Long time no hear. No idea if anyone will read this, so I'll keep to six paragraphs.
To sum up year 2022, I fled my homeland, lost investments, neat salary and most of belonging, met wonderful friends and married. Last points did made life wonderful despite all the mortal horrors ongoing nearby.
Currently I'm busy making decent salary in a tricky and mediocre way (while keeping sanity), closely watching chainlink of red tape keeping me from swimming over to Japan (and also handling red numbers, the second deterring factor) and severing my connection with wonderful and ludicruos State spewing hate toward it's recent expatriants.
It is an enlightening experience.
Three travel cases for two of us, and we left. Now I'm ejoying Central Asian cuisine and consumer prices, together with funny internet restrictions, unprivileged status of temporary visitor, unstable decline of remaining savings' currency and dimishing list of countries accepting people with passports of my color. But there's no discrimination or oppression here, only the usual red tape. Beats being dead, conscripted or jailed.
My 2012 ThinkPad with Manjaro (long overdue for replacement) still manages to make me employable and functional, thanks to FOSS communities and open web. I also got a budget Sony phone, it is ergonomic and wonderful. Free time is spent reading on local processes and colonial history, studying Economics 101, improving local maps with OSM and maps of the Global South with OSM and HOT. This is the scope of my community work.
It became clear my worldview is more liberal than I expected. Together with my funny ethnicity and appreciation for globalism politically I'm a perfect enemy of the State. Ironically, that standing does not at all affect policies of the closest Free World countries, which by default treat me and my compatriots as unwanted elements and so very caringly restrict the available business and visa scope. My current economic standing is somewhere between a refugee and a moneybag-class expat (way more to the left, frankly speaking), and I fell strongly that international solidarity suffers when immigration policy has leevay only for those who qualify for golden visas or real estate in Middle East or Cyprus. But this seems obvious enough to don't get into it much.
With that, Gokigen-2022 out. Want to ask or discuss something?
Feel free to mail me at... [imitating radio cypher voice] ★ｇｏｋｉｇｅｎ☮ｄｉｓｒｏｏｔ☆ｄｏｔ☆ｏｒｇ★ Have a position where where Russian / Japanese / English language comprehension will be of help? Want that weird 4koma manga, retro OVA or obscure interview translated? Need somebody to check UI or wording consistency? Forming an international thintank with excess liquidity? I'm humbly yours.