Grigory Lukin.com

Tuesday night, Remembrance Day Eve.

Today was an unexpected anniversary: 150 consecutive days of learning French (and/or Spanish) on DuoLingo. Time flies when you’re hiding out from a poorly understood highly infectious virus! Who knows, maybe eventually I’ll be able to do French improv like this absolute legend of a guy.

Remembrance Day is tomorrow: it’s not a full official holiday in Canada, but we still get a day off at work. This holiday is huge here. I don’t go out much lately (because, you know, the plague) but I remember seeing a lot of folks wearing poppies on their lapels last fall. Thinking back, I can’t recall ever seeing anyone in the US do that, and I lived all over the country… Peaceful people, these Canadians. I wonder if that’s because they take deliberate steps to remember their wars, or simply because they never felt the need to fight their way onto the world stage like the US did ever since the Spanish-American War of 1898.

I’m becoming even more of a brain in a jar. Workdays get longer, there’s less time to myself, and there’s really no other outlet aside from work: no strangers to hang out with, no dates or group meetups… My 11th work anniversary is less than a fortnight away: in a way, that’s the longest relationship of my life. (Sad, I know. Bigly sad.) With nothing else to do, that’s the sole recipient of all my energy and creativity: even accounting for the fact that 2020 is a year filled with unpredictability, I’m still finding a lot of weak spots and money-saving opportunities for them. (Being a financial analyst/controller and all.) This might result in a promotion next quarter. We’ll see.

I’m currently binge-watching The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, and it most definitely lives up to all the praise. The casting, the acting, the fine attention to detail – it all comes together to make chess, of all things, an exciting topic for a TV show. (I wonder if that’ll set off yet another pandemic fad, with lots of new chess hobbyists playing with each other online.) A great, well made, and feminist show – five stars, two thumbs up, etc, etc.

In covid news, Vice President Mike Pence was about to go to Florida on vacation this week – but after the news got leaked, he cancelled his trip in a hurry. Normally, that wouldn’t be so bad, but he also happens to be in charge of the covid task force. At this point in the game, the task force is just a bad joke: the top doctors have given up on it, they hardly ever meet, and even a news junkie like myself can’t think of a single thing they did to fight the pandemic. Even so, that’s terrible optics when over 100,000 Americans get covid each day, and the town of El Paso, Texas, has to request 10 morgue trucks due to a spike in covid deaths.

…and in political news, Trump still hasn’t conceded to Biden, and appears to be fighting his loss in every way he can think of. His campaign is filing frivolous lawsuits, he’s sharing all sorts of conspiracy theories on Twitter, etc. Most worryingly, he fired his Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, as well as senior Department of Defense officials, replacing them with loyalists. Some folks online are concerned about a potential coup attempt, but that’s the same brilliant administration that couldn’t book a Four Seasons hotel. If and when they try something funny, they’re far more likely to shoot themselves in the foot – and nick their femoral artery in the process.

Stay safe out there, folks.

Monday night, a fine end to a fantastic day.

No boring personals news this time around – just the amazing covid-related stuff. Earlier today, Pfizer announced that their covid vaccine is 90% effective. That’s way higher than everyone’s original estimate (40-60%) and downright amazing if you consider that the virus is only about a year old. (Humanity can get shit done, but only if we really, really feel like it.) The phase 3 trial is still in progress, so there’ll be more to come.

It’s pretty funny: Russia couldn’t let westerners have all the glory, so they followed up with their own press release. They claim their Sputnik V vaccine is also 90% effective, but there are no clinical trials and no data, so they just expect us to trust them. Suuuuure, comrades. Putin might as well say that he has an amazing girlfriend but she lives in Canada, so we’ll never get to meet her. It’s rather sad, really.

The stock market had a ridiculous rally today, mostly due to the vaccine news, partly because Biden’s victory got finalized over the weekend. Frankly, I’ve never seen anything like this… Stocks in my porfolio have gone up by anywhere between 9%-39%. (That is not a typo. Yes, one of them went up by thirty-nine percent.) My portfolio’s performance is finally the right side up, eh. A few months ago, I invested in recovery: travel, tourism, commercial real estate, etc. I did not quite call the bottom on all of them, so there was some downward momentum, but once the economy fully recovers, my investments will double – or more. For now, I’m quite content with the knowledge that an awful lot of short-sellers ended up losing lots of cash today. And hey, my overall portfolio went up by 19.4% today. Like I said, I’ve never seen anything like this.

