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.