May 12th, 2022

It's hard to believe but it's now been a little more than two years since the pandemic started. And around a year since it really started to die down. I was just thinking about that today as I made my way up the hill to our vineyard and saw our Grape Guy wearing what looked exactly like a good old FFP2 mask and thought to myself "I haven't seen one of those out in the wild in months!". I asked him what was up (we're an organic winery, naturally) and he said that since he had a box of the masks lying around -- it was literally an old FFP2 mask -- he thought it might help with his springtime allergies. Fair enough.

I think it's fair to say that almost no one predicted how quickly and enormously the rideshare industry would not only rebound post-Covid but take off beyond any of even the most extreme optimistic projections leading to a drop in car ownership across the Western World of near 40% (led, surprisingly enough, by the United States which was clearly helped by President Harris's executive order banning all gasoline cars from the road after January 1st 2022) and literally not a single person anywhere could have foreseen the implosion of Uber and subsequent world domination of their kinder, gentler, fairer, and all-around better competitor Lyft. The fact that Lyft's stock increased in value roughly 100x in under six months was really quite nice for us and you might think that led to me being incredibly wealthy but unfortunately it was only enough to make us rich and allow me to quit my job to buy a vineyard in Piemonte.

The kids are still liking Italian / French / German school and Heinrich seems quite at home in the Italian language. Helga still prefers German but now that she's in the first grade she got to choose an elective and she's making a lot of progress in Greek (especially useful for our upcoming sailing trip around the Greek islands).

Joelle wasn't sure about becoming a winemaker at first but she's really taken to it and was just awarded the Gold Medal at the OIV 2020 gathering in Argentina for "Most Promising New Vintner or Vigneron" (unfortunately she just missed out on the "top 40 under 40 in the wine industry" list but she's hoping for next's year "top 50 under 50").

For now I'm just enjoying living in Italy with a little less stress than what we were subjected to during those tumultuous days of 2020 and I'm slowly figuring out what to do next with my life. I'm pretty busy helping with the cultivation and wine making, taking the kids to football practice, reading Goethe's Faust in the original "old German", selling my fresh bread products at the farmer's market on Sundays, entering coffee making competitions, training for the amateur Giro d'Italia, building a functional replica of the famous Rolex Triple Calendar Moonphase Reference 6062, and binge watching the latest season of Lupin: dans l'ombre d'Arsène on Netflix. Hopefully I'll have a plan for what to do professionally by the end of the 2020's.

The 2020's

Exactly one year minus a day ago I wrote a post on this blog called "The 2010's" that was sort of a high-level synopsis of the decade. It seems that all in all there were some pretty good times and the post ended with these words:

Let's hope the 2020's bring just as much [...] good.

Whoops! I guess I probably jinxed it for everybody. Sorry about that. Then again, things can only get better from here, right? (imagine having said that about, e.g. American Democracy around January 4th!). Yes, things can always get worse, but they might also get better. Everyone has a bad day or a bad month or a bad year (*cough* 2020 *cough*) and the 2020's could still turn out to be good. While The 2010's recounted a lot of highlights, let's not forget about that time in October 2016 that I planned to fly direct from Munich to Redmond but then some snowstorm (!!!) cancelled flights, I got sent to Frankfurt, sat there for several hours, got sent to Vancouver, sat there for even more hours, finally got on a plane down to Seattle and arrived some 28 hours after having left Munich and then went on about 3 hours sleep per day for an entire jet-lagged week of giving presentations and not being able to remember more than approx. 0.7 seconds into the past at any given time. The point is that despite that, the 2010's recovered. The 2020's can too! (plus it's a lot harder to have a flight cancelled and then get re-routed all over the world since you can't really take a flight in the first place. Score!)

