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Well, that was unexpected. I moved to Canada in March 2019, and did a fair bit of travel both before and after getting my permanent resident (PR) status in 2021. To apply for the Canadian citizenship, one needs to spend 1,095 days total (the equivalent of 3 years) in Canada over the period of 5 years, but the pre-PR days count only as half-days. And when you throw in all the travel… That’s a lot of calculations, eh.
I’d had some basic mental idea that I’d accrue enough residency days sometime around November 2023, but I never actually sat down to crunch the numbers until getting so very, very bored this evening. After digging through all my emails to find 4-year-old travel receipts, I discovered that I was eligible to apply 3 whole weeks ago! Huzzah, mis amis!
It’s really quite remarkable how fast the immigration process is here in Canada. In the US, it takes quite a bit longer to obtain both the PR status and the citizenship. The big downside here and now is that the processing time is 17 months. Yeah, no, that wasn’t a typo. 17 months, as in 1 year and 5 months, as in I’ll probably get my digital citizenship certificate in the first half of 2025. Well, I guess I definitely have something planned for that year now. (I wonder how much of this is due to the covid bottleneck?.. Did the processing time used to be shorter? Will there come a day when even a 17-month wait will seem relatively short by comparison?)
It’s been quite a journey… Only 4.5 years, but that included 2 years of Amazon stress, a goddamn worldwide pandemic, a huge stock market success, being part of the GameStop mania (293% in 2 days, awww yeah), a few relationships and a couple of deaths, moving to Quebec, and hiking from Mexico to Canada. That was a pretty eventful stretch of my life, and it hasn’t even been 5 years.
It irks me somewhat that I can’t finish my citizenship application right this minute because I have to go out and find an official photographer to take my citizenship application picture. (They reserve the right to verify the photographer’s information, which makes sense from the security standpoint.) It irks me even more that it’s 9:30pm and there are absolutely no photographers open at this time of night. It also irks, though a tiny bit less, to know that I’ll be charged an arm and a leg for a simple digital picture against some plain background. A whole lot of irking, in other words.
But meanwhile, here and now, wooooooo! Wooooooo, I say! I wooooooo in Ottawa’s general direction! To celebrate, I’m going to have an unscheduled cup of tea, followed by chugging some Grade-A Canadian maple syrup right out of the bottle. (Gotta start integrating into my new society, eh.)
Life is good.
After months of writing, editing, re-writing, and re-editing, my newest brain baby is ready to meet the world. I present to you my Pacific Crest Tutorial: Your Handy PCT Guide! If you’re not in the US, please search for “Pacific Crest Tutorial” on your country’s Amazon site, and you will see it there as well.
As usual, I’m giving it away for free for 3 days. I’m doing the giveaway to help my fellow hikers, both the hopefuls and the returning ones. (And if anybody feels like leaving a nice review on their shiny new book, that’s a bonus!)
It will remain free until 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time on Tuesday, November 7th. Once the giveaway ends, I’ll remove the link from this post, so no one would accidentally pay for it. There are 2 buttons on that link: don’t click the yellow “Read for free” button at the top because that would start a Kindle Unlimited subscription, which would charge you $10 a month (and you wouldn’t even get to keep the e-book if you cancel!). (I mean, unless you already have Kindle Unlimited.) You’ll want to click the second, orange button that says “Buy now with 1-Click” right underneath the $0.00.
You do not need a Kindle to read this e-book: you can either read it using the free Kindle app on your phone, tablet, etc – or on your computer using the Kindle Cloud Reader. Unlike all the other PCT books, which are 100% advice and 0% journal, my e-book combines them both: it’s roughly 75% journal describing local towns, and 25% advice on everything else. The journal part is a travelogue with detailed descriptions of PCT-adjacent towns: the best and worst places to eat, where (and how!) to hitchhike, etc. It also has more subtle stuff, like making sure you don’t zero in Etna on a Sunday (the whole town shuts down!), or visiting Carson, WA, aka the friendliest PCT-adjacent town in Washington, though it doesn’t appear in most guides. And much, much more.
