Tag Archive: travel


Feral Artist Nomad odyssey, part 5: the Ecuador Acquiescence

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November 26, 2025

The plan went kind of sideways. And upside down and inside out, but fun the entire time – and that’s what matters.

The flight to Quito got delayed more and more, to the point where my cleverly planned timeline (landing before sunset) got scrambled and we touched down in pitch darkness. The customs lady couldn’t quite comprehend the concept of somebody flying this far to work for free. (To be fair, my New York sister also had a hard time with that notion.) Fortunately, one of her colleagues had heard of Workaway, and I got waved through.

There were no buses running at that hour, only a $25 taxi to the motel near the bus terminal, and another $25 for the motel itself, once I convinced them a) that I wasn’t a vampire and b) to raise their metal barrier and let me in, eh. Mucho dinero hemorrhage, and within just an hour of my arrival in Ecuador. Ho hum.

Ecuadorian bus terminals take a bit getting used to: there is the Ticket That May Not Be Lost, and a tiny receipt with the gate QR code. Gods help you if you lose either one, eh. My high school Spanish returned surprisingly fast, aided by Google Translate and a pocket dictionary. I spent a few hours waiting for my bus to Manta (the west side of the country) by people-watching (so many vendors!) and staying in close proximity to my two backpacks. There were quite a few cops walking around the terminal, twirling their batons, but why take the chance?

Free pro tip: if you’re traveling across Ecuador, take the night bus, not the day one. The projected 8-hour journey took 11 hours total, largely because of the 40-minute breaks the driver started taking toward the end, when there was only one other passenger besides myself. From Manta (again, past sunset), it was a pricey taxi ride to the beach community of Santa Marianita, and to the guesthouse (which will remain nameless) where I was going to volunteer for about a month.

The place was fairly big and cozy: many hammocks, lots of books, 22 cats, three dogs, a nice 85-year-old lady who owned the whole place, one other volunteer, and a couple of long-term guests. There was also the guesthouse manager, a Scottish-American fellow who used to be a CEO in Colorado…

The five-ish hours of work, five days a week, were mostly easy, until they weren’t: lugging around big bags of gravel (about 80-100 lbs each) without any equipment was no bueno. Painting and varnishing the fences was a bit more fun. The ocean, just a few feet away, was the saving grace. The nearby town of Manta (described in guidebooks as “there is nothing to see here) could be reached by walking to the highway and flagging down a truck for about a buck. (Ditto for the return trip.)

I spent one of my weekends on a trip to Puerto Lopez, a very touristy town where I booked a trip to La Isla de la Plata (aka “The Island of Silver” aka “Poor Man’s Galapagos”) where we all snorkeled (wayyy outside my comfort zone, but fun!) and hiked and admired lots of blue-footed boobies. Those birds are too goofy to be real: they look like cartoon characters that escaped into our world. That tour was worth every penny of the $41 I spent on it, eh.

My volunteer adventure came to an unexpected end after just 18 days. Each Friday, the guesthouse’s owner hosted a restaurant night for all the local expats. Beer, burgers – the works, and for a fairly low price. The guesthouse’s manager utterly lost his cool when faced with a larger-than-normal crowd: instead of the usual 15 guests, he had 25. They were all slow-moving, slow-eating, and slow-drinking pensioners, but he treated it like a national emergency. Consequently, he treated us volunteers as if we were contestants on a British cooking show. He launched many an F-bomb at us volunteers when we couldn’t quite make sense of his rapidly changing plans for fork arrangements. (No, really.)

At the end of the night, when we too feasted on burgers and beer, I very politely asked him not to insult his volunteers again, please and thank you. He reacted by storming off, saying he’d had enough with me, and telling me to leave the first thing in the morning. Right around that time, he also shouted at the guesthouse’s 85-year-old owner. In front of witnesses. He then took off to do some drunk-driving around the neighbourhood.

While I tried to make sense of it all, he sent me a series of Whatsapp messages describing how serious he was and how much he hated me in particular. The room doors in the guesthouse were thin and flimsy… I barricaded my door with furniture and couldn’t fall asleep till 3am. I slept with two kitchen knives by my side: an overkill, perhaps, but when dealing with an irrational agent who had clearly had more than just beer, can you really play it too safe?

Morning came. He disappeared, perhaps unwilling to look us in the face. The guesthouse’s owner tried to assure me I could still stay, but with such limited space, and with no way to avoid the guy, it would’ve been one mighty passive-aggressive environment. I packed up, had my last free volunteer breakfast (bagels and eggs), and left town. I don’t stay where I ain’t welcome. Later, I heard that the other volunteers left soon after me, as did one long-term guest. The owner’s US-based daughter messaged me to get my side of the story. Not sure what happened to that manager, but meh, he’ll get his someday.

I hung out in Manta and (being a smarter tourist this time) took an overnight bus back to the capital, to Quito. Workaway has the option to search for the hosts who seek last-minute volunteers, and that’s how I ended up arriving at a vegan anarchist compound near the rainforest town of Loreto. (Which was another seven hours by bus from Quito.) There were no other volunteers here, just the two hosts and myself.

Their reforestation project was noble. The fruit trees and tropical flowers were beautiful. The sunset was lovely. I even got used to eating only bananas and quinoa, while using leaves for toilet paper. But… One of the hosts (the one I spent the most time around) started making jokes (plural) about genocide, followed by a racist joke I wish I could erase from my mind…

Life is short, and it’s important to be careful what kind of inputs you allow into your brain, your heart, your soul. The people you surround yourself with will always influence your worldview. That wasn’t the kind of influence I wanted… I invented a flimsy excuse (a volunteer meet-up in Quito) and bounced out after just two full days and two partial ones.

