quite some thinking about what I am doing next, I decided that I came here to Serbia to settle. Well, so that has fallen through a bit, because I didn't get it done sooner.

Well, my excuse is that when I started out here 3 months ago, I had a far lower expectation of how much money I would have.

Since the resurgence of Steem's price, the whole situation has changed radically. I will be in the next day or so with a very ample bank balance, there's probably at least another €2000 coming from the next and final power down. I can rent the nice apartment now, with the bathtub, and permission to get a pair of kitties ( @deearchi told me yesterday when she was in Belgrade she discovered that most apartments are no pets...)

Overall, I would like that I had not failed to get myself permission to stay here, but I won't miss the bureaucracy. Bulgarian govenment agencies are irritating and the rules are irritating but in general, there is nobody enforcing the more onerous rules. But here in Serbia, there is scumbag bureaucrats of all stripes who actually enforce these dumb laws.

I initially was under the impression that it was cheaper here, but after 3 months here, I can say that it is only cigarettes and many groceries that are cheaper, rents are cheaper but the energy bill is higher, not by much.

Being that I already have a bank account with Unicredit Bulbank, and now with a wad of cash in hand I know that within a couple of weeks I can be holding a Bulgarian ID card and have 1 year of residence permission outside of my EU passport's privileges, which has the advantage of being proof of address that KYC/AML rules all require even though possessing an address is a peculiarly fraught business in Europe. Banks don't send you mail, they take an address but they don't verify it (and don't care), in the Continent in the countries I have lived where I had to deal with this (the UK was the only exception).

I am likely going to be travelling by train this afternoon via Belgrade and Niš to Sofia, rolling up to the Art Hostel in central Sofia to book in for 3 days, during which I am going to be visiting all the real estate agents I can find, and finding myself an apartment that has as its' main requirements, above 3rd floor, bathtub, cats allowed, and preferably not too big, I don't like having too much space.

Once I have secured my housing, I turn to getting my residence permission stuff (I only