The other 2 sections consist of a loooong list of my PCT advice to aspiring thru-hikers, and a very detailed PCT FAQ. The FAQ has 92 different questions with a variety of answers, both my own and from all over the web. It covers topics from “Is it safe to hike alone?” to “How do I poop with all these mosquitoes?” – and everything in between.
My hope is that the end result is an e-book that would be incredibly useful for PCT hopefuls, or just for those curious about thru-hiking. The town travelogue, based on my 2022 thru-hike, should be useful to all those who hiked the PCT before and want to try it again. (As I myself will someday…)
I hope you enjoy my e-book, and I hope it proves useful on your amazing, mind-blowing, life-changing adventure. Please feel free to share the link with your friends or with PCT facebook groups (I hang out exclusively on Reddit). As always, I look forward to your feedback. 🙂
Happy reading, and happy trails!
It’s been over a week now, and anger has subsided. (See the earlier entry.) I’ll probably get even more perspective on this strange year-long adventure as more time passes, but I may as well jot down some notes here and now.
Quebec is a unique and interesting province, and it’s the only jurisdiction in North America where French is the official language. If you don’t live here (or in Canada), chances are you’ll never see any news reports about all the conflicts, reforms, and counter-reforms related to the French language, the pushback against Anglos (that’s the slang term for English speakers such as moi), and so much more. There’s a lot of rich history, and quite a lot of baggage, both historic and cultural.
You can learn the basics of the local francization program over here, but in a nutshell, the government offers free full-time French courses to all the newcomers, be they refugees, Anglo Canadians from other provinces, or immigrants. To sweeten the deal, they also pay $5 CAD ($3.66 USD as of this writing) per hour for attending those classes. That doesn’t sound like much until you remember it’s 40 hours a week, 10 weeks per course, and four courses altogether. With all the breaks and such, that comes out to exactly one year, and approximately $800 CAD ($586 USD) per month, which is pretty neat, actually.
The course was held at the cégep (a uniquely Quebecois type of community college) on the other side of town because, hey, that was the only opening when I finally got the call. Cégeps are used to educate teens right after high school, and train them either in hands-on skills (there were so many bright-eyed and bushy-tailed paramedic hopefuls!) or something more abstract, like philosophy. The entire francization wing was more or less isolated from the local students – in retrospect, kind of a shame.
The class itself was… slow. Very, very slow. To be fair, I’m not an average student: French was my sixth language (or an attempt at one, anyhow), after Russian, English, German, Spanish, and Japanese. Just about every other student in our class (the size varied between 15-19 students) was a refugee. Some from Latin America, most from Ukraine. (They didn’t hold the war against me after I made my feelings about Russia clear.) I had to constantly remind myself that they didn’t choose to be here: a couple of years ago, they probably wouldn’t have even imagined moving to the exotic French-speaking land just north of New York. Unlike me, they ended up here involuntarily, due to larger-than-life circumstances outside their control.
That is a very long and polite way of saying that there were multiple students who simply didn’t give a damn, or would do their best to disrupt the class, though sometimes accidentally. There was a young European guy with a raging case of… something, who delighted in yelling out his name and basking in the confused attention of the others. Every three minutes or so. There was a fellow American who had a bad case of ADHD and would constantly interrupt the class to say that “Ahh, and in the US, we do it like this” – stopping any and all progress for at least five minutes. (She’d do that about once an hour.) An elderly woman who loudly complained about each and every little thing, nonstop. A young Ukrainian guy who either deliberately trolled the professor or had a genuine learning disability, asking a question every 30 seconds on those rare occasions when we’d get an interesting presentation about local history.
And then there was the fact that one of our four professors was a power-tripping, emotionally unstable maniac. (Once again, see the earlier entry.) It had been 14 years since my university graduation, and the blatant power abuse (and a “shruggie emoji” reaction from the administration) strongly reminded me why I never continued my formal education.