With my volunteer plans dashed to hell, I decided to just spend my last two weeks in Quito, at the high-rated (and, at just $8 a night, quite cheap!) hostel: Community Hostel in the historical district. It was, without exaggeration, the best hostel I’ve ever stayed at. The view from the rooftop was glorious, especially at night. The Basicilo del Voto Nacional looked like something from a Disney cartoon when it was lit up in the darkness.

Much partying and exploration followed. Ecuador is not a rich country, and foreigners are advised to stay indoors after sunset (because, ya know, vampires) and to avoid most of the city even by daylight. The hostel was just a five-minute walk away from the presidential palace, but there were three-way knife fights and domestic violence happening right underneath our windows almost daily. We watched, and could do nothing, and stayed indoors.

I write this as I pace the hostel’s rooftop deck, looking at the wide street below, covered with piles of trash and flimsy blankets where the most unfortunate Ecuadorians sleep on the sidewalk. As I write this, a homeless woman is urinating on a palm tree. …now she picked up a stick and started poking the homeless person trying to sleep.

Ecuador is a beautiful country, but (and I say this as an imperfectly informed outsider) its social and structural systems are broken. Crime is rampant. The air is polluted from all the vehicle exhaust. It’s particularly bizarre when one of the many local municipal buses drives past you and belches a giant cloud of black smoke into your face. The only drinking water comes from large water canisters that are delivered daily, by truck, along with metal cylinders filled with natural gas for cooking. Local entrepreneurs drive those trucks starting 6am, each with their own little tune playing at top volume. There is no postal service anywhere in Ecuador as a result of some government shenanigans a few years back: only delivery companies remain.

Ecuador’s nature is beautiful, though – at least the parts that are protected from developers. A two-day trip to Mindo resulted in a ride on a cable car, a nice little hike to several waterfalls, and a visit to a butterfly sanctuary. (I leveled up as a druid when I learned how to lure those giant butterflies on my hands and nose. Huzzah!)

But not all is gloomy. Ten days ago, there was a national constitutional referendum. The government banned alcohol sales for that entire weekend. (Though the ban wasn’t enforced all that well…) There were dozens of armed soldiers all over the capital, prepared for trouble. In the end, the people voted to protect the environment and to keep the US from setting up military bases in Ecuador. No violence erupted. I carry two passports on my person, so I showed only the Canadian one, just to play it extra safe.

This country can be so cheap… There are tourist traps that can and will charge you $15 for a mediocre meal. But there are also cheap local places, like my favourite breakfast diner, where a local grandma cooks only one thing – an avocado omelet. It comes with coffee and freshly squeezed juice, and costs just $2.50. Combine that with the dirt-cheap, overabundant fruit and cheap hostels (mine cost $8 per night for a dorm bed; others cost far less) – and you can live here long-term for very very little money…

Quito is beautiful if you choose to look only at the pretty buildings. Cathedrals, museums, murals, the occasional parade – just ignore the cops beating the hell of a fruit vendor lady who dared to push them back. Ignore the waitress with a knife scar extending from her mouth across her cheek. Ignore all the many, many people who are missing eyes or have broken noses. Ignore the walls upon walls covered with “missing” posters: all genders, all ages. Ignore it all and spend and smile and laugh.

Meanwhile, I’ve made a few buddies at the hostel during my two-week stay. They taught me a few neat tricks about low-cost travel. I’ve also resumed writing my ambitious novel featuring apathetic space aliens – and finished a rather snappy flash story (950 words!), while submitting it and others to anthologies and magazines. Glad I decided to bring my old netbook!

I’m typing this last part in Quito’s international airport at 10:33pm, waiting for the first of my three flights. This airport features the world’s most expensive duty-free store. (If I really do buy those five boxes of wine for $160, do I get to turn that plane into a party plane?) It also sells tiny bottles of coke for $5 a piece. There’s the world’s most puritanical Victoria’s Secret. Alpaca scarves that cost 300% more than my local souvenir vendors charged. (Incidentally, I got an excellent deal on a poncho a few days ago.) I’m munching on a $4 bag of Doritos in protest of this price-gouging.

Weird place, Ecuador… I don’t think I’ll visit it again. I hope the people retake control and make their country more like Costa Rica and less like Russia. They deserve stable, peaceful lives, as do we all.

And meanwhile… My initial plan had been to spend a month or so in a different South American country. (Peru? Argentina?) But a lady friend I’d met at a Montreal party almost two months ago (and have stayed in touch with) invited me to Tokyo, in exchange for symbolic rent, for as long as I want. When the universe sends you that kind of invitation, how can you possibly say no? And so, I found the cheapest airline out there (ZipAir: $238 for a direct Los Angeles-Tokyo flight!), spent a few hours double-checking all the details, and now I’m about to board the first of my three flights.

I’ll spend a total of 22 hours in the air, with a big 24-hour layover in LA, but it’ll all be worth it in the end. Plans change all the time, but my current best bad plan is to hang out in Japan until the film festival season kicks off in February, and then my nomadic odyssey will continue.

Here is to more vagabonding.

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Feral Artist Nomad odyssey, part 1

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October 5, 2025

The first part of my 2025-26 Feral Artist Nomad adventure is just about done.