Ms. Merkel said yesterday that the hard lockdown in Germany would probably have to last up to another 10 weeks. That brings us to the middle of March which is coincidentally exactly when Lockdown #1 started so many moons ago. If the thought of 10 more weeks of this bullshit doesn't fill you with happiness and excitement then we are one and the same. Helga had one of her 3 per week 45 minute Zoom sessions for "online learning" this morning. Heinrich wasn't too amused so did a lot of screaming during that, Helga couldn't hear the teacher and was subsequently muted and so couldn't say anything, and I couldn't get any work done. It was a lot of fun. In this gloomy scenario, however, I force myself to be reminded of the words of a great philosopher of the 2020's (unknown) who said: the two best things about working from home are that (1) you have a home; and (2) you have a job. Good point, Mr. or Ms. Philosopher of these modern times (however, kids might lead to cancellation of point [2] which will then eventually lead to cancellation of point [1]. I hope not though).

I was thinking today that maybe we should move to Augsburg. Why not, right? I had previously considered a change of scenery, perhaps to Zürich for example, but upon discovering it's basically the most expensive city in the world to live in, the shine sort of wore off a bit. But Augsburg? You mean the city that "[a]fter Neuss and Trier, [...] Germany's third oldest city, founded in 15 BC by the Romans as Augusta Vindelicorum, named after the Roman emperor Augustus" [thanks Wikipedia]? Hell ya. But then again, what would we do in Augsburg?

Christmas Card Preamble

Every year I really think "this is going to be the year that we send Christmas cards". Of course every year we don't actually send them, but I've heard many times that "it's the thought that counts"; and so, I guess that's pretty impressive because I've thought a lot about it.

But since there's no actual physical Christmas card, and I might not even get around to writing a virtual one (even if I do I could never top the Californication-themed Christmas card of 2013), here is the preamble to a potential but by no means guaranteed virtual Christmas card 2020... [update: it is now New Years Eve so this will actually be the Christmas Card / Year-end Card].

2020 was a fun year for the Pemulis Family. For the first time ever we started the year off as a family of four and we were lucky enough to wake up that morning of January 1st safely in Canadian farmland with zero knowledge that a pandemic that was already getting underway in the Far East would upend all of our lives in just a few short months.

I had recently returned from a successful business trip to California where my colleague and I spent half the time working and half the time discovering the whiskey joints of the Mission district in San Francisco. We attended a San Jose Sharks game, took the commuter jet up to Seattle as all the cool tech bros do, and ate fried chicken at Patricia's Green with sparkling rosé that cost $25 a glass (paid for by the company, natch, as they will never run out of money... haha kind of a foreshadow for all you readers out there -- and to be honest the company only paid for part of it). How were we to know that not long from those times my colleague would be laid off along with half of the rest of the office and there would be zero more flights to California (or anywhere) for a long time to come...

Before the pandemic got underway, however, we spent a wonderful week at the Hotel Fuente de la Higuera in the Ronda region of Spain in February. You might have read about this very trip in some greater detail on this blog. In March Heinrich had his first birthday and we secured a place for him at his future Krippe. These are very exciting and important breakthroughs for parents with kids in the 21st century, by the way.

Observing my calendar we basically did nothing from March to July but at the very start of July we managed to escape our confinement and "unwound" (not really due to kids, but overall it was still nice) at a cottage in the Austrian mountains. Our ultra trail race at the Zugspitz was cancelled but in early July we used our "rain check" to sign up to hopefully try again next year.

In August, even though somehow it's not on our calendar (what an oversight), we spent a week in Italy again to "unwind" (not really due to kids) and celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary. Twelve years!? Can you believe it? Insane how the time goes by. And because 12 is such an obvious connection to the dial of a watch, Joelle got me a very nice watch to commemorate such a momentous occasion that I wear with pride.

The rest of the year somehow just kind of burned right by and here I am finishing this up on the evening of December 30th (ok so it's not quite NYE but we're super close) dreaming of the arrival of the great vaccine. It's been hard not being in Canada for Christmas time but some parts of being here have of course been nice too. We look forward to a hopefully different outcome next year and for sure I will write a Christmas Card about it.