There will be more news later on. Pfizer’s competitors will announce their own vaccine efficiency rates. Pfizer will end their phase 3 and almost certainly get an emergency approval from the FDA. (Dr.Fauci said he fully expects the first vaccinations to take place before the end of the year.) There will be plans for recovery put in place. But there’ll also be more and more new covid cases, more deaths, more economic uncertainty. It’ll be a whiplash cycle of great and terrible news, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Sunday night. Yet another week closer to becoming a permanent Canadian, eh.

Today was filled with frugal low-key hedonism: snacking on random foods, not exercising (yay designated cheat day), playing video games… I spent over an hour of my precious weekend time trying to install an add-on for my MMORPG, Elder Scrolls Online. That was mostly unsuccessful. Is that a metaphor? It sure feels like one. In lieu of absolutely nothing, I’m going to finish the day by finally watching Downfall – the award-winning movie about Hitler’s last days as his empire collapsed around him.

I’ve had the first Skype chat in a while with xgf earlier today. She’s doing well, though her father has started marching around the house and literally yelling at his phone as he watches an endless stream of pro-Trump TikTok videos. He’s a Canadian and won’t be affected by Trump’s loss in any way whatsoever, but I’m guessing he took his idol’s downfall (heh) close to heart. Alas, xgf can’t afford to move anywhere else at this time… Her overall life is doing well, though, so good for her.

As for my romantic life: a few days ago, a local dude with a blank profile and a fetish for tickling people’s feet inquired about my availability. I declined his advances, put on my socks, and tried to view that in a positive light: there’s lots of diversity in this world, it turns out.

In covid news, the US has crossed 10,000,000 recorded covid cases. It’s hard to say how many there truly have been: testing was very nearly non-existent during the first months of the pandemic. We’ll never know the true number. Using the admittedly flawed methodology they do have, that last, 10th million had taken only 11 days… The new cases in the US keep increasing and setting new records with every passing day: each new million cases will come that much faster. You either understand exponential growth, or you get hit by it with the full force of an 18-wheeler as you jaywalk your way through life.

Stay safe out there, folks. If you’re in the US and stayed uninfected this long, your difficulty level will be progressively harder with every passing day, but you can do this, eh.

Saturday night. I’d pay a good chunk of change to know when my next weekend party will be. (Best case, four months out.)

The election nightmare is finally over. Now they’ll all get to take the weekend off before getting at each other’s throats again for the 2022 election. Ho hum. The most corrupt president in living memory has been defeated. That does call for a celebration. (In my case, an extra Tim Hortons meal and a day with no exercise.) Whoop-whoop.

But if you look just one level deeper… Trump received 7.6 million more votes than in 2016. People saw all he’s done, and decided that they want more of that, please and thank you. Biden was the most boring, most centrist candidate from the Democratic primary, and he ended up barely winning those last key states, with just a few thousand votes here and there. (I know, he got millions more votes overall, but we gotta play by the outdated system’s rules here, unfortunately.)

If not for the pandemic, of if Trump had been mildly more competent with his pandemic handling, or if someone even a bit more controversial than Biden had gotten the nomination, Trump would have gotten reelected. This was a victory, but a very fragile one, and one that shed light on some very disturbing truths that will not go away.

Sorry, y’all, but I’m going to remain in Canada – things are far from perfect here, but at least we don’t reward corruption with millions more votes after it gets exposed for all the world to see, eh.

In covid news, president-elect Biden addressed multiple issues during his first official speech. One of them was setting up a group of scientists and experts on Monday to brainstorm the best way to handle the pandemic. Unfortunately, neither they nor Biden will have any actual resources before the January inauguration, so even if they have a perfect plan, we’ll still get countless avoidable deaths between now and then… Ironically, Trump’s impromptu speech earlier today was held in the parking lot of a landscaping company, located between an adult bookstore and a crematorium. (I am not making this up.) I guess that’s a fitting end to his administration, whose motto in 2020 may as well have been “fuck off and die.” So it goes.

Wednesday night.

You gotta give America one thing: they know how to produce great entertainment. Somewhere out there, someone (or multiple someone) has probably been up for 39 hours straight, tracking the election results. That someone is probably pretty manic by now, and still has a few hours to go. (For the record: I am not that someone.) It’s still too early to call, with a lot of absentee ballots, mailed ballots, etc. The lead between Trump and Biden keeps widening and contracting. Biden seems to be the likely winner, but anything can happen. It’s all up to Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania now. It’s pretty funny that my old stomping ground, Reno, might decide the election.

It was pretty disturbing to see the footage of Trump’s supporters trying to break into the ballot-counting facility in Michigan, hitting the glass with their hands like so many zombies. Well, at least they’ve stopped pretending they believe in democracy, eh?

