Grigory Lukin.com

Thursday night. To quote the early 21st century bard known only as Rihanna, “work work work work work work.”

Apparently, an adjacent boss recently described me as “a ball of energy.” Heh. I’d be more impressed if that actually translates into something real.

I’m staying in touch with my relatives through a text group chat: apparently, my little nephew in New York has developed a maple syrup addiction. He went so far as to record a little video asking me to send him some from Canada. How could I possibly say no to that?

Xgf said that yesterday she braved the long taxi journey to three different appointments to get her torn leg muscle looked at. She got an X-Ray the same day (go Canada!) and an appointment for an ultrasound in the near future. (Still not too bad, Canada!)

In DuoLingo adventures, the French word for “the weekend” is “le week-end.” Heh.

In covid news, as more and more schools around the US are starting to reopen, there are some frankly horrifying pictures of crowded school hallways with hardly any kids wearing masks. One school district went so far as to threaten students that if they take pictures or post them online, “there’ll be consequences.” ACLU has gotten immediately involved – good for them. One school official said that enforcing mask compliance is hard because “it’s a personal choice.” Funny how they don’t have the same issue when it comes to enforcing arbitrary wardrobe rules for teenagers.

In British Columbia, retired Canadians have found a new hobby: tracking American boats that dock in BC instead of going north to Alaska. (That’s the only way they can make it past the border, thanks to the Alaska exception.) Some Americans are trying to fight back by disabling their transponders soon after crossing the border. I’m not a boat guy, but that sounds like a pretty big no-no.

The tensions between Canada and the US are getting worse: Trump has just announced that he’d restore the 10% tariff on Canadian imports. Trudeau has immediately replied that Canada will retaliate dollar for dollar, eh. (He might not have said “eh.”) Hard to say why this is happening right here and now: the cynic in me thinks it’s just another attempt by the White House to hijack the news cycle and make it about anything at all other than the pandemic. Ho hum. I wonder if at any point things will get bad enough that Canada will start giving out bounties for reporting illegal Americans. Heh. After all, 80% of Canadians want to keep the border closed, and that kind of solidarity is nothing short of remarkable. Ye gods, I’m so happy I’ve escaped to Canada before this whole mess began.

Wednesday evening. Things are getting hectic at work, but what else is new? As long as you keep your schedule clean, keep doing Excel magic, and – most importantly – don’t panic, all is well. (And yes, I do take my towel with me whenever I travel.)

Sliding right back into the old routine… Instead of spending most of the day hiking, it’s just a brief exposure to the sun in the backyard while I gobble up my dinner. (Today’s culinary adventure: cider and microwaved frozen burritos. Exciting, I know.) Learning a couple of new French words in DuoLingo, playing some more video games, yada yada yada.

It could be far worse, though: the gigantic explosion in Beirut, as well as its aftermath, is simply unimaginable. How on earth does one misplace 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate? Was it corruption? Incompetence? Both? Neither? I’ve read that the explosion was among the biggest non-nuclear blasts in human history. I’ve read that Lebanon’s economy is now destroyed. I’ve read many things, but I can’t even begin to understand what that must be like to go through so much strife, and stress, and violence, and the pandemic, and then have your capital city explode. This is a tragedy of such a scope that it’s impossible to fully grasp it. May it put our own petty struggles in perspective.

In covid news, it turns out a churchgoer in Ohio infected 91 others in one day. That is remarkable, an tragic, and was entirely avoidable. Dr.Fauci reports that his family has received death threats. Here is hoping none of those troglodytes actually follow up. And on a somewhat brighter note, Canada’s government has announced plans to invest a fortune into vaccine research, followed by distributing a vaccine (once a viable one exists) to Canadians.

Yay Canada. Yesterday, after I mentioned the latest update in my quest for Canada’s residence, I remembered something my AirBnB host in Palmer Rapids told me a week ago. A friend of his was about to go through the same PR application process I’ve described here in the past. Unfortunately, she couldn’t find any fingerprinting agencies that stayed open during the pandemic. Her work permit has expired, and now she’s in the legal limbo. I hope things work out for her… I mentioned that there was one place that stayed open (though with very strong anti-viral protocols) in Mississauga, a four-hour drive west of my host. He said his friend didn’t think to look that far out. Now she may have to leave, all for the price of a single day-long roadtrip. …raises a question, doesn’t it? How far would any of us be willing to go to fulfill our dreams? At what point do we stop looking, even though the solution may be just a bit farther away?

Tuesday night. Getting back into the groove of things with far too much ease, just like when I returned from the AirBnB odyssey on day 73-ish. Ho hum.

Today brought some objectively good news about my immigration process: the company’s lawyers have finalized my PR application and sent it off. At some point between now and February 4th, I should receive an update – hopefully one that would declare me an official permanent resident of Canada, eh. That’s certainly good news, but I’m just so worn out by the process at this point… (Reminds me of working so very hard to get a permanent full-time job at an Amazon warehouse after being a temp for six months. That was 10 years ago. When I finally got the coveted blue badge, I just sat there, satisfied and tired, as full-time employees in the breakroom congratulated me. Heh.) I wonder – and not for the first time – how different the world will be when that particular achievement gets unlocked.

And once I get my PR, I’ll be eligible to apply for Canadian citizenship just a couple of years down the road… I’ll be a proud Russian-American-Canadian in no time!