It’s Sunday, and I’m enjoying the somewhat fresh air on a bench in the sun by the big bus station, awaiting the overnight bus that will take me from Montreal to New York and will depart in about seven hours. I’m quite sleep-deprived, but also happy with how things have turned out.

The big move on Tuesday, September 30th, was rough – but they always are. The two tall Ikea bookshelves were the hardest part, as usual. Driving the 15-foot Uhaul for three hours is a fascinating experience: it’s the closest that most of us will ever get to handling a tank. Montreal’s narrow streets and potholes were a bit of a challenge, and the truck may or may not have gone almost flying a few times. There were, fortunately, no cops in the vicinity.

It’s odd to know that everything you own can fit into a 5’x10’x8′ storage unit with quite a bit of cubic space left over. It’s secured with two padlocks and a magnetic card. I have no clue when I will access it next.

I spent five nights at the “Auberge Alternative du Vieux-Montréal” hostel, smack in the touristy part of town. Amazingly low prices, and you get used to the snoring of your dorm-mates eventually.

I swear I’m an introvert, but I made myself go out and attend events every night of the week. There was the literary open mic night, where everyone mourned the anniversary of their friend’s death, and where I performed my first-ever public reading of one of my short stories. (Some of the local poets and writers had grade-A material!) There was the weekly local writer meetup where only five people out of ~1,500 facebook group members actually showed up. They were an interesting bunch.

There was the karaoke party with a twist, where I met a fellow traveler, whom I got to know over the 36 hours that followed. My hostel bed probably wondered why I didn’t return. She’s flying back to Tokyo even as I type this. The bite marks make such beautiful mementos.

Exploring the city on foot is fun: always a lot to see, and my mental map of the place is slowly but surely populating. I’ve already found a popular local hole-in-the-wall that stays open till 2am. And a fun little store that sells random discarded Amazon items for a fraction of the price. I had to restrain my inner hoarder.

And now… I’ve put the last of my random and non-essential items into my storage unit (won’t need fancy dress shoes where I’m going) – I’ll start my one-man two-week film festival circuit very very soon. After that, straight to Workaway, probably. My clothes, fancy camera, non-fancy netbook, and harmonica are in my bulging Osprey backpack. My brand new CouchSurfing account has already secured me one couch in Colorado, for an overnight visit to Grand Junction.

Aside from the lack of sleep, I’m as ready as I can be. Let’s do this, eh.

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Onward to Worldcon

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August 12, 2025

Typing this up at 1:40am before catching some Zzz’s, a bit of packing, more than a bit of Tim Hortons, and a bus to the first of the two flights to Seattle, to the 2025 Worldcon.

This will be my first Worldcon and almost certainly not the last. I got here in such a roundabout way, too… Months ago, I was dying of boredom (a bit of a recurring theme, that) and, after playing with filters on FilmFreeway, I stumbled on Worldcon’s first-ever film festival. It hadn’t been advertised, and so it was just pure chance that I found it at all. Submitted my short film. Got accepted. Started thinking that if I’m going to attend in person, I might as well get the full week-long membership, not just the complimentary one-day ticket… And that’s how it came to be, eh. Life is a yarn ball of coincidences.

I’ll be in Seattle for six full days, at least four of which will feature post-Worldcon parties, and the sixth will have a barbecue right after a hike up one of the local mountains. (With a handful of other Worldcon attendees.) That should be fun… For extra fun, I’ll try to get up at 6am in order to be at a coffeeshop meet-ups (and one SFWA breakfast!) at 7-ish in the morning, for a chance to geek out with fellow SFF fans before the hustle and bustle of the convention.

On the off chance you’re reading this and have not yet finalized your Worldcon program – hey, come check out my film! Thursday, noon, room 331. It’ll be my third real-life screening, and it’ll be every bit as terrifying and exciting as the first two, I’m sure.

My sole regret is that I won’t be able to attend every single Worldcon panel – there are so many of them, and some of the really amazing-sounding ones overlap. Where’s a time-turner when you need one, eh?

This will be, without a doubt, the geekiest week of my life. Exactly 168 hours from now, I’ll be napping in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport before my morning flight back to Quebec City: the first of many attempts to pay off the sleep debt I’m going to accrue in the coming days.

Can’t wait, eh.

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Losses and wins

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June 3, 2025

My desert adventure ended early. I wrote about it in depth on my trail journal. Short version: my legs got several injuries, the trail was a lot less developed than advertised (at least 10% included walking on the side of a highway…), and it was soul-crushingly lonely. It was considered normal to walk 3-4 days without seeing another human being. This year, in particular, there was a shortage of hikers, especially from other countries. (Probably due to the politics and the ongoing harassment of foreign tourists.)

The loneliness bit may have been partly due to bad luck. There was one experienced hiker (she’d done the Triple Crown (hiking all three major trails) twice) who managed to form a trail family of eight people around her by the time she reached the first town, 83 miles from the border. Impressive, that. Others ended up walking outside such bubbles.

The desert was beautiful, though… I’d never seen the Milky Way so bright, not even in the Sierra-Nevada mountains during my PCT thru-hike in 2022. Along the way, I explored the ghost town of Old Hachita – or what’s left of it. Those ruins were some grade-A Wild West Americana.