My landlords keep trying to engage me in political conversations, and I keep laughing that off, saying I’m a Canadian now and don’t really care. I’m still not entirely sure why they’re rooting for Trump – or care about the US election at all. Meh. I’m not really in the “older and wiser” category compared to my younger self, but I’ve learned enough not to get into pointless political arguments with those I live with.

I woke up and checked the news as soon as I woke up today and was disappointed to see there was no winner. Gonna try again tomorrow: if this mess finally ends, at least my social media feed will return to some sort of normalcy.

In covid news, Ontario’s premier Doug Ford (our own version of Trump) is in hot water after no one really bothered to read his 20-page powerpoint presentation, and everyone is equally mad at him. Under the new plan, there are five infection levels, and somehow, someway, that involves reopening businesses even as cases rise. (Nobody seems to understand why that includes karaoke bars, aka the riskiest potential clusters.) Restaurant owners are unhappy about the 9pm closing time and the yo-yo nature of closing/reopening. Epidemiologists are unhappy with the idea of reopening businesses even as cases rise. Everyone else is just unhappy in general. Heh. The guy tried to please everyone, and ended up pissing off them all instead. Just like the prisoner’s dilemma: instead of sticking to one strategy, he flip-flopped and got the worst of all possible outcomes.

In other, and far more disturbing, covid news: we may end up with covid-20. The virus has jumped from humans to rodents and back to humans, by way of minks. A dozen people got infected, and it looks like the potential covid-19 vaccines won’t help against this particular new strain, seeing as it downgrades the formation of ye olde antibodies. Denmark isn’t taking any chances and culling millions of minks. With luck, this will be just another bizarre development that goes nowhere. Unfortunately, luck is in short supply in 2020… Let’s just hope this isn’t our new normal, eh?

Taco Tuesday night. Yum yum. (Note to self: buy non-broccoli vegetables to avoid sad tacos again in the future.)

Whelp, the big election day is here. It’s looking like a tossup right now. Definitely not the landslide many people had thought this would be. Florida and Texas have gone for Trump. A burst pipe in Georgia has delayed the ballot counting. (Seriously, Georgia? You had four years and one job.) As always, I’m hoping for the best and preparing for the worst – or, rather, I’m already as prepared as one can be, having already moved to Canada and all.

I just find it so hard to believe that the guy who literally danced in front of crowds as hundreds of thousands of Americans died might end up getting even more votes than he did in 2016…

I’d thought I’d be all cool, suave, and detached about this process, but I’m just not sufficiently emotionally detached from the US yet, I suppose. The first two years in a foreign country are the hardest. I remember trying to find the Russian community in Reno, Nevada when I was 18 and all alone. (That didn’t really work out all that well.) It got better and easier as years went by. I stopped following Russian news or caring about their politics (beyond what you glimpse in headlines) ages ago. Someday, I’ll probably get the same way about the second country I left behind, about the US. Today is not that day.

We might know the end result of the election tonight. Perhaps tomorrow morning.

In covid news, the UK is allegedly preparing to start its vaccination campaign in December. No vaccine has been officially approved yet, but two candidates are about done with their clinical trials. (It takes a while to fully prepare the logistics for something like this.) The first doses will go to frontline healthcare workers and people over 85, as it should be. This is not just a success story but also a monumental scientific breakthrough: the virus itself is less than a year old, and this would be the fastest vaccine development in history. The geek in me is utterly blown away. The rest of me is just as excited: someone, somewhere, will get their vaccines in a matter of weeks. That means, logistical challenges aside, things are getting better and faster than I’d ever hoped. I’m clinging to this good news like a life raft, even as I know the vaccine may be imperfect, might not work at all, and might not make it to Canada as fast as to the UK.

Hope everlasting. Hope never-ending. Hope persevering.

Monday night. The 18-month US election circus is finally going to end.

Another grey day, hastened along by the succession of routine tasks, so familiar as to become automatic. Two differences, though: first, the weather has officially gone to shit, but the gusts of whistling wind beyond my window make life a bit more interesting. Second, the landlords’ teenager was coughing up a storm this morning… This is one of those fun games we’ll all be playing this year: cold, flu, or covid?

I miiiiiight have overreacted, but I spent some time shortly afterwards on AirBnB, looking up month-long self-contained rentals (no roommates, please and thank you) in the general Toronto area. (You get a discount if you rent for 28 days.) There was a pretty funny one, a 145-sq-ft microapartment which would make for a hilarious life experience if it hadn’t been priced as much as normal, human-sized habitats. A surprisingly cheap rental from a newbie host went to my “nope” list after he said there’s only street parking, and I might get a ticket after 11pm. There was a cozy and beautiful place all the way in Niagara Falls: reasonably priced, self-contained, with fast wi-fi and parking… The sole downside is that my trip to submit the biometrics data for my PR application would turn from a 30-minute roundtrip into a three-hour one. No bueno, eh?

