2021
Well 2021 was once again a depressing year of not going anywhere and not seeing my fiancee at all for a second year in a row ):
In fact I haven't even set foot an airplane in over two years!
For mos of the year the furthest east I had been in the year was the shipping container on the east side of the property at work.
By far the most exciting thing to happen in 2021 was my Australian permanent residency was approved on February 8th. That was exciting, I had been living under a big visa shadow for a long time -- On my previous skilled migrant visa I wasn't supposed to spend more than three weeks a year outside the country (which was actually a huge burden to me back when we could travel), I couldn't work for anyone else (which was especially burdensome in 2021 when my pay was reduced to an absolute poverty level), and especially as the end of the previous visa I didn't know if I'd be able to even apply for PR and so imminently having to abandon my house and all my stuff and leave the country was hanging over my head. Once I got the visa application lodged this visa-of-damocles hanging over my head became even more pronounced, since if it was denied I would have just exactly a month to get out of the country.
As soon as the PR was approved and I could, for example, work for other people, oh look I found another job! I began working for local beekeeper John Edmonds. "Beekeeper" can denote a variety of scales of operation. Edmonds Honey is the primary local honey label in this area -- in addition to producing his own honey he serves as the packer for a lot of other local beekeepers, which is to say they just sell him their honey, and so he has a very large amount of honey to sell; and also he's the primary seller of beekeeping equipment in this area and in fact one of the biggest in the state. So a pretty significant operation. So all winter I was there three days a week, mainly assembling equipment and helping with honey harvest, and also helping in the store. Towards the end of winter (August?) I was changed to full time and the primary person running the store. This makes sense because el bossman doesn't need another beekeeping expert out in the field with him but having one running the store to answer all sorts of questions is valuable, but has the slightly odd effect that I literally never get to go out and be involved in the company's beekeeping.
I've also continued to maintain the hives I used to (though we sold off 40, bringing the number down to 60), and selling that honey as Great Ocean Road Honey Company still. That's all relegated to the weekends now so I'm pretty busy on the weekends and thus pretty busy working 7 days a week.
In the winter when I was only working 3 days a week I continued to take classes online in California. Took some writing classes as well as biology and even business 1 at my old commmunity college (which mainly served to further convince me that people who are overly enthusiastic about studying or teaching business are all a bunch of absolute sociopaths).
Another important milestone in 2021 was getting the partner visa for Cristina filed on December 3rd. Now we just have to wait "25-35" months for it to be approved 😬
For most of the year the covid situation seemed to be improving. I got my vaccinations in July and August. Around September and October I was saying I thought the end of all this was in sight and maybe by February my parents could visit like they used to. I wish I had taken a screenshot of the covid cases graph on December 31st for purposes of this year end review. At that point we were definitely on another upsurge, higher than anything before, but still it was nothing compared to what has already happened since. In the first few days of 2022 we had more covid cases here in Victoria than all previous years combined. Weirdly the government hasn't to my knowledge reinstated all the bans on gatherings we had had before, though I'm definitely trying to minimize my exposure.
So anyway, yeah, that was 2021.
Plans for 2022
It will probably be yet another year of nothing particularly exciting. The biggest potential thing is IF Cristina's visa is approved much much sooner than the 25 months predicted she plans to come here as soon as possible, even if it means not completing the anesthesiology program she's in the third and final year of. Otherwise though I might not see her for the third year in a row 😭
Also if the international travel is feasible and I can afford it, the biennial world beekeeping conference (Apimondia) is scheduled to take place in the city of Ufa in the obscure Russian region of Bashkortostan in September and I'd like to attend. I've always wanted to ride the Trans-Siberian-Railroad so I'd like to fly in to Vladivostok and take the TSS across Siberia (would have to change from the TSS to a different train in Yekaterinburg and head south to Ufa). So anyway that's all a thing that could happen. Though if that all turns out to be unfeasible, Apomondia 2023 (this year's was postponed from last year, hence there's now two in consequtive years) will be in Chile, which I definitely want to attend with Cristina.