Christmas in Quarantine

2020. Four syllables (or five, depending on how you say it, but no sane person would not say twenty-twenty, right?) that will surely for all time produce a deep visceral reaction in those that have lived through these 126 years 12 months. What a funny year. In February we were staying near Ronda in Spain on holiday and had heard something vague in a news article or two about a mystery respiratory illness in China. Shortly before flying home we heard news about the outbreak in northern Italy, which still seemed like a problem a million miles away both physically and mentally. Quickly it felt a little more real as we passed through the airport in Munich but it was still something very "out there" as opposed to, say, "next door". The day that schools finally shut down and my office was closed in mid-March had an obviously surreal feeling, and the days that followed were not as difficult as they would eventually become because there was not only a tinge of novelty, but a sense of togetherness in that we were all living through this crazy thing and we would survive together and it was kind of mysterious and different and strange having to venture to the grocery store. We discussed seeing people with masks which was so odd at the time, especially in contrast to now where if you see someone without one then you immediately know something about their politics and self-centredness. The summer brought about a calm before the storm where guards were let down and things actually weren't that bad -- at least in many places such as here in Germany -- with a bad day in virus news meaning a few hundred new infections instead of several dozen thousand like we have today. We were fortunate enough to spend some time at a mountain-top cottage in Austria and later in the summer we spent a week in Italy. On both trips the virus was never too far from our minds but it only passively affected us in that, for example, we wore masks in the hotel hallways and -- while the weather was thankfully beautiful -- made sure we ate all of our meals outside.

The second wave in the Fall is something that experts basically told us was a certainty but it seems everyone is still surprised by the seriousness of how bad things have gotten. It has perhaps never been so different from now but there is indeed a pervasive feeling in society that if something sounds contrary to what we want then we can just imagine a different reality and that will be the one that comes to pass. Unfortunately people's resolve have further crumbled with the length of this "thing", the amplification of ridiculous conspiracy theories through social media, and the in-vogue societal distrust of governments, experts of any kind, and international organizations. It feels so useless to even mention but the hypocrisy of populist right wing elected officials has helped a huge amount in bringing us to this point. Wearing a mask is tyranny but banning abortion is pro-life. Not being able to go to a bar is an unjust oppression but killing innocent black people is just a mistake by otherwise upstanding police officers. What can you expect when you have elected officials like these?

On the one hand, modern technology and modern society will perhaps help to make this pandemic short(ish) lived with up to 3 or more vaccines having recently been shown to be highly effective in preventing Covid-19 and being developed, tested, and brought to market in a timeframe that is near unheard of (while most vaccines require between 10 and 15 years to develop and become available, the fastest until now was the Mumps vaccine which required a little over four years). There is also the speed at which we learned about the disease, other technologies such as mobile-phone-based contact tracing, and newly-developed treatments that have kept death rates much lower than they surely would have been years ago. On the other hand, however, people are basically stupider than ever and (well, it's not totally their faults, it's the platforms themselves which are a huge part of the problem) will believe almost anything. If something is repeated to you over and over again in a Facebook echo chamber, evolution has given you no ability to overcome the inundation. Seeing conmen in movies sometimes might lead you to think "no way someone would believe this in real life" but there are literally millions of people -- including people dying at that very moment of Covid-19 -- who believe that it's a hoax. W. T. F. This is not a fringe really anymore; there are millions of people in the United States who believe Trump won the election and that it was stolen from him by fraud. Many of those same people believe that every single world leader (well, except Trump and Bolsonaro, I guess), every single corporation, every single doctor, nurse, public official, scientist, whatever, has somehow got together in a huge secret club to collude to invent a disease that they are suffering from at that very minute. And why would they do such a thing? Of course there's no single answer, but one of my very favourite conspiracy theories is that the hoax was created to force the world to accept taking a vaccine with an embedded microchip so people can be tracked. Imagine! The guy writing this conspiracy theory just logged into his smartphone using a fingerprint sensor, where he connects to a mobile phone network using a device with sub-metre accuracy GPS, has given all of his photos and social connections to Facebook, and all of his purchase history to Amazon, and he's worried about a tracking chip that could not possibly exist in a vaccine to help bring the world back to whatever normal sort of existed before. Un-fucking-believable.

