but hey, that’s the price of civilization.) China and Brazil are banned as well, and the list will be reviewed every two weeks.

Arizona has finally decided that they might as well try listening to scientists: they’ve shut down bars, gyms, and other public places. And just to think, this is only the first wave hitting them. We’ll all be in the same boat again later this year. (I doubt they will have learned…) Meanwhile, China is skipping the final step of the vaccine testing: they’ll test it out on their military instead. That is… troubling. If that works, they’ll have a strategic military advantage over everyone in the region. (Not to mention the control over the world’s only viable vaccine.) If that doesn’t work, they may end up permanently injuring their own military. That’s one hell of a gamble.

On the personal front… I’ve been texting on and off with a local friend. She got mildly flirtatious. Then she sent me a video of a covid-denier and said he made some good points. Oh well. At least this pandemic is making it easier to remove people with no critical thinking skills out of one’s dating pool. So it goes. I’m still trying to make the most of my one-man lockdown: today at work, I made a breakthrough and created a shiny useful Excel-based tool that had never existed before. Then I logged off at 5pm sharp (work-life harmony FTW) and celebrated by eating a freshly baked Hawaiian pizza on the sunlit backporch while sipping a coke and taking my French daily lessons from Duolingo. Life isn’t all bad.

Sunday night. I can’t express how beautiful and addicting this Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) game is. Ten years from now, it’ll probably seem primitive compared to the virtual reality haptic-feedback games. (As seen in Ready Player One.) Still, here and now, this is something remarkable. Beautiful graphics, lots of subtle humour, the freedom to do anything you want… I must say, having my character gallop around on an immortal hydrophobic horsie while crafting different gizmos is definitely giving me some ideas for the future.

And that’s how I spent pretty much this entire day. Healthy? Hell no. Helpful? Very much so. As escapism goes, this is pretty great. (And did I mention the game is free to play? Heh.)

Elsewhere in the world (well, pretty much just the US) – southern states are starting to obfuscate information: deleting ICU data, not updating the case numbers, etc. This is pointless, but I suppose if you’re stuck in the middle of a shitstorm, you lose your ability to think strategically. Your life becomes a series of tactical mini-shitstorms, and that’s something I can relate to based on my own prior work experience.

South Carolina is particularly bad: they plan to convert school gyms into overflow areas for 3,000 new ICU beds. If this isn’t madness, I don’t know what is.

…and now back to my pandemic-free fantasy world. Heh.

Friday night. I celebrated by going to Walmart and LCBO. It was interesting to see that this time, only 50% or so wore masks. I researched the cancer warning of my new face shield some more: it was referring to California’s overarching warning that working with dust or lead is bad for you. Since I don’t intend to do that, I’m safe. It felt oddly comfortable to wear a cloth mask with a filter, a pair of wraparound goggles, and a face shield. Got a few odd looks but not as many as I’d thought. As a bonus, I spotted a fellow shopper who purchased a similar face shield for herself.

I’m trying to pass the time with more indoorsy addictions… Having finished the Walking Dead show, I’ve switched to reading the source material on Comixology. Steam just launched their summer sale, so I’ve finally bought Elder Scrolls Online to continue exploring the Skyrim universe, only with better graphics this time around. Whatever it takes to keep my mind off the things happening in the real world.

The governors of Texas and Florida finally decided to do the absolute bare minimum required to stop the pandemic: they’ve shut down bars. That wasn’t based on altruism and them coming to their senses; that was most likely because their major cities have run out of ICU beds. Now those petty science-denying tyrants are in an interesting philosophical pickle. They wanted their states to reopen because they claimed the pandemic wasn’t that bad, and that they’re somehow sturdier, healthier, and luckier than all those New Yorkers. Now they’re shutting down again (if even a little bit) because the virus doesn’t care about their politics. In so doing, they’ve successfully pissed off everyone: those who follow medical guidelines and self-isolate, and those who think the pandemic is a hoax. Heh.

Arizona might be the next in line to shut down once more. Then again, it’s hard to underestimate the ineptitude of Arizona’s government. Close to home, Canada will withdraw its armed forces from Quebec: they’d been sent there a while back, as I wrote 69 days ago over yonder. While helping the elderly, they also discovered multiple cases of neglect, if not downright abuse. I worry that things will just slide back toward the baseline relatively soon.

