2011 to 2021. Ten years during which it barely limped along there in the end. Even now I remember my enthusiasm starting it up; I was still in Toronto, inside my tiny mid-town apartment surrounded by boxes, trying to decide what's going to cross the ocean and what's staying behind. I left so many things. I didn't fully believe in the permanence of the move, no expat does. Immigrants do. And I remember thinking about how interesting it would be to document the details of my move to Romania in blog form. I chose the name expatro because I was an expat in everything but nationality. I had some family here and spoke the language, badly, but you're not anywhere close to native until you clash, repeatedly, against the new system, adapt to its rules, and blend into the tapestry by adopting local mannerisms. My return to Romania, though expatriate in form, was at its core a repatriation. The motherland reclaiming a long lost son, that kind of thing. But these technicalities a
Let's say you've been working all day, ever since your cozo/milk/coffee and cigarette breakfast (the real breakfast of champions). You've been sitting at home in meetings, coding, clicking around, being somewhat productive (let's not get too carried away) and before you know it, a thought starts to poke its way in, interrupting your fourth coffee break of the day. Admittedly this is now a major issue all over the world, but I'm going to write about it because it's important to point out that Romania is not immune to the, what are we having for lunch dilemma. In some cases, it's an actual question; money's tight and maybe you had to decide between paying the heating and electricity or buying groceries. Research shows that about 50% of Romanians were unable to pay at least part of their monthly bills in 2020. Meanwhile, eighty million Europeans live below the poverty line. Times are dire. But still, for those of us in the Big Tech bubble, the lawyers, th