In covid news – and for once, not the American news, Australia’s state of Victoria has declared “state of disaster.” They’re entering a strict six-week curfew because of approximately 700 new covid cases. All in all, they had about 200 deaths. Granted, their population is about 1/13th of the US (25 million) but at this point, having 25×700 = 17,500 new cases per day would be a major win in the US. It’s impressive but also sad to see other, more functional countries take action while my former country is just shrugging this off. In another world, where I didn’t screw up my job interview, I would’ve secured my transfer to Australia in 2018. I would’ve lived through the massive forest fire of early 2020, followed by this six-week shutdown. That Aussie Grigory would’ve had an entirely different lived experience.

Back to the US, though: this interview between Trump and Jonathan Swan, an Australian journalist, really must be seen to be believed. If at some point in the distant future historians refuse to believe that Trump was a real person (or as bad as he was described), I hope the footage of this interview will survive. I hope the opposition party plays his “it is what it is” soundbite nonstop. He’s just… stupid. I don’t say that because I have different politics – I’m just calling it like it is. He’s irredeemably stupid in the same way that Carter was naive, and G.W.Bush was unprepared, and Obama was inexperienced. Just plain old stupid, arguing that the most important metric is the ratio of deaths to cases, even as more and more Americans get sick.

Someone online has joked that at some point, the White House will claim the US has the lowest ratio of covid deaths to acreage. While that’d technically be correct, it’d also be absolutely ridiculous – much like the way the Soviet Union used to brag that they produce more concrete per capita than any other country. So what, eh?

The US is in for a wild ride… Good luck, y’all.

Monday evening. I’m not entirely sure how one is supposed to celebrate Civic Day, so I did my best impression of a civil Canadian just in case. (Eh.)

Back to the mundane routine: a few hours of work and catching up on my emails, a load of laundry, etc. One of the many benefits of my comfy and adventurous vacation is all the different ideas popping into my head: I might have found a new hobby. If I succeed at it, it’ll make my life a whole lot more interesting. Just to keep from jinxing myself, I’m not going to describe what exactly it is – suffice to say, it’s creative.

Folks online have come up with an interesting term for what I’ve been doing in regards to covid: doom-scrolling. There’s always this idea that staying informed is a virtue, that being curious about the world around you is a fine and admirable trait. With hundreds of thousands of death, there’s no shortage of doom-and-gloom stories, and scrolling through all of them, if only just headlines… Yeesh. And yet, I want to keep track of what’s going on, if only so I don’t lose the thread of continuity. (Can you imagine explaining the world around us to someone who just got out of a seven-month coma? Yeah, good luck with that.)

So, here’s just a minor covid update: a bigwig from the Federal Reserve, one Neel Kashkari, claims that without one more long shutdown (four weeks, or ideally six), the US economy doesn’t stand a chance. The math checks out: if everyone tried really hard and stayed inside (again) for a month or so, the virus would be severely hobbled, if not defeated outright. The alternative – stretching out the current misery – seems easier on the surface, but it’ll cost a lot more lives and money in the long run. (Or even just the medium run.)

Of course, doing that would require the full cooperation of all fifty states and, most importantly, the White House… If Trump loses the election, and if he steps down peacefully, then maybe, just maybe, the Biden administration pulls the trigger and enacts the second lockdown in February 2021, six months from now. (Hopefully, I’ll become a permanent resident of Canada by then.) It just doesn’t seem likely that something on that scale would happen in 2020. Then again, I’ve been wrong before, and I’ll gladly be wrong on this as well.

To end on a positive note, here’s a mildly out-of-focus picture of an amethyst I found on my vacation. (I’ve brought back hundreds of little treasures like this one!)

Wednesday night. Today was interesting: I spent the first half of the day talking to my contracted lawyers about my permanent residence application: apparently, one reason it’s taken them so long to prepare it is my ~16 addresses over the past 10 years. Heh. However, they did make several mistakes that I had to identify and call out. With luck, the whole thing will get submitted by the end of the week.

I spent the second half of the day at the commercial mine – the Quadeville Beryl Pit. For just $10 CAD, you get secret directions to an unmarked mine: after parking and then walking for about five minutes, you can pick all the fluorite, quartz, and amazonite your little heart desires! (Other minerals are also there, but not as evident.) It’s a bit on the nose that I, an Amazon employee, collected a bunch of amazonite. Might make a ring out of it… Heh. The actual ground floor of the mine had very high radiation readings (yay Geiger counter!), so I skedaddled the hell out of there. Still found some nice shiny rocks, though.

While I was out there, finally using the shovel I’d bought before my vacation, I overheard some locals: looks like the CN dump pile near Bancroft is a real thing, and you really can find some gems that glow under the UV light. The plan for tomorrow is to explore that town, hang out past sunset, and find some of those gems for myself. Alas, the famous mineral museum is shut down due to covid. Ditto for the annual gem convention, the Gemboree, which takes place here. On the upside, my AirBnB host told me about a local legend – the woman who makes the best donuts in the world. I’ll be driving by the Bancroft farmer’s market on Saturday morning, and will be able to buy some of her famous donuts then. I’m more than a little curious about the hype.

The host also uncorked some of the cider he’d made earlier this year: it’s sour and tastes pretty good, and it also seems to have way higher alcohol content than the usual stuff you’d find on sale. Life is good.

In covid news: congressman Louie Gohmert has tested positive for covid after deliberately avoiding masks or any other safety measures. He announced the news to his staffers in person – once again, without wearing a mask. It’s unclear how many people he’s managed to infect thus far… Like the saying goes, “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” I have no sympathy for militant stupidity of this sort. I only wonder why the people of Texas kept re-electing someone like him. Is it the plain old “jocks vs nerds” issue where no one wants to vote for a boring brainiac? No hope for human race… (Or at least not the US part of it.)