I ended up not renting anything: I’m rolling the dice that the kid just choked on his soup or has a bad cold… After a certain point, running stops being a viable strategy. Sure, I could bounce out of here until early December, but none of the existing risk factors would go away. The kid would still keep going to school, one of the landlords would keep going to the office, and they’d still be holding small social gatherings every week. But then again, if vaccines get distributed, say, three months from now, then maybe, just maybe, I could go into hiding for that long. Paying rent for two places at once would suck, but not nearly as much as lifelong neurological damage. I’ll give it two more days: if the kid keeps coughing, then it’s not a fluke, and then it’ll be time to go into covid self-exile once again.

In mildly better news, I’ve gotten to the point of being able to do 30 chinups more or less in a row. Considering I started in low single digits just a month or so ago, that’s a huge win, eh. Just finished reading “A bridge of years” by Robert Charles Wilson: it’s an interesting sci-fi yarn with a unique twist on time travel, though oddly enough, not as engaging as the previous book, which I read in 24 hours but liked a lot less. Heh. Next up, re-reading the excellent “City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis” by John C. Wright. It’s funny: Kindle just told me I bought this ebook almost exactly five years ago. I’m curious to see my younger self’s highlights and notes from a different temporal perspective.

In covid news, the WHO’s director-general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he’s been exposed to something who tested positive for covid. He’s gone into self-isolation. If he gets it, it’ll be a strange omen. Incidentally, and for the record, the WHO’s current stance is against herd immunity. Just thought I’d point that out, given that they’ve been flip-flopping on this quite a lot. I believe the last time I mentioned the WHO, it was because one of their bureaucrats spoke well of the Barrington Declaration.

In other VIP covid news, it’s only now been revealed that Prince William has covid all the way in April, spent time in the ICU, and had difficulty breathing at one point. That news didn’t get shared with the rest of the UK, presumably to avoid panic. One can’t help wondering, though, how many deaths would’ve been avoided if folks knew that even a healthy VIP guy with excellent healthcare came so close to dying… Lies, good intentions, and obfuscation.

Despite my best self-assurances to the contrary, I just can’t turn away from a flaming runaway train that is the US politics. I’ll most likely spend most of tomorrow refreshing Trump’s twitter feed, if only to see his meltdown (or petty triumphalism, either/or) unfold in real time. Hey, what can I say, my threshold for entertainment is mighty low these days.

Sunday night. The first of yet another morbid month.

This ridiculous amount of time by myself has inspired me to dust off some old hobbies – or rather, things that I’d deliberately put aside because they’re just so damn addictive. This time, it’s the marvelous video game “XCom 2: War of the Chosen.” The plot is simple: evil aliens have taken over the world, and you’re in charge of the resistance in your stolen UFO. The combination of graphics, catchy music, and step-by-step strategy as you move your soldiers around… Let’s just say I’ve been known to spend multiple hours restarting the same mission just to get it perfectly right.

In pre-covid days, this game would easily gobble up several weeks’ worth of evenings, and a fair chunk of my weekends as well. Nowadays, it’s a very welcome distraction from, you know, everything.

The last votes in the US election will be cast in less than 48 hours. I’m curious, but not passionate – just emotionally removed, the same way you’d be if some TV show you didn’t really like released a new season. Things are heating up over there… In Texas, a bunch of yahoos in pickup trucks tried to run a Biden campaign bus off the road, while the police offered no assistance. (Biden and Harris were not on the bus.) As a result, several campaign events had to be scrapped, so the domestic terrorists won. They’re also organizing roadblocks in New York, which is frankly pathetic. If they lose (if the election doesn’t get stolen again, this time via courts), I can only hope they’ll stop these shenanigans. It’s not like the US doesn’t already have enough bad press to deal with.

In covid news, there were some giant Halloween parties in – you guessed it – the States. Two in New York totaled almost 1,000 people, while the big one in Utah had somewhere between 2,000-10,000 altogether. I can maybe possibly understand the Utah party, since the state didn’t have a giant first wave in the spring. But New York? The same city that had to use forklifts to stack corpses into refrigerated trucks just six months ago?.. I hope some anthropologists dive into this fascinating borderline-sociopathic behaviour. That’d make one helluva documentary. (“To party in the time of plague”?) The worst part, of course, is that while the event organizers might face some charges, all the partiers will just keep on going to underground raves and off-the-grid parties. That right there is why we can’t have nice things, eh?