But, there is some good news. Despite Trump's and unbelievably, yet sadly believably and I suppose inevitably, senior republicans' protestations to the contrary, Joe Biden, who by any measure and all accounts seems to be an honest-to-goodness Good Man who holds ideals of living in and supporting an actual civil society and trusts scientists and loves more than just himself will be the next president of the United States [in-line footnote: my very favourite outcome of the Hunter Biden "Laptop Scandal" that the Republican Party and Fox News, et al. tried desperately to push during the waning days of the US election and that led to somehow having some of Biden's son's e-mails released is that Joe Biden is basically a good dad]. While I thankfully do not live there, the direction of the US has some (obviously) pretty important ramifications on the directions of the rest of the world. As mentioned above, there are at least 3 vaccines that early data seems to suggest will help put this crazy 2020 behind us. Germany may start vaccinating people as early as December 15th. Biden will put the US back into the Paris Climate Agreement as of his first day in office. Maybe the world will survive at least a little longer. Thanks to the announced vaccines Lyft stock is way up and so maybe one day we'll be able to buy a cottage. So really, good news all around.

**********

Until we all start getting vaccinated, there is still a life to live. For only the second time in 8 years, and the first time in 5 years, we will not be able to make the long trip to Canada this December/January to celebrate Christmas. That sucks. Especially with small children who provide zero breaks to try to restore your sanity and not many options for distractions with limited social engagements and pretty cold temperatures outside, things can feel pretty difficult, frustrating, and generally draining a lot of the time (however we won't have to fly with Heinrich at this stage of his life so thank God for that). Don't get me wrong, I know that we're extremely privileged and lucky in almost all aspects of life, but this year has presented a lot of unique challenges that are especially felt (INTER ALIA) by those with small children and who do not have family close by. We do, however, have something different to look forward to: Christmas in Quarantine!

Christmas in Quantine, Munich, 2020/2021 was a period consisting of approximately four to six weeks during the Covid-19 Pandemic that ravaged much of the world towards the beginning of the third decade of the third millennium where a series of Christmas celebrations took place without the participants actually going anywhere, seeing anyone, or doing much of anything (note that in parallel there were multiple more traditional Christmas celebrations held predominantly by Republicans, conspiracy theorists, and other people who only care about themselves and/or are very divorced from reality). It was a strange period in history to say the least, but people made do often with the help of alcohol, modern technology, and self delusion.

Our Christmas in Quarantine started just this past weekend when Helga and I put up our new outdoor Christmas lights in the backyard. Helga and her mother then built this year's Adventskrantz which is currently burning one candle strong, and I broke out for the first time this year Tramp Records' Santa's Funk & Soul Christmas Party Volume 1 on vinyl as we enjoyed the remnants of what one can find on the first Sunday of Advent at the local bakery when you show up 3 minutes before it closes.

Christmas in Quarantine 2020 continued today, December 1st, with, appropriately enough, our first snowfall of the season. Later today we will open the first entry on our coffees of the world Advent Calendar and sit back and relax for perhaps up to 7 seconds before Heinrich tries to throw my stereo to the ground or Helga tries to strangle her little brother to death.

I hope to report back with additional happenings as they happen from this very special, very unique, and very original Christmas in Quarantine 2020. Until then, stay healthy friends!

Helga's Back

 Hello!  It is I, Helga.  I have not for a long time added to the blog of my father, so I would like to do this.  I am, of course, fluent in French and German (I also have a smattering of Italian), but my English is a little, how you say it, “rusty,” so I will use this opportunity to practice my English.

What is new in my family?  Well, the most vexing question of today is this: Does my dad look like a famous professor at Harvard, where students go to become incredibly wealthy internet entrepreneurs (this means in English “people who start their own business and then buy up everyone else’s business”), or does he look like a graduate of the University of Guelph, where students go to become knowledgeable about fertilizers and husbandry?  Many of our relatives have “weighed in” (metaphysically speaking) to this debate.  I don’t really care because in my future career as dancer/supermodel/Jeopardy contestant, it will only be important for my dad to look like me.  You be the judge: 

Looks like my dad?  I don’t think so.

My dad looks as good as me?  For sure!

 

Heinrich, stop biting!  It is not seemly for future dancers/supermodels/Jeopardy contestants to have bite marks on their otherwise flawless skin.  And get a haircut!  I have had my hair cut several times and it just keeps growing back.  You will not lose your hair like our father did because he did not get the right genes, which were mistakenly given to our Uncle Tom.