The stock market crashed by almost 3% today. Looks like Wall Street hadn’t anticipated that the reopening would fail. So much for that efficient market, eh? Trump’s bragging rights are mostly centered on the stock market’s performance. Seems like some more strings will be pulled (or more misinformation released) to keep the market propped up. My money is on the cruise industry lobbyists getting a shout-out or some stimulus money to keep them afloat. (Terrible pun intended.)

And so begins one more pandemic weekend… Just to keep things interesting, here’s a pic of yours truly sporting not one, not two, but three different types of PPE. Stay safe out there, folks.

Thursday night. Things are getting weird at work. A once-in-a-century pandemic isn’t the best time for a re-org. Not that there’s ever a good time for it, but this is just spectacularly bad timing. Learned a few things today… If my life were a TV show (and who is to say it isn’t?), there’d be a very angry letter-writing campaign to the show’s writers because some plot twists are simply too bizarre.

On the upside, my job is pretty safe, and the company’s lawyers are pretty damn close to submitting my PR application. Just a few more months till I become Canada’s newest permanent resident… Something to look forward to as the world continues its inexorable slide into madness.

Houston’s ICU beds are officially 100% full. Hospital CEOs are trying to sound upbeat, claiming the overflow will be taken care of with utmost safety and efficiency, but that’s neither reassuring nor believable. Only 198 ICU beds (12% of the total) are available in Arizona. It’s just a matter of days now before the same horrifying footage we saw in New York (forklifts with dead bodies, refrigerated morgue trucks on residential streets, etc) start showing up there as well. Texas governor Greg Abbott has paused the reopening plan, which is probably as close as any southern governor will come to admitting their mistake.

It’s morbid, but… If you kill one person, you’ll get to prison. Kill several people, and you’ll most likely spend the rest of your life behind bars. But if you ignore all empirical evidence and make mindboggingly stupid decisions that result in deaths of thousands, you’ll suffer zero consequences. Hell, you might even get reelected. And as if willful ignorance weren’t enough, now there are sheriffs around the US claiming they will not enforce mandatory mask mandates in their counties.

If you’re reading this in the future, I hope this conveys at least some of the overwhelming, ceaseless absurdity our world has become. There’s more and more news coming out every hour of every day – articles and videos that would’ve hijacked the public discourse for days before the pandemic. Now, however, it’s all just more of the same. Yet another video of a cop killing someone in cold blood and lying about it. More insane tweets from Trump. A 6-point earthquake in California. So-called “Karens” printing out misspelled cards claiming they don’t have to wear a mask because of undisclosed health reasons. This really is stranger than fiction, and more disturbing than any dystopian book you’ll ever hope to find.

Thursday night. As Toronto is starting to open back up, people are starting to take more risks. The landlords’ teenage son really wants his haircut… Another possible vector. My life would’ve been so much easier if I’d simply rented a small studio apartment when I moved to Canada. Then again, I would’ve missed out on lots of adventures along the way. (Moving right now is not advisable: Uhaul isn’t known for their standards of hygiene or for sterilizing things.

Alarming reports from Houston: 97% of the city’s ICU beds are full. Unless this is the peak of their outbreak (and it probably isn’t), they’ll have to resort to picking who gets the intensive care, just like their Italian counterparts did two months ago… Meanwhile, in West Palm Beach, Florida, angry morons at a town hall meeting claimed that mandatory masks are unconstitutional, and that doctors are guilty of crimes against humanity. It’s all fun and games until one of those mouth-breathers decides to administer their idea of justice.

Incidentally, I used to live in both Texas and Florida. Neither of these news stories surprises me… (I do miss Florida’s beaches, though. The beaches were nice.)

Cruise companies are taking a beating once again, dropping 5-10% every day. The CDC put a stop to cruises until September, even though bars and restaurants are allowed to open. It’ll be curious to see how many lobbyists the cruise industry will throw at this problem. And speaking of September: no one has any idea what will happen when the school year begins. Parents with young kids won’t be able to leave them at home, and kids in general aren’t big fans of sitting still and following instructions on their tablets. There’s no nationwide plan: it seems there are as many plans as there are school districts.

Decades from now, when those haven’t yet been born listen to our stories about 2020, they won’t believe us – and who can blame them?