In the end, I made it 155 miles before calling it quits in Silver City, NM. The downtown Palace Hotel was incredibly hiker-friendly, and there were quite a few of us there. Many were recovering from their own injuries, most of them less serious than my own. It was a bit like a hiker-trash field hospital in that respect. My initial (and very very ambitious) plan had been to do the entire Triple Crown by completing the Continental Divide Trail this year, followed by the Appalachian Trail in 2026. But over at that hotel… Yeesh. Yeesh, I say. Multiple thruhikers (who had saved the CDT for last) I met would complain about how much they disliked the AT, and how they were forcing themselves to do the CDT.

I listened to their woeful laments, and nodded, and sympathized – and also asked myself, “Self, is that what I sound like?”

There comes a point when pursuing an overly ambitious quest becomes not merely eccentric or quixotic, but self-destructive, with not much fun along the way. A lot of that desert section was beautiful, and I met some unique and interesting people, but hiking on the side of the highway, alone, with coal-rolling trucks spewing exhaust in my face… That doesn’t count as a “National Scenic Trail” in my book.

…though to be fair, if my legs hadn’t decided to fall apart (should I have done more ThighMaster exercises beforehand?..), and if it had been just a bit less lonely, I might have carried on, if only out of sheer stubbornness.

Ah well.

The unplanned return back to Quebec was pricey: a flight from Silver City to Albuquerque (a very cheap, very tiny propeller plane; great experience!), from there to New York, and from there, an all-night bus back home. My apartment lease was still good until June 30th, so that’s where I’ve been for the past two weeks. No furniture (still in storage), only my sleeping bag, the contents of my hiking backpack, and a big bag of “welcome home” stuff I’d packed away for easy access. (The initial plan had been to finish the hike, get an AirBnB, and hunt for apartments.)

It makes no sense to hire a moving truck, move my stuff back here, and then move it back to my new apartment (just found one) on July 1, soooo here I am, trapped in the midst of strange logistics. Just an empty studio, a sleeping bag, a few books, my phone, and my laptop. (I use the phone as a hotspot when I need to do laptop-specific things.)

It’s a hilarious parody of a bachelor’s life (though fortunately, my girlfriend was glad to see me back early!), but on the upside, I’ve gotten quite a lot done. I’ve already finished a couple of new short stories, caught up on a lot of reading, and done some other productive stuff. If I’d returned to my TV, gaming computer, and unlimited internet, my productivity would’ve been a whole lot lower, eh.

I’ve got some good news, too. I always juggle a lot of different projects, and a few of them paid off:

My essay “A Hierarchy of Apocalypses” has been published in Phano, making it my first-ever non-fiction sale. (I’m not including my Kindle e-books.) Also, the pixel art the editor had picked to go with my essay is a thing of beauty.

“If Time Travel Were Possible…” (a short story set in my OTTO-verse) has been published in Black Cat Weekly, which also resulted in my first-ever fan mail!

“Murder of the Orient Express” (of, not on!) has been published in Pulp Asylum. The title is a bit of a funny story: a couple of podcast hosts had a blooper moment when they mispronounced the title of that classic novel, and they laughed it off. But that got me thinking… Who would want to kill an actual train itself? Why? And how? And thus this story was born!

…and I have a few more waiting in the wings.

It’s a bit funny: in the short-story biz, an “emerging writer” is defined as someone who has three or fewer publishing credits. I guess that makes me an emerged writer, eh?

One particular cool piece of news is that my short film, “Please Don’t Send Help,” got accepted by the first-ever Worldcon Film Festival! Worldcon is the biggest annual sci-fi convention in the world, and this will be their first addition of a film festival alongside all the author-related events. This year, it’s held in Seattle, in mid-August. I’ll get to attend it for free for one day when my film screens, and it’ll be a fun experience, being there as a sci-fi creator, but not (or at least not yet) a published novelist. Just like with my one-day visit to the New York Comic Con last October, I’ll have to make the most of it!

And speaking of film festivals… I’ve got at least two dozen major film fests I’ve applied for. (Why yes, I do have a problem.) All of them are famous for their hospitality, hard to get into, and/or will get me sponsored by Quebec if I get picked. That’s mostly for the European festivals, but I really like my odds with the Finnish Tampere fest! We’ll see.

If even a few of those festivals accept me (and I submitted four films to each one, to boost my odds), that’ll result in more partying within a single year than in my entire life up to this point. All those submission fees have cost me a pretty penny (even with the carefully timed early-bird discounts), but a) parties! and b) unforgettable experiences and c) possibly new grand adventures stemming from those new connections?, and d) once you get accepted, you usually get a lifelong alumni discount, meaning no more fees ever again.

And so, while my dream of becoming an elite professional thru-hiker has gone bust, the upside is that I’d be able to attend my film’s screening at my dream sci-fi convention (that would’ve been impossible if I kept hiking), and I’ve used all this free time (and utter lack of distractions) to double-down on my artsy endeavours. Let’s see how this plays out, eh?

…there’s a distinct possibility that a year from today, I’ll be completely frazzled, drained of energy, filled with way too many conflicting and overlapping memories of far too many events (what folks in the biz call “the festival brain”), but that kind of fatigue will be a good problem to have – or, as I call these things, #GrigoryProblems

I hope all y’all are about to have a fun summer too!

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Year in review: 2024

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January 8, 2025

2025 isn’t getting any younger, and I suppose I should continue this little tradition I’ve started…

2024 was a weird year for me. It was the third full year of my early retirement – the fourth if you include the seven months of 2021. I’d thought it’d be a quiet sort of year: no thru-hiking, no full-time French classes, just helping my gf move all her stuff (so much stuff!) to her new place in the middle of the summer. I’d underestimated how wacky that year would be.

