Thursday night.

My fellow Torontonians on reddit were discussing what random hobbies they’ve developed during this whole pandemic mess. I started typing and got a little carried away… Heh. I guess I’ve done a bit more than I thought.

Here is the whole thing in its entirety in lieu of yet another boring recollection of an unremarkable day:

I’ve tried so much stuff in my 11-month lockdown…

  • Read a bunch of sci-fi and pop science books;
  • Played Stardew Valley twice, for 200 hours total;
  • Learned a fair bit of French before stopping. (The pronunciation got a little too hard haha)
  • Tried to learn Vietnamese on DuoLingo before stopping. (Their Vietnamese module isn’t very good – no pronunciation checks, etc.)
  • Started learning Spanish on DuoLingo and still going 9 months later.
  • Cancelled my summer vacation in Montreal and went on a looooong roadtrip around Ontario (3,200 km) to explore abandoned mines. Collected a bunch of shiny minerals. 🙂
  • Tried learning harmonica (a gag gift from years ago) before getting bored and giving it up.
  • Bought an Instapot and fell in love with it. (It can do so much, so fast! And so easy to clean! 🙂 )
  • Started weightlifting with dumbbells before giving it up a few months later. I still do bicep curls every day, though.
  • Bought a whittling set on Amazon before realizing that soft wood is pretty hard to find.
  • Moved to my own little rental Studio of Solitude after my landlords decided to disregard every single covid guidance.
  • Researched the hell out of people who successfully hacked lotteries in the past. I found some very interesting patterns in local scratch-off tickets but had to end the project after realizing they wouldn’t let me return unscratched tickets. Heh. (Broke even on the whole project, though.)
  • Put my years of study into practice, put together a portfolio of very underpriced stocks in May, and it’s gone up by 168% since then. 🙂 (No, that’s not a typo. 168%) I’m much closer to early retirement now…
  • Submitted my PR application, got invited to apply, and currently waiting for their final decision. (The 6-month point was a week ago… Patience is a virtue, eh?)
  • Got briefly obsessed with the idea of collecting scrap metal as a profitable hobby. Got dissuaded from it when I realized that a) homeless people rely on that for their living, and b) I had no idea how to even begin to take apart an actual kitchen stove that someone left on the sidewalk near my place.
  • Realized I’d never cut it as a hermit. (And never make it as a wise man either.)
  • Started a daily blog where I write a bit about what’s going on in my life and a bit about the current status of the pandemic. It’s pretty much the only thing that helps me keep track of the passage of time since I’ve been working from home since last March.
  • Signed up to join the local Search & Rescue organization – finally, a chance to do something objectively good instead of just self-isolating to help stop the virus from spreading.

I’m probably forgetting a few things, but these are the main ones. 🙂