All in all, the year-long course really helped my French – it was definitely more effective than Duolingo and other apps. But ye gods, it moved so slowly, and we received so little actual hands-on practice with oral comprehension… (Because you can’t exactly turn on the subtitles when the local talks to you and you don’t quite get what they mean.) I’m fairly sure I would’ve gotten the same amount of French (if not more) if I’d just taken a burger-flipping job at the local Tim Hortons for three months or so.
Toward the end of our fourth and final course, the cégep simply wanted to get rid of us as fast as possible. The final exam was a joke: not a carefully curated and strict affair like in the previous module, but a free-for-all where the professor looked the other way, and we were all encouraged to cheat and copy each other’s answers. Everyone passed, and I’m quite certain the low scores got fudged so that all 18 of us would get a passing grade and GTFO. Ho hum.
I’ve made a fair amount of progress, though quite a few others didn’t. A big part of that, I believe, was due to the fact that they never really tried to “francisize.” Each day, and constantly, there would be conversations in either Spanish or Ukrainian all around me, non-stop. That’s fine if there’s an emergency, but if you’re just blabbing on about the weather or what’s for lunch… Try saying it in French, eh? And then your friend will try to understand and reply back, and then before you know it, you’ll both get some much-needed practice! I was alone in my desire to speak exclusively in French, and that did not make me too popular. So it goes.
Some of the things I did while waiting for the particularly slow days of class to end:
- manually copied (yes, by hand) Wikipedia’s articles on electromagnetism and the underlying formulas thereof;
- wrote a short fantasy story;
- wrote poetry;
- read through my entire pocket English-French dictionary, found the shortest words, and wrote down my own mini-dictionary of said words in my notebook;
- developed a swing-trading strategy for my stocks;
- improved my doodling skills;
- wrote down the full text of a beautiful French poem, then its English translation, and tried to learn the fancy book French by staring intently at the two versions;
- devoured several science textbooks in an attempt to keep my brain sane;
- compiled several Kindle e-books on my phone;
- read multiple lists of quotes by my favourite writers and philosophers, then stashed the best of them into text files on my phone;
There was more, I’m sure, but these are the top ones. That should probably give you some idea how much free (or underutilized) time we all had. Ho hum.
Well… I’m glad this is over. No lifelong friendships had been made, though I did meet my amazing, wonderful, absolutely perfect partner back in March, and she (a native Quebecoise) helped keep me sane throughout all this. That alone means the year wasn’t a waste. We went on so many little adventures…
But I digress. Not every huge adventure ends up particularly fun or exciting, so this year-long project will almost certainly rank near the bottom of my eccentric ideas – but hey, at least now I speak passable French. Or try to, in any case. Salut!
What a wonderful book. What a fascinating writer. A beautiful brew of unusual life experiences paired with a decade of editing. Can’t recommend it highly enough.
“animal pleasures remain close to sensation levels and avoid the perceptual . . . the human requires a background grid through which to see his universe”
—-
“Why are you doing this?” he demanded.
“To determine if you’re human. Be silent.”
—
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
—
“Ever sift sand through a screen?” she asked. The tangential slash of her question shocked his mind into a higher awareness: Sand through a screen, he nodded. “We Bene Gesserit sift people to find the humans.”
—
“He straightened, assuming an odd attitude of dignity – as though it were another mask, but this time clothing his entire body.”
—
”Humans are almost always lonely.”
—
“Paul looked up at the grizzled old man who stopped at a corner of the table. Hawat’s eyes were two pools of alertness in a dark and deeply seamed face.”
—
“Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things . . . ” She held up four big-knuckled fingers. “. . . the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing . . . ” She closed her fingers into a fist. “. . . without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!”
—
”She said a ruler must learn to persuade and not to compel. She said he must lay the best coffee hearth to attract the finest men.“
—
“I quoted the First Law of Mentat at her: ‘A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.’ That seemed to satisfy her.“”
—
“Nothing wins more loyalty for a leader than an air of bravura.”
