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Saturday night. Spent the day hanging out with xgf again: she’s doing better but not great. She recently swallowed her pride and called the local volunteer group that delivers groceries to people with disabilities or compromised immune systems. (And she has both.) After the groceries are dropped off, you just transfer the total amount to the volunteer through Interac – a really cool (and free!) money transfer system everyone uses in Canada. I’m not sure if that group existed before the pandemic, but nonetheless, this is a great example of random acts of kindness in the world.

Xgf was also worried about catching covid and developing severe symptoms (to the point of not being able to get out of bed), since she lives by herself. Her frame of reference was some random person on Reddit, who said hospitals won’t admit you unless you’re in critical condition. My arguments to the contrary didn’t help, not even when I mentioned that a rural hospital in Quebec gave her top-notch treatment (including a brain scan) when she had chest pains. After 10 minutes of back-and-forth, I called Toronto’s health department.

The person on the other end of the line confirmed that treatment (such as it is) is available to everyone, and that hospitals will definitely provide help if the patient’s condition is bad enough. When I asked for details, she said that only 52% of ICU beds in Toronto were occupied. She also said that although 81% of acute care beds were occupied, there were always overflow options. That seemed to make xgf feel better, if only for a bit. She comes from a strange background… Just the other day, her mother (who moved here from Poland) said that a Polish surfer on Instagram (heh) said the virus was a hoax, and she believed him because he always such positive and heartfelt things…

It’s hard to describe the strange reality we’re living in, when surfers from landlocked Eastern European countries are listened to for their medical advice; where volunteers go grocery shopping and spend their own time and gas to help those in need; where there’s simply too much news for any one person to digest, and many end up reverting to their previous worldview and biases.

A couple of days ago, Ontario rolled out the plan for 10-person social bubbles. Your own family, plus another family, plus however many people it’d take to get to 10, can all hang out together – as long as nobody joins another bubble. If at least one person cheats on their bubble, and if one bubble develops a covid infection, the overlap may infect others. This isn’t something that can be enforced, and judging by all the large groups we saw in the local park today (it was picnic weather), many will likely ignore it. Still, as bad ideas go, that one isn’t too terrible. It’s an attempt to give some semblance of order to the chaos that would result if everyone just gave up. We’ll see how that plays out.

And meanwhile, only four weeks to go until my hopefully relaxing vacation. Just 20 business days, and they fly by so fast… In exactly 28 days, I’ll be sleeping in my rental car at some highway rest stop, halfway to Thunder Bay, the amethyst capital of Ontario. I can only wonder how different the world will be 28 days later.

Friday night. If I were less honest, I would’ve said how much I miss going out on a night like this – but, to be fair, most of my evenings before the pandemic were just like this: finish up work, play some video games, stream some TV shows, maybe read. The main difference now is that I’m saving a whole lot of time and money on my commute, and that I’m not going to the gym after I leave work. (I miss the gym…) And to be fair, after this whole mess ends, my routine will likely stay exactly the same, give or take a few minor differences. People always default to their baseline, eh?

I’m still celebrating the invitation to apply for permanent residence. That plan has been in the making over four years. Even in February 2016, I knew that a country that would even consider Donald Trump was a country that had something very wrong with it… I never could’ve foreseen his victory on technicality, or the mess he’d make, or the once-in-a-century pandemic. (I hope there won’t be another one like it anytime soon, but my hope could be wrong.) I tried transferring first to the United Kingdom, then to Poland, then to Canada, then to Australia, and then to Canada again. It took five tries and three years, but I made it out. And now, 14 months after I got here, I finally have the permanent residence within my grasp. It’s an indescribably amazing feeling, having your long-term stratagem play out just as expected.

…and meanwhile, in the US, approximately 1,000 Americans die of covid each day, but you wouldn’t know it if you watched most media. It’s almost as if people are fooled into thinking that all is well now, that it’s safe to come out, that the virus is behind us, just like a particularly persistent news story that just wouldn’t go away but finally left us at last. Part of it is just human nature: people are likely tired of waiting and self-isolating. Restaurants are open again, and the weather is great, and why the hell not, eh?

My own resolve wears thin sometimes: I would love to have some of those scrumptious Tim Hortons egg&bacon sandwiches, or go to my favourite Egyptian restaurant that’s just a few minutes away. And yet… That’d be a phenomenally bad idea, even if Ontario has just had fewer than 200 new cases for the first time in quite a while. Oh well. I guess I’ll just have to get better at making beans and/or eggs.

Enjoy the first night of your weekend, fellow pandemic peeps.

Wednesday evening. Another step closer to the weekend, eh?

I spent a couple of hours at a nearby medical center, getting a clean bill of health (hopefully, anyway) ahead of what I expect to be my Express Entry invitation to apply for Canadian residence. It wasn’t quite as bad as I’d expected: there were few fellow patients, and almost all of them wore masks. The only cougher was a maskless old man, but then again, that might have been a wheeze after climbing the stairs. The medical battery consisted of the usual cursory blood pressure and lung check, a TB X-ray (it tickled), and a fair amount of blood taken out to test for HIV. (What happens to the applicants who test positive, I wonder…)

One of the people prodding me was an archetypal snarky old doctor:
“Are you married?”
“Nah.”
“Good, that means you’re free.”

Heh…

The results should get uploaded within a few days, and with any luck, the Express Entry drawing in a few days will get me to the final step of the process. With my 522 score, I should be a shoo-in, but you never know.