I haven’t blogged a whole lot, so this post will be a bit fragmented: a bit about everything.

The eclipse

In April, Quebecers got the unique opportunity to observe the total solar eclipse: it was almost next door to us. Here in Quebec City, folks would’ve caught just 97% of it, and would’ve missed the totality. It was rather disappointing to learn how many of my local friends chose to stay here rather than drive just two hours east to catch the full 100%. (Work was no excuse: no work was done at all on that day.) That was an unexpected sort of litmus test to see which of my compadres had the potential to become an adventurer. Oh well.

I joined a local group of hikers and carpooled with them: we drove to, and then hiked on top, Ham Mountain. There was no ham, though. Or ham-related puns. Shame, really – such a missed opportunity.

The totality itself was… Magical. It was simply magical. If you’ve never seen it, you wouldn’t believe me. You can look at all the pictures and videos in the world, but they will not prepare you for that magical, otherworldly moment where the sky turns black, the sun becomes safe to look at, becomes a solid black disk, and tendrils of white light whirl all around it. Even knowing all the physics of what was going on, I was shocked, stupefied – and, on some deep animal level, a little scared and more than a little awed. Natural wonders of that caliber used to inspire myths and religions in the olden days…

Citizenship

I became a Canadian citizen just a few days before the eclipse! That was a busy week, eh. I’d moved here in March 2019, and became a full-fledged citizen just over five years later. If I hadn’t left on my big PCT adventure, and if I’d done the math a little better, I would’ve gotten it even sooner than that. Canada’s immigration system isn’t perfect, but it’s so much faster than the American system.

The citizenship application itself was pricey: somewhere around $800 CAD, if I recall correctly. They sent me a free booklet with all the information about Canada’s history that might appear on the test. The citizenship test was done online, and it was pretty funny… You had to answer at least 15 out of the 20 questions, and you had 40 minutes to do so. I got 20 out of 20, and it took me exactly two minutes. Heh.

The citizenship swearing-in ceremony was done entirely online, which was disappointing, and didn’t feel quite real… My US citizenship ceremony, back in 2011, took place in a courthouse, and even though the judge kind of fumbled it, it still had that saccharine, Disney-ish, smiles-all-around feeling and good vibes. When you do the same thing over Zoom… Yeah, no, sorry, it’s just not the same. We have covid vaccines now, so there’s no logical reason for such precautions, but I suspect we won’t get real-life ceremonies back anytime soon.

There were about 160 of us, connected into one big video chat through our webcams at home. Some folks went all out with Canadian-themed decorations and balloon displays in the background. (I had my giant Canadian flag hanging behind me.) The ceremony would get disrupted all the time by folks forgetting to mute their microphones. After hours of speeches (in English as well as French), we all raised our right hand, recited the oath in English and then – very haltingly – in French, and sang the Canadian anthem, karaoke-style. (Or at least tried to. 160 people trying to sing in unison was pretty funny.)

The funniest, most Kafkaesque part of the ceremony was the picture-taking bit. It’s important for folks to have at least some sort of memento from such a huge event in their life, so the judge posed for pictures on her end of the video chat and told us we could take selfies with our computer screen. She then sat immobile for a solid minute, adopting several different grins and smiles. (But no thumbs up.) That was weeeeird, y’all.

Eventually, the ceremony was over, and we logged off, and I applied for my Canadian passport. The processing time is so much shorter… A couple of days if it’s an emergency, or just a couple of weeks otherwise. This is my third passport, in addition to my American one and the expired Russian one. It looks a whole lot less aggressive than the US passport: no pictures of angry eagles, no quotes about war or bloodshed. Instead, it has cute pictures of moose and beavers and other Canadian symbolism. Neat, eh.

Creative endeavours

In early 2024, I finally completed “Time Traveler’s Etiquette Guide” – my sci-fi novel I’d started wayyy back in 2015. Ironically, it took the soul-crushing full-time French classes at the local community college to spur me into action. I didn’t want to feel like I wasted even a day of my life, so each evening, I spent an hour studying genetics (a fascinating topic!) and another hour writing my novel. And it worked!

I gave it a few months, did a bunch of edits, trimmed the length down from 106K words to 103K and ultimately to 99K, and entered the query trenches to find myself a literary agent. That’s a whole different story…

Bad news: no luck yet. Good news: I have my full manuscript with five literary agents, and now I have my toes and fingers crossed. But even if the answer is a resounding “no,” that still won’t be the end: the next stage would be contacting small publishers. Someday, my novel will get published. It’s only the details that are vague and fuzzy.

Along the way, I prepared a full outline for my non-fiction book – a tell-all memoir about life at Amazon. (Currently sending out tentative queries.)

After one agent replied with a “schmaybe” to my full manuscript, they also gave me an idea for a Young Adult novel that deals with one of my areas of expertise… That secret project is almost done – 62,000 words in, and only six chapters left to go!

Also, a pro tip: don’t wait for a muse to come and find you. I tried that with my YA novel, and the result was equal parts hilarious and miserable. I’d sit down, write a bunch of new words (the first draft doesn’t need to be pretty; it just needs to exist), and then I’d walk away from the novel for several weeks. That resulted in very slow progress. A month ago, I sat down and outlined what I actually wanted to tell in the rest of the story, and how that would break down by chapter, with a quick synopsis thereof. It’s embarrassing how much that helped me: now all I need to do is sit down, consult the next chapter’s synopsis, and just write. I’ve been knocking out anywhere between 1,000-5,000 words per day, and it feels amaaaazing. The first draft will be finished quite soon. And then… And then we’ll see.