—
“His first encounter with the people he had been ordered to betray left Dr. Kynes shaken.”
—
“Halleck had spoken in Paul’s ear: “Odd sort of fellow. Has a precise way of speaking–clipped off, no fuzzy edges–razor-apt.”
And the Duke, behind them, had said: “Scientist type.””
—
“Kynes stared at him, seeing the water-fat flesh. He spoke coldly: “You never talk of likelihoods on Arrakis. You speak only of possibilities.””
—
“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.”
—
“Do you wrestle with dreams?
Do you contend with shadows?
Do you move in a kind of sleep?
Time has slipped away.
Your life is stolen.
You tarried with trifles,
Victim of your folly.”
—
“Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.”
—
“And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning ‘That path leads ever down into stagnation.”
—
“Superstitions sometimes have strange roots and stranger branchings.”
—
“The absence of a thing,” the Baron said, “this can be as deadly as the presence. The absence of air, eh? The absence of water? The absence of anything else we’re addicted to.”
—
“What senses do we lack that we cannot see or hear another world all around us?”
—
“The highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences.”
—
“Science is made up of so many things that appear obvious after they are explained.”
—
“No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero.”
—
“It could be only the adab, the demanding memory that comes upon you of itself.”
—
“The vision made him want to freeze into immobility, but this, too, was action with its consequences.”
—
“Fear coursed through Paul. He felt suddenly alone and naked standing in dull yellow light within this ring of people. Prescience had fed his knowledge with countless experiences, hinted at the strongest currents of the future and the strings of decision that guided them, but this was the real-now. This was death hanging on an infinite number of minuscule mischances.”
—
“Each day, some time each hour, brings change.”
—
“That which makes a man superhuman is terrifying.”
—
“Walking a thing wire of peace with a measure of happiness.”
—
“The man without emotions is the one to fear. But deep emotions … ah, now, those can be bent to your needs.”
—
“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”
—
“But the test of a man isn’t what you think he’ll do. It’s what he actually does.”
—
“He seemed too submissive to Paul, but then the Sardaukar had never been prepared for such happenings as this day. They’d never known anything but victory which, Paul realized, could be a weakness in itself.”
—
“Isn’t it odd how we misunderstand the hidden unity of kindness and cruelty?”
—
“The Guild navigators, gifted with limited prescience, had made the fatal decision: they’d chosen always the clear, safe course that leads ever downward into stagnation.”
—
“The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it.”
—
“Before the lectures, though, he had to convince the Fremen. To understand how this came about, you must first understand the enormous single-mindedness, the innocence with which he approached any problem. He was not naive, he merely permitted himself no distractions.”
—
“It became apparent to the Fremen that Kynes was not a madman totally, just mad enough to be holy.”
—
“There is a fifth force which shaped religious belief, but its effect is so universal and profound that it deserves to stand alone. This is, of course, space travel – and in any discussion of religion, it deserves to be written thus:
SPACE TRAVEL!”
—
“Twenty delegates were recalled by their congregations. One committed suicide by stealing a space frigate and diving it into the sun.”
—
“Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, ‘I am not the kind of person I want to be.’ It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.”
—
“To increase understanding is a laudable goal.”
—
“La, la, la – a Fremen cry of grief (“La” translates as ultimate denial, a “no” from which you cannot appeal.)”
My Oxford French mini dictionary has a vagina but no penis. It has sperm but no menstruation. No fucking, only sex, and a pregnancy without a womb.
My Oxford French mini dictionary has honour without traitors, self-sacrifice without self-doubt.
There is a kangaroo but no platypus. There is God but no Bigfoot or Chupacabra.
My Oxford French mini dictionary has heaven and hell without apocalypse, without utopia, without rapture.
In the world of my Oxford French mini dictionary, there are workaholics but no slackers. There is neither heroism nor apathy, only complacency. Obedience without caricatures.
My Oxford French mini dictionary has knives and guns and bullets but no cotton candy, no colouring books, no dollhouses.