Things are getting worse in the US: some reports claim that 83% of Arizona’s hospital beds are occupied. There are over 2,000 active cases in Texas. Canada ain’t perfect either: a family gathering in BC led to 15 new infections. On the bright side, scientists in Copenhagen developed a vaccine that works on mice. It’s far, far too early to celebrate (unless you’re secretly a mouse reading this on a tiny mouse laptop), but that’s a step in the right direction.

And now to stream more Walking Dead to pass the time in this dystopia…

Monday evening – another day, another loonie…

One of the stranger things about the current stage of the pandemic is the rapid rise of the stock market over the past few weeks. Even junk companies that have no positive news are getting swept up in the rally. (And that’s despite the announcement that the positive unemployment data released on Friday was flawed.) Part of that was due to the fact that some traders were shorting everything in sight, and they had to cover their positions. The bigger part is that there’s some irrational exuberance due to the US (as well as Canada) opening up for business once again.

I would be lying if I said the stock market rally didn’t benefit me, and I seldom lie. Still, some part of me wonders if all these hope-fueled gains will get reversed in just a month or two, once the second wave of covid arrives. In a way, it’s a bet: pandemic versus the future. If I side with pessimism, I should cash out and brace myself for more bad news. If I choose to be an optimist, at least just this once, I’ll ride the stock market’s rally into the bright tomorrow. To quote Robert Heinlein, “Don’t ever become a pessimist… a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.” I think I know which way I’ll go.

And meanwhile, even by the most basic official count, the US had more covid deaths so far in June than in the entire month of March…

Saturday night. Hung out with xgf again – normally, in a sane world, we’d give each other far more space after the breakup, but this world is neither sane nor normal. Aside from a gal pal and myself, she doesn’t have anyone else who can come over and spend time with her. (While wearing the PPR and maintaining proper distance.) This cognitive dissonance doesn’t make her a happy camper, but she needs human contact, and it’s the least I could do. We went for a fairly long walk through a semi-wild park in Toronto, had a homecooked dinner, and finished by going to a local gelato place. (She’d never had it before, and there was a high-ranked place right around the corner.) And, of course, video games. Lots and lots of video games.

When we drove past a few TTC train cars, we noticed something disturbing. Only one person on each train car wore a mask, and there were 15-20 people inside. If even one of them had covid and had a coughing fit… People still try to socially distance and wear masks in public, but there are bottlenecks that seem almost perfect for super-spreaders.

In other covid news: New Delhi’s crematoriums are getting overwhelmed, and they’re bringing back the old tradition of funeral pyres out in the open… Brazil has completely stopped reporting its official death toll and case numbers: earlier, they stopped covering that information in evening news reports. Now the government site is no longer being updated at all. Those are all just the official numbers that might not account for comorbidities, folks dying at home, etc… It’ll keep getting uglier. Right now, most of the news in the US and Canada is about the ongoing protests – and while that’s most certainly newsworthy, that drowns out all the other developments around the world. I have a feeling there’ll be some highly disturbing pictures or videos coming out of Brazil very soon.

Friday night. I don’t mean to come off as a guy with a drinking problem, but this was the third bottle of champagne in as many nights. Either the stock market is entirely irrational, or I’m a goddamn genius at stock-picking, or both. (Or neither?) Today I passe yet another threshold toward my main goal, and like I’d promised myself, that was a cause for celebration. (To quote a damn good movie, “when you break a promise to yourself, things can get a bit dicey.”)

It really is macabre that with everything happening elsewhere in the world, and especially in the US, I’m celebrating. Then again, it’s not like there’s much else I can do right now…

In covid news, the southern states that opened up (Arizona, Texas, Florida) are seeing ever-increasing number of covid cases. That was to be expected…

In personal news, the lawyer ferrets have submitted the permanent residency paperwork on my behalf. A week or so from now, I’ll find out whether I’ve been invited to apply for PR. And then… Then I wait up to six months for my application to get reviewed, but after that – that’s when things will really get interesting.

Happy weekend, my fellow plague-dodgers.

Thursday night, and yet another workweek’s almost done. Time flies by so fast when you work from home… No new faces or office chatter, just the same old environment. Not that I’m complaining, mind you: I’m saving plenty of time and money now that I’m not commuting.

Lawyers from work had a welcome update: they’ve finalized all my documents, and they’re ready to submit my permanent residency application. The next Express Entry draw is in a week, so this timing is perfect. Once I get an invitation to apply for PR, the rest should be a formality: wait a few months, and then I’m officially a Canadian. (And from what I understand, I’ll be able to apply for citizenship in April 2022.)

It feels ridiculously inappropriate to celebrate, but my investments have also being doing quite great. I’ve passed another milestone today. (I know, it’s odd to have two of them back to back.) More champagne to celebrate.

Xgf is adjusting to the basement life, though her sleep cycle seems to be affected by the lack of sunlight. She’s making up for the lack of social contact by organizing the hell out of that basement apartment, and doing things like comparison-shopping for the greatest planner/organizer out there. Hey, we all have our hobbies.

In covid news, some of the Las Vegas casinos reopened for business earlier today, at the strike of midnight. People were lined up to gamble, even though it was a Wednesday night. If you’re reading this further down the road, try to find Vegas videos dated June 4th, 2020. It’s downright surreal to see card dealers and dancers with their entire faces covered by masks. Interestingly, some of the early proposed designs didn’t come to pass: there are no plexiglass dividers between gamblers at the casino tables, and masks for customers appear to be merely encouraged, not mandated.

There’s more speculation on the nature of the eventual vaccine. Seems like every pharmaceutical company out there is trying their hand at it. It’ll most likely be a two-dose vaccine, with a month or so between the doses. (Covid may mutate fast, unlike, say, measles, which stays the same forever and requires just one shot.) I wonder if it’ll come out late this year or at the beginning of 2021…