I need to get better and more organized about writing my sci-fi short stories: I have a few, and I feel like I’m getting better, but – yeah – the muse syndrome again. I did get one of them published, though! “How to Prepare for Time Travelers in the Workplace” appeared in Ruth and Ann’s Guide to Time Travel, Volume I. It was a 1,000-word flash fiction story, and the payout was $10, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I am now a published author, huzzah! The anthology is out in print and on Kindle. It has been nominated for several awards, so we’ll see how that plays out. Meanwhile, I keep writing more stories and submitting them to online publications… Allegedly, there are far fewer short-story markets now than way back in the day. I like a challenge.

Along the way, while I was devouring all the advice on finding literary agents, I found one particularly interesting tip: branch out into other media to get more spotlight on your book. That meant writing editorials, or creating art, or making films… And so I asked myself, “Self, what exactly is stopping us from making a film?” Sure, there are lights and cameras and actors, but what if you could find a shortcut?..

That’s how I ended up using public-domain footage (including from NASA’s archives), public-domain music, and an incredibly talented British voice actress from Fiverr to make my debut short film, “Please Don’t Send Help.” I wrote the script (all 167 words of it), taught myself video editing (OpenShot is free and pretty great!), and spent a lot of time splicing it to make it perfect. The final budget was $15 USD: $10 for the voice talent and a 50% tip.

The end result is beautiful, even if it’s just 2.5 minutes long. I submitted it to the Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival, and made it all the way to the final round! I’m waiting to hear back from a few more film festivals, and I’ve completed (or almost completed) a few more films with public-domain footage, which will go to even more festivals later this year… Mwahahaha.

Travel

I didn’t get to go on a big thru-hike in 2024, but there was still a lot of traveling! In February, I went to hang out with my sister and her family in New York – and ended up in the audience of Stephen Colbert’s show along the way. (Great guy!)

A very fun and exclusive recurring party (which, unfortunately, went out of business a month ago) had me coming and going to Montreal quite a lot – huzzah for rideshare! One of those times, late at night, our driver was falling asleep at the wheel, squeezing a candy wrapper over and over to keep herself awake… I was even more tired than she was, or else I would’ve asked to take over the wheel. In some alternate universe, we probably crashed into the oncoming traffic.

July had the Montreal Comic Con. It was fun, but surprisingly more conservative than the Comic Cons I’d attended in the US. In particular, cosplay consisted almost entirely of online-bought costumes. How weird is that? The highlight of the event was Giancarlo Esposito, who gave us two hours of his time as he answered questions and participated in a celebrity panel.

September had a two-week trip to Seattle to catch up with my family and put my suburban condo on the market. That did not go well… It’s still on the market, and the whole thing is mighty ridiculous, as usual, but at some point this year, I just might free myself from that ridiculous source of stress in my life.

October had an unexpected trip back to New York, to attend the Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival in person. It was small but extremely welcoming and hospitable. My film was screened in front of a live audience, and it was beautiful… Afterwards, a professional actor approached me outside the movie theater. She spent the next 90 minutes telling me how much she loved my imagination, and that did dangerous things to my ego… (Her boyfriend – the director of her film – was chatting to his own fans right next to us, so no, it wasn’t that kind of admiration, you bunch of perverts.)

While in New York (crashing at my friend’s place in the Jamaica neighbourhood of New York City), I accidentally found out the annual New York Comic Con would take place the same weekend. I managed to snag one of the very last remaining Thursday tickets, and wow – that was one overwhelming day. I blogged about it earlier over yonder.

There was so much travel that month – including picking up gf from her flight in Montreal – that at one point, over the course of five days, I woke up in two different countries, in three different cities, and in five very different places. (Those places included someone’s carpet, as well as a parked car.) That was exhausting but so, sooo much fun.

Life weirdness

Weird and improbable things happen to me quite often, and I’ve made peace with it. Unless I’m forgetting anything…

There was a ridiculously incompetent French teacher at my community college… In 2024, she hired lawyers to send me a cease-and-desist letter in response to a long blog post I made in November 2023. Apparently, she saw it when she googled her name. Heh. The letter was 10 pages long, entirely in French, and demanded I delete the offending blog post. I did so, and replied with just “LOL OK.” I hope they hired a translator to decipher that, and billed her extra for that service.

In February, a cop tried to barge into my apartment at 4am while not following any official protocols – such as, say, identifying himself as a cop. In my sleep-deprived state, I assumed that was a burglar pretending to be a cop, especially when he took out the skeleton key and started trying to unlock my door… There are moments in life when you suddenly realize what kind of person you truly are. At that moment, I learned something about myself: I’m okay with the idea of using violence, at least in self-defense. As my lock rattled and turned, I stood in the door’s blind spot, holding my trusty ice axe in one hand and a sharp knife in the other… If he had actually managed to unlock that door, things would’ve gone very badly for him. (I was quiet. The lights were off. He expected an empty apartment.)

Afterwards, I learned that the cops responded to a domestic violence call, couldn’t find the exact apartment the noise was coming from, and kicked down at least one wrong door by mistake. I escalated to the local ethics commissioner, which resulted in a long process that led exactly nowhere. Ah well, at least I made that particular cop’s life a bit difficult. Incidentally, now I understand why so many people in Quebec City hate the police.