My Oxford French mini dictionary has no serendipity or randomness or rumination, only cold consequences. There is neither hedonism nor stoicism. There is only boredom.
There is no unpredictability.
I did not think the game would be so bad that I’d have to refund it – never did that for a game before, but wow. This is something else… (Also, this whole post is a rant. Sorry, just gotta get it off my chest. Feel free to sound off and/or tell me why I’m wrong.)
I grew up playing Diablo-1 and Diablo-2. Dumped a lot of time into Diablo-3 when that came out, too. I really, really hoped D-4 would be better after the FUBAR they committed with D-3. (Remember when your character was basically a Terminator, walking through the halls of heaven and destroying everything in its path with zero effort? Good times, great worldbuilding, very wow, much impressive.) But JFC, right from the start, D-4 seems to be the least demanding, most ridiculously casual game of the entire franchise.
This is a rant. Feel free to close it. 🙂 If this helps at least one other person avoid purchasing the game, cool.
To start, the graphics were amazing. That first cut scene? Wow. Also, the character customization window was excellent. As for the rest…
- The sorceress starts the game with zero spells. Her only weapon is a stick that also doesn’t cast spells. 🙂 That’s not a sorceress – that’s an over-confident applicant to the mage school. (Compare and contrast D-2 at least giving you a rudimentary magic staff from the start.)
- No option to chat or even listen to the mysterious delirious stranger whose very presence kicked off a quest. Why? Just…. why? At least let me hang out and listen to his ravings. But nah, zero freedom.
- Can’t loot any of the animals I killed. (Killing a goddamn bear with one shot was pretty funny.) Can’t harvest their hide, or blood, or horns (that deer had so much potential), or souls, or teeth. Lame. Wasteful, even.
- Novice-level spells cost zero mana and can be fired non-stop.
That turns the dynamic into a plain old “point and click.” There’s zero tactics involved – and I made sure to play on the “experienced” difficulty level, not the newbie level. Remember how in D-2 you had to run around and conserve your mana while a bunch of mobs chased you? Yeah, so there’s an infinite source of basic-level magic now, apparently. - Speaking of running around: no stamina bar anymore, either. Every character is now a marathon runner, woot!
- Somewhere after Diablo-3, the world lost the belt technology. 🙂 Shame, really: I guess they all wear suspenders and/or togas now. You can carry a ridiculous amount of gear in your inventory now, but gods help you if you decide to carry more than 4 potions on your person.
- The first big boss (X’Fer or some similar cliché fantasy name, all X’s and apostrophes) got defeated just by clicking on him, holding down the button for a couple of minutes, and occasionally stepping aside. Smooooth. Compare and contrast with the horror that was the Butcher in D-1, or how ridiculously difficult it was to kill Blood Raven in D-2.
- Accidentally clicked on the non-obvious exit right after killing the boss. The game wouldn’t let me to climb back inside the tower to pick up the loot. Why? Just… why? Skyrim came out 11.5 years ago, and even that gave you the freedom to backtrack, unless you specifically jumped off a ledge. Seems like the future gameplay will also be straight and one-sided like you’re a one-dimensional character.
- Again, the cut scenes make for nice eye candy, but that’s wayyyy too much cut-scene material for just the first 30 minutes or so of gameplay. (Compare and contrast: in the TV show Heroes, it took 9 episodes of build-up before they even showed the face of the villain Sylar. Here, we have the big bad monologuing at the very beginning.)