What else is new?  Well, I used to want to be a princess but since my grandmère Lisa has been reading to me about the Princess in Black, I have decided that being a princess is way too much work.  Always with the monsters that eat the goats!  Why does she not move to a safer neighborhood, like my cousin Zoe and my cousin Maya, who are moving to Oakridge?  There are very few monsters in Oakridge, outside of the ones who attend Oakridge Secondary School.  And the Princess in Black has to ride on a horse.  In Germany we have Audis and Mercedes and BMWs (not Volkswagens—those are for the serfs); we do not ride on horses.

In my class at school, I am often mistaken for American.  This is more horrible than being on a horse.  Everyone knows that Americans are crazy and virus-ridden.  (This does not mean that they ride on the viruses like on the horses.  English is a weird language.)  Every night I am made to promise my parents not to move to America when I am a famous dancer/supermodel/Jeopardy contestant.  There are monsters in America.  Who would ever move there?  Better that Heinrich bites me than that I move to America.  Perhaps I will move to Oakridge, where my cousin Zoe and my cousin Maya are going.  I would have a lot to teach them about being a dancer or supermodel, but not a Jeopardy contestant because I don’t need that kind of competition.

Grandpère Mike says that I should not be a “smart aleck” because then people will not like me so much.  However, being a smart aleck will be useful when I am bantering with Ken Jennings after he replaces Alex.  Also, it will make me a very good host of Der Schwächste fliegt!  I can use my smart aleck look and say, “Da wollen wir doch mal sehen, wer unsere kostbare Studioluft lang genug weggeatmet hat!”  I will wear the Princess in Black outfit and instead of chasing monsters I will chase the Schwächste off the stage.  What fun, is it not so?  (Excuse my French.)

 

Der Schwächste fliegt! 

What a year

It's Sunday, October 18th, 2020. Pemulis lives in Munich with his wife Joelle and two small children Helga and Heinrich. Twenty one years ago to the day (or so) Pemulis was eighteen years old and wheels up on Air Canada XYZ non-stop to Paris. Bill Clinton had more than a year remaining in his second term. The world was on edge awaiting the Y2K crisis. And who could have imagined two decades ahead and the arc of history that would transpire. Not this dude.

In the intervening years Pemulis returned to Paris a half dozen times or so, one time "hitchhiking" from Leeds "for charity", another with Joelle taking advantage of the early 2000's hedonism of 10₤ EasyJet flights, and another with Joelle and her family on a summertime train trip to the Big City from deep in the provinces (aka Grenoble). It's funny this awe that a city can possess; Joelle doesn't seem to feel that same attraction to the City of Lights but Pemulis sure does. If she felt a little softer on the subject we very well might be living there now (well, the Gilets Jaunes and the burned out cars and the crime and all that are kind of a drag and a stirring in the heart doesn't necessarily make for the number one reason to live in a place but whatever). But I digress.

Tying together the above-mentioned arc, another propitious event took place on this date just two years ago today. For on October 18th, 2018, Pemulis embarked on a new career as a soldier on the front lines in the ongoing holy war against cars. Or at least the war on human beings driving them. There have been highs and lows in the time between then and now, but as the wise Swedes Axwell, Steve Angello, and Sebastian Ingrosso (aka Swedish House Mafia) reassured me, besides to not worry not worry child, Heaven has a plan for me.

And so it was that last week (or so) Faceless Multinational Transportation Company X masquerading -- or "branding itself" -- as Friendly Progressive Transportation Company Y made the unsurprising decision to close the Munich office. This does not mean that Pemulis is out of work; rather, it means that he will continue, for now, pushing digital paper from the Ikea patio furniture (the Askholmen to be precise) not from a modern office in Munich's downtown core, but from his daughter Helga's bedroom for the foreseeable future.

So status quo, more or less. But symbolically? Perhaps something more, and perhaps just the push that Pemulis and family need to take the next step.

What might that step be? Well, theoretically one could live anywhere when one's office is your own home.