Last but not least – I was attacked by (and then fought off) a gang of feral teenagers. Gf is more optimistic about the human nature than I am: when someone replied to her Facebook Marketplace ad and offered to pay her more than she was asking for her old iPhone, that sounded odd. When they set the meeting place in a local park after sunset, that was strange. When they kept changing the meeting location, that was just a giant red flag. She sent me there in her car, holding her phone in my hand, on speakerphone, calling me paranoid when I said that was clearly a trap.

Reader, that was clearly a trap. They were expecting a short, slim woman. They got a tall, hairy, broad-shouldered guy. I stood there, underneath the single streetlight, yelling the name of the owner of that anonymous profile that set up the meeting. Finally, the teens loitering nearby said it was them, and they proceeded to waste an hour of everyone’s time as they tried – and failed – to trick me into surrendering the iPhone while pretending to ask about its settings, battery life, etc. Finally, the gf had enough of that, gave them a one-minute countdown, and told me to head home – the deal was over. I put her phone in my jeans pocket, and was just about to apologize to the teens, when one of them pushed the heaviest teen right at me…

There were five teens, all around 16 years old, and quite overweight, and that impact knocked the air out of me. I stumbled, but I didn’t fall.

…I go through life deliberately trying to appear harmless, non-creepy, and non-threatening. That involves body language, smiling much more than any Russian is comfortable with, etc. In that moment, all of that went out the window. I straightened up, extended my arms (imagine Frankenstein’s monster, but hairier), and shouted “PAS COOL! PAS COOL!!” (“Not cool”) at them. They jumped on their bicycles and fucked off into the darkness. The gf was mortified afterwards, and extremely apologetic. Ever since then, all her marketplace meet-ups happened in crowded public places, and in broad daylight.

Miscellaneous

This is getting a tad longer than I’d anticipated, so just a few more observations.

Trump won. Again. He’d gotten 63 million votes in 2016, 74 million votes in 2020, and 77 million votes in 2024. Looks like America has spoken… There are still 12 days until the inauguration, and his coalition is already falling apart, partly because of Elon Musk, partly because the architects of Project 2025 are openly gloating about their plans. Trump himself keeps not-quite-joking about annexing Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal – using the military if necessary. There’s a really good chance nothing will come of it. There’s a greater-than-zero chance this will shatter the NATO.

The AI bubble looks like it’s about to burst. OpenAI is trying to convince the UK government to let them feed all the copyrighted books into the maw of their plagiarism machine. The new iteration of ChatGPT seems to be especially useless, since they no longer have enough new data to feed it with. The internet is swarming with bots that use ChatGPT to generate the most banal platitudes imaginable, which they then post on social media, pretending to be humans. Goddamn creepy is what it is. All the earlier headlines praising the AI success were significantly overblown, and rightfully should’ve had gigantic asterisks. When the AI bubble pops, it’ll take the tech sector down quite a bit. Should be interesting.

Last but not least: it took a while, but the CEO hunting season has officially begun. On December 6, Luigi Mangione (allegedly) shot and killed Brian Thompson, the CEO of the biggest and most hated health insurance company. Luigi is a folk hero now: he’s being charged with terrorism, which is in stark contrast to all the school shooters who got taken alive and never got that charge. Priorities, eh?

Weird year, 2024. Weeeeird year. 2025 will have a lot more hiking, more film festivals, and maybe even a book deal! Here is to more adventures.

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Still traveling, eh

Filed under: wanderlust — Leave a comment
August 24, 2021

Well, that was fun. I am, indeed, still alive and well, though the multitasking Russian Lyft driver in Huntington Beach almost killed me when he decided to take a left turn into the oncoming traffic. Ahh, California…

It’s a strange and wild idea, but I might have temporarily overdosed on the whole travel thing. Thirty-seven days and seven cities, with new people, experiences, places, or just plain old airports, every single day. Even though I’ve been back for 23 days, it feels like my brain is still processing all those inputs. Every so often, I get a random flash of something I did or something I saw during my gigantic revenge vacation, and all the pleasant memories flood back: all the old friends I hung out with, the bars I hopped, the museums I saw, the old haunts revisited once more. (Rest in peace, Harrah’s casino.)

In no particular order…

I found a town that was filled with nothing but touristy souvenir stores, one of which attempted to print out every single motivational Instagram slogan on pillows and hanging signs. That proud town of Snohomish, WA also featured a huge antique store that was definitely bigger on the inside than it had appeared on the outside. I may have gone overboard and bought six antique cameras that I then lugged in my backpack all over the continent for the following month. Heh. I confirmed that cider doesn’t exist outside of the Pacific Northwest: Nevada’s casinos didn’t have any in stock (on tap or in bottles), and a cornered bartender finally told me that’s because the entire beer supply chain is severely disrupted. Oof. Just… oof.

Reno’s casinos got mostly consolidated after Eldorado took over just about everything. One of their few remaining competitors, Sands, was so understaffed that they had to shut down all their table games at 1am. (If that’s not horrifying, I don’t know what is.) The week in Nevada, split between Reno and Vegas, was a strange blast from the past, an opportunity to over-indulge (I mean, way over-indulge) in all my vices. How strange to think that I’m still very much the same person who left the state in 2013. The Strip was as full as ever, though the roaming showgirl duos replaced the water peddlers and the “massage” card distributors. I did the most cliché tourist thing imaginable and paid $100 to go to a gun range that offers multiple types of firearms. (You know, like in the “Big Short” movie.) I can definitely see why people get so addicted to their shotguns and semi-auto rifles: addictive, and powerful, and dangerous.