- Speaking of monologuing: the British accents in the intro cut scene (three looters and a scholar) were kind of amusing, though kind of cliché. But what was up with everrrryone in that village trrrying theirrrr best to do a strrrrronk Easterrrrn-Eurrropean accent? It felt so damn cringy, almost like watching “Orange is the New Black” again. Maybe my memory is failing me, but I don’t recall such an overabundance of thick ethnic accents in any of the previous games. Characters had foreign names, yes, and each NPC’s voice conveyed some aspect of their personality, but can you imagine the inhabitants of D-2’s Lut Gholein doing super-thick Middle-Eastern accents just for the fun of it? JFC…
- The leveling is way, wayyyyyy too fast. Five levels just for clearing out a ridiculously easy boss and a few skeletons?.. I logged out in disgust and got my refund ASAP, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I also scored 10 achievements along the way. (“Newwww achievement! Your character met their FitBit goal for the day by walking 50 steps!”)
tl;dr – shoddy writing, poor gameplay design and worldbuilding, zero challenge or tactics involved, and the dev team probably had fewer RPG players than the dev team that created D-3. 😦
Okay, so the title is a bit of a mouthful, but you gotta be thorough with those things. Also, there are zero other e-books that have “lean-FIRE” in their title, and that’s just a damn shame, eh. (For the uninitiated: “FIRE” stands for “Financial Independence, Retire Early” – and lean-FIRE is the frugal version of that movement.) You can download my shiny new e-book over here. It’ll stay free until the end of Friday, June 2. I may do another giveaway in the coming weeks… If you like the e-book, please leave a 5-star review so others would be able to find it too!
As for what the book is about, I’m just going to shamelessly plagiarize my own e-book description here…
I retired at 34. I can teach you how.
My story doesn’t involve huge inheritances, rich relatives, or cushy jobs obtained through the Good Ol’ Boy Network. I’m a double immigrant: from Russia to the US when I was 16, from the US to Canada when I was 32. I never made six figures, never got huge scholarships, and my first job after college was as a box packer at an Amazon warehouse. (Thanks, recession!) Over the years, and by necessity, I mastered the art of frugal living and taught myself how to earn more, spend less, and invest the rest.
This book grew out of my personal finance blog, with a few extra chapters thrown in. Consider it your instruction manual for achieving frugal early retirement, aka lean-FIRE. (FIRE is a financial movement: it stands for “Financial Independence, Retire Early.”)
This book is written in a conversational and informal (sometimes too informal) style, and it has something for everyone who wants to improve their financial situation. Even if you don’t replicate my journey entirely, you’ll still be able to avoid some huge mistakes and boost your savings rate.
This e-book is hands down the most book-like e-book I’ve ever written: for one thing, it’s long (317 pages, woot!), and consists entirely of my own writing, unlike so many of the public-domain e-books I’ve spliced together. In theory, I could’ve tried to pitch it to publishing houses to get it printed like an actual real-life book, but from what I understand about the industry, nowadays they prefer authors with huge social media platforms, and that’s not something I care to maintain. (You, dear reader, are part of a small and exclusive club!) So e-book format it is, then.
This e-book has a lot of rather personal information that average people never really share with one another: money permeates so many aspects of our lives, yet it’s considered faux pas to bring it up, especially so when you’re doing better than those around you. Not gonna lie, I had some doubts about releasing it, even as I cleaned up all my old blog posts and wrote a couple of new chapters.
I ended up clicking that “Publish” button anyway, and that’s due to two simple reasons. First, no one will remember any of us 150 years from now: our internal struggle, shame, or awkwardness don’t matter one bit in the grand scale of things. And secondly, if my e-book can help at least one person (and ideally, many more) streamline their financial situation and retire earlier, then all of this will be worth it. In fact, one of my PCT hiking buddies has already thanked me profusely: he’s a lawyer, but he never got a chance to learn the ins and outs of personal finance – until now. Looks like I’ve already accomplished my absolute-minimum goal – let’s see how many more I can help, eh?
And so, without further ado, head over here if you’d like to download the e-book for free, and please feel free to share the link with all your friends: my e-book has something for everyone. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope even more to get a shiny 5-star review from you afterwards. Have fun!
P.S.: To celebrate my e-book’s release, I’m also doing a two-day giveaway on most of my other e-books over here. Personally, I highly recommend 50 shades of yay: great thinkers on happiness. It contains useful perspectives on happiness from great thinkers across the millennia. (We could all use that in this stressful time!)
