Year In Review 2022
After two years of having no flights at all to show for the year, I finally got moving again this year! Two trips to Sydney and then the big trip to West Africa in July-August. 26,930 miles!
This map shows the project sites this year (red pins), as well as project sites from previous years that fall in the map area (the orange pins). Dotted line is travel by air this year, red solid line is travel by car. As you can see we went on a bit of a road trip round about Guinea.
The Predictions
Let us begin by looking back at our predictions for 2022 made in the 2021 year in review post: "It will probably be yet another year of nothing particularly exciting." Well! I think we actually exceeded that expectation! The other expectation was, "if the international travel is feasible" to travel to a beekeeping conference in Russia. Well! Yeahhhh no that certainly fell through!
The Year in Review
This year I've worked full time for Edmonds Honey all year (having only become full time something like September of 2021). At the beginning of the year covid was still a thing (that seems so long ago now!) and I think we were still regularly masking, and then in April or so we at work pretty much all got it all at once.
On February 24th of this year of course Russia invaded Ukraine. This, well, obviously affected a lot of people a lot more than it affected me. I feel like ever since the 90s Russia has been taken to be more or less another western democracy with its Soviet past well behind it, albeit with Putin's reign increasingly suspiciously long, and then this year they just pulled the mask off and nope it turns out Russia is just as much a brutal antidemocratic oppressive regime as the Soviet Union ever was. Very much like the Simpsons episode where in the UN the Russian representative pushes a button and cackles as the "Russia" placard flips to become USSR. Yet another Simpsons prediction come true.
But the unexpected effect on me was that after my close friends got tired of my updates on the war, I started posting them to facebook, and soon had over a hundred people I don't know who were following me on facebook just for my updates. That started to feel like a burden after awhile since when I didn't post people would clamor for an update.
It also got me into twitter for the first time. I'd had an account since 2008 but could never figure out how to get any value out of twitter. I had followed a bunch of beekeeping related organizations and friends and none of them posted anything very interesting. But I discovered there were a bunch of accounts posting reliable information on the Ukraine war and that it was a better source than trying to reload actual news organization's pages. And then the recommendation algorithms somehow figured out I was into history stuff and started recommending other interesting accounts. I spent most of the year looking at twitter whenever I had a moment to see what was new in the world.
Then of course Elong Musk bought twitter and immediate broke the algorithms. Ever since then I haven't been seeing enough Ukraine news posts but I am seeing every got damn post by El Musk and Don Jr and other ogres. Though it has been somewhat a source of enjoyment watching his stocks tank and people giving him lots of rightly deserved shit for his terrible editorial decisions.
Also Twitter has given us a really heartwarming end of the year story -- the twitter news these last 48 hours has been that some "alpha male" douche posted some deranged monologue about how he has 33 cars and asking Greta Thornburg for her personal email address (for some reason??), and she wrote back that it was "smalldickenergy@getalife.com" which the whole twittersphere agreed was a sick burn but that was only the beginning! Incensed, he apparently posted a response video I didn't see but in it there was a prominently featured pizza box. Next thing, that guy has been arrested in Romania for sex trafficking! The initial story was that the pizza box tipped off the police to where he was ... that aspect has since been debunked but we the collective internet are still having a good laugh about it even so.
Made substatial writing progress this year. At the beginning of the year only the first chapter (~6,000 words) of my travel memoir book was written, now I've got about 45,000 words written, which I think should be about a quarter of the total.
Turned 40 in May. "Celebrated" by having pancakes alone.
First project in Ghana, July 3rd - 22nd. This was epic and fun! Three project locations, marathon pace, with old aquantance (now good friend!) Arne, and an awesome local crew who I now also consider friends and look forward to seeing next year.
Fourth project in Guinea, July 23rd - August 8th. Good to be back! As mentioned, a bit of a roadtrip around Guinea which was fun. A particular highlight was going back to the village I'd been to eight years ago and seeing how improved it is now.
Other news, I have a housemate now, Trent. And I got granted German citizenship! Wooo! (in a German accent).
Feel like I have hardly gone out on any fire brigade deployments, but this year I did the training for breathing apparatus gear so I can go into a burning building wearing the darth vader mask. Deployed for two nights to monitor pumps in a flooded town (flooding has been bad for months down here, it was a really really wet winter). And in actual fact just today (Dec 31st for 13 more minutes at this moment!) I deployed in the morning to a grass fire.
Two rather upsetting things at the end of the year. Hit a cow on the road at night last month. Car totalled but driveable. Farmer initially sounded all about taking responsibility for it but I ran into the girl who should have put the cow away, at the pub the other day, and her attitude was accusatory and unpleasant so now I'm more concerned. The other bad news is $700 were spent out of my bank account by a scammer and, whereas in the past the banks have reversed things like that with no problem, in this case they've "launched an investigation" and I keep calling them and it "could take up to 40 days." I'm really rather upset about this. I have absolutely zilch nada zero nothing to do with the vendors the purchases were made from or whomever made the purchases. It's annoying me greatly that the bank is dragging their feet on this so long with their investigation.
Also this year has brought a steady stream of good news about Trump actually being held accountable, so that has been nice.
Plans & Anticipations for 2023
So now we're 12 months in to the "28-36 months" the partner visa for Cristina is estimated to take, so it still isn't predicted to come through even this upcoming year, but we can hope!!
Cristina and I have talked about going to Spain together in April. And as well the world beekeeping conference will be in Chile in September and I'm hoping she can come hang out with me while I'm there as well. Additionally, my boss John Edmonds is definitely planning on attending that conference, as is probably my friend Doug, and Steph sounds really keen for it too, so it might be a lot of fun with a lot of friends.
There's definitely a planned return to Ghana for another three weeks. I'm really looking forward to working once again with that great team. As of the present moment there aren't any other projects on the board -- there had been one I really really wanted to do in Solomon Islands but they wanted someone earlier than I was available (April) and found someone. I really wish I'd been able to do it it sounds really fun (the Scope of Work specifically specified must be willing to work in remote locations only accessible by boat. Yassss sign me up!).
My parents are visiting in February, I haven't seen any family members in over three years now so it will be nice to finally see them again.
And hopefully I get at least another quarter of this book done, if not significantly more!