Portland was filled with beautiful wacky-haired tattooed people. That city, unlike any other I’ve ever been to, may as well be the setting of Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. (Sorry, Toronto, but you’re just not hip enough.) In some other world, I might have visited Portland and fallen in love with it and maybe even moved – but meh.

I spent several nights wondering through Vancouver’s tourist-trap district, following random noises, but never did manage to find any live music. All the karaoke bars listed on Google Maps were shut down. I did go on a whale-watching trip, though: deep inside, I’ll always be a broke 19-year-old college student, and that was more expensive than I was comfortable with, but damn, that was worth every penny. Seeing those giant beautiful creatures in real life, just 100 or so yards away, was majestic. Not unlike the time I rode an elephant at a Tampa Renaissance fair: the experience turns the animal from something you’re theoretically familiar with (like anteaters, or ostriches, or Wisconsin) and turns it into something far more real and tangible.

I stayed in a Vegas hotel (Treasure Island, to be precise) for two nights after cashing in some of my M-Life app reward points, and now I can sort of understand why people pay the top dollar to stay at those resorts – as opposed to, say, finding dirt-cheap AirBnB accommodations. Next time, whenever that may be, I just might stay at one of the low-key casinos in the Fremont district. I’m quite impressed that my elaborate plan of checking out of the hotel, dropping off my giant heavy backpack at a 24/7 bail bonds agency, checking into a seedy AirBnB (the check-in instructions explicitly asked not to bleed or jizz on the carpet because the cleaning fee wasn’t high enough to cover that), partying it up the whole next day, and packing up my backpack 36 hours later, at 1am, actually worked. There were a lot of moving pieces there, and while that worked out perfectly, I definitely won’t do that again. Great proof of concept, but for the price of all the running around, I may as well have bought that third hotel night with my own cash. The 4am flight to New York went splendidly, though I ended up sleeping 14 hours the following night. Good times, good times.

The evening train from Seattle to Portland remains an amazing experience that everyone should try.

Some of the groupies from the Seattle-based finance email list that I frequent ended up dining and wining me (cidering me?) in exchange for my sage advice. It was so weird to give out money wisdom to a guy who makes almost my entire net worth in just one year. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up inspiring an annual pilgrimage of my fans into Canada, the way Buffett’s fans visit him in Omaha.

New York was as beautiful as ever: I ended up munching on more bagels than I can recall, as well as enjoying some amazing pizza. I also might have run out of museums to visit.

On my final day, I lived a futurist’s dream: traveling by bus (New York City to Buffalo), car (a Lyft to the border station), my own two feet (crossing the eerily empty bridge in Niagara Falls), train to Toronto, and finally a subway ride back home.

And then… I spent five days scouting Quebec City and checking out several rental apartments. I’m moving in a week: a small U-Haul truck filled with a few plastic crates, an eight-hour drive (far better than the 10-hour train ride!), et voila – I’ll become a Quebecois! It’s the only Canadian province with rent control, which would explain how I managed to find a 1-bedroom apartment with plenty of windows, with all the utilities and high-speed internet included, for only $523 USD. (Aka $660 CAD.) That is not a typo – that really is that good of a deal. Of course, it helps that the city is beautiful, everyone speaks a fun new language that I’ll be learning, and that there’s live music on every corner. The jury is still out on their karaoke and cider scene, of course.

All in all, this will be 10 weeks of intermittent travel. I cannot wait to leave this A/C-less studio refuge with its $1,000 penalties for setting off smoke detectors (aka, you know, cooking) and finally settling down someplace new. Someplace permanent.

That should be fun, eh.

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Book review: “And the Monkey Learned Nothing” by Tom Lutz

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September 30, 2016

I rarely read non-fiction. I’ve never read a travelogue. And yet I was pleasantly surprised by Tom Lutz’s latest book, “And the Monkey Learned Nothing: Dispatches from a Life in Transit.” At first, the book grabbed my attention with its title, followed by the synopsis. After I read the first few chapters, I knew I was hooked.

Lutz is a solo traveler who dreams of visiting every country in the world. He’s also a great and introspective writer. Each chapter is a short account of his personal experience in a new foreign country. They range in length and topic: walking through an empty Middle Eastern town; being stalked by an aloof young woman in South Korea; infiltrating the secret tango scene in Buenos Aires…

Like every other travelogue out there, this one is subjective. It reveals a fair bit about the author himself, while also describing the way others reacted to him. It also adds a great deal of cultural context or just funny (and occasionally disturbing) anecdotes.

Just about the only flaw I could find in the book is the dry nature of some chapters that discuss local politics. Those chapters, however, were outnumbered by the ones that gave great travel advice, made me reconsider visiting a few places (sorry, Cambodia) and taught me to avoid monkeys in tourist-heavy areas. (“They are sociopaths, like particularly nasty juvenile delinquents.”)

This book was a genuine pleasure to read. It would make an excellent present to anyone that’s curious about travel, the world, the universe and everything. Most and foremost, it’s a must-read if your wanderlust has overgrown the confines of your own country and inspired you to travel abroad.

I give this book five out of five stars.

Full disclosure: I received an advance reader copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Buy “And the monkey learned nothing” on Amazon.

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