Welcome to November, y’all.

Saturday night. My Halloween costume this year is “a Russian-American-Canadian who stayed indoors for 232 days.” It’s very niche.

Another cozy weekend day of doing nothing. Treated myself to 50 grams of frozen smoked salmon I’d picked up during the recent grocery run. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of the way it melts in my mouth. Absolutely scrumptious. (Free culinary tip: I don’t know how or why, but avocado and smoked salmon make for an amazing combination in a taco.)

I’m still hyped up on the news that my PR application is proceeding on schedule, with just about three months to go until I get it. Things will get quite a bit easier then…

In covid news, The UK has joined France and Germany with its own lockdown: it’ll last a whole month, and will begin on Thursday. It’ll be pretty strict and similar to the one in France: no haircuts or indoor dining, no going outside without a good reason, etc.

Belgium’s medical system appears to be on the verge of collapse. In at least one city, medical staff who got diagnosed with covid but aren’t symptomatic have been requested to keep working. About 25% of their staff have covid… That’s horrifiying. There is a finite number of medical professionals out there. I wonder if there’ll be some accelerated medical bootcamps to train average people to do the most basic and useful medical tasks. (Like the EMT school, only a lot more specialized.) It may come to that if things stay sufficiently bad sufficiently long. Earlier this year, some countries allowed medical students to skip their final exams and go straight to work. They may end up doing that and more as the dark winter continues.

As always, here is hoping I’m wrong about it. Happy Halloween, y’all…

Friday evening. Yaaaaaay.

This is the Halloween weekend. If not for the virus, I probably would’ve been out there – walking around in some self-assembled costume, celebrating, people-watching… This year, I imagine there are still some house parties, but the most relevant official event I heard of was a haunted drivethrough. (I literally laughed out loud when I heard about it.) I like to think that once this pandemic ends, I’ll never miss another opportunity to go out ever again. Then again, everyone returns to their baseline, so that self-promise probably wouldn’t last. On the other hand, you only get so many healthy years, and this damn pandemic has devoured one of them… Gonna have to be fractionally more festive and party-going from now on, eh?

Today was, for once, a bit different. Some good news at last: Service Canada called and set up my long-awaited biometrics appointment. (A very fancy way of saying they’ll take my picture and take my fingerprints. Heh.) The big day is just 13 days away. My company’s lawyers said the permanent residency application is still on track, and they’re still expecting me to get it by early February. Just three more months, just 14 more weeks, only 14 more blinks that take me straight to Friday night as I fast-forward through yet another grey and uneventful workweek… Hope is a dangerous thing. I want to be all cute and clever and say “I’m contemplating allowing myself to begin considering cautious optimism” but no, I really do hope, sincerely and fervently, that everything will work out just fine and right on schedule.

As one of my all-time favourite quotes goes, “Hope… Do not look down, my friend. Even in the darkest of times, there is always hope. Hope for a better day, hope for a new dawn. Or just hope for a good breakfast. You start small, then see what you can get.” Something I always try to keep in mind.

In covid news, the US has set yet another record, this time with 98,000 new cases in one day. Simultaneously, here is what the President of the United States of America said at yet another rally earlier today: “You know, our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID. You know that, right? I mean our doctors are very smart people. With us when in doubt, choose COVID. It’s true, no, it’s true. No, they’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s terrible what he said,’ but that’s true. It’s like $2,000 more, so you get more money. This could only happen to us”

…I’m glad I left. It’s interesting, in a rather macabre way. I used to think that just ahead of the election (which is four days away), Trump’s administration would introduce some fake or untested covid vaccines, and fool people just long enough to get their votes. (In this scenario, they wouldn’t care about any side effects, since they would have won the election by then.) In reality, though, they’ve ended up downplaying the pandemic, essentially calling it fake news, and celebrating some imaginary victory. A news release from the White House Office of Science and Technology claimed “ending the covid-19 pandemic” as one of the administration biggest scientific triumphs. It’s really beginning to sound like 40% of Americans live in some alternate reality, where covid is fake, the pandemic is over, and there aren’t 1,000 Americans dying every day.

Oh, and Idaho Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin just recorded an anti-lockdown video of herself sitting in a car, holding a gun and a Bible, and talking about inalienable rights. This whole thing is too absurd to be real, too stupid to be funny, too believable to be shocking. There are four days left until the election: if one of those idiots decides to orchestrate a covid-related October surprise, it’ll likely happen this weekend – assuming it happens at all.

Stay safe out there, folks, and especially you, my American amigos.