Boy are there options. Now options are, generally speaking, an objectively good thing. An Instagram Post once told me something along the lines of "wealth is not being rich, it's being free, and being free is having options". But then if the option of not having to choose is available then one might justly choose said option and that would be just as free as having more options, if you get my drift.

It would be great if little Helga and little Heinrich could keep up their language skills. Moving to the mountains in BC would be all English all the time; moving to the mountains in the Allgäu in the Bavarian Alps would be all German (and perhaps some Bayerisch) all the time; moving to Paris (remember the first two paragraphs?) would be good for some French. Munich has German and a great French school. What about a return to the Capital of the Alps? Shouldn't I at least learn German before I move away? To be fair, we've only lived here seven years so far...

The Covid-19 Biergarten Experience, redux

About 16 weeks ago (or so), the lockdowns were lifted and we experienced our first Covid-19 Biergarten Experience. A lot has changed since then, but a lot has also stayed the same: masks upon entering, fill out the form indicating the details of your next of kin, drink 5 more beers than usual to forget for just one evening the world that we somehow currently live in, the usual...

It was your typical Corona Sunday in Bayern and the family made a short trip to the local Beer Garden for a much-needed Bavarian dinner fix. The sun sat low in the sky on a warm still-clinging-to-summer evening. By this point in 2020 the children had lost all semblance of social skills, connection to reality, and ability to cope with anything, and the adults were not any better. We ran into some acquaintances who were entering the Garden at the coincidental same time as Pemulis & Co. and much like a hilarious sitcom episode re-running on Netflix the acquaintances asked us if we would like to join their table; as in the TV show, Mrs. Pemulis tried as she might to silently show her extreme disapproval of the idea but following the perfectly honed over time formula, Mr. Pemulis goofily accepted the invitation happily and prepared the audience for an evening full of laughs for some and pain for many others.

The first (and probably most severe) disaster happened when Pemulis ordered a cold, fresh, delicious Weißbier but was instead delivered what the good Bavarians refer to as a "Russ": Weißbier mixed with sparkling lemonade. Now, I'm all for a good Radler (sparkling lemonade with Helles) on a hot mid-morning bike ride, but sitting in a beer garden on a Sunday evening sparkling lemonading down a perfectly good beer for no reason other than to upset a customer? Well, I never...

When Helga disappeared the first five minutes were really quite lovely. It's easy to all of a sudden get lost in a moment when you happen to be enjoying it and are not busy having stress take over your body and doing whatever can be done to keep the temperature of your blood below the ignition point and realizing that Hey! it can actually be relaxing sitting around having dinner with your family but then things come crashing down and it quickly becomes clear that the only reason things seem OK is that your child is nowhere to be found.

Don't worry she was eventually found behind a tree where she had attempted to pee I guess (hopefully) on the ground but actually peed all over herself. Par for the course and all that.

Heinrich had a small cold which developed the previous week at Krippe (pronounced "KRI-PUH" and which means DAYCARE) that was basically completely gone by the time we arrived at our allegedly relaxing Sunday evening outing. The acquaintances were also sitting with some of their acquaintances and Joelle sat down with Heinrich on her lap next to a man from this latter group and he asked how serious we were about this whole Corona thing and if it was OK if they sat next to one another. Joelle told him that she should warn everybody that Heinrich was a little bit sick because of Krippe but the man didn't hear Krippe he heard Grippe (pronounced "GRI-PUH") which sounds really quite close to Krippe but instead means influenza. Surprisingly he got up very quickly and made one of the most disgusted faces I've ever seen. Quite something, really. Somebody explained that Joelle had said Krippe, not Grippe, and things continued as they would but in some ways the atmosphere was never really quite the same. Pemulis ordered another beer and made sure they didn't dilute it with Sprite.

Then the Biergarten people lit the Tiki Torches. Luckily it turns out that Tiki Torches are only a White Supremacist thing in the US and they were just a nice looking way to light up the beer garden once it got dark. Unluckily, however, it turns out that kids just love fire. We left shortly thereafter.

All in all another enthralling Covid-19 Biergarten Experience. 8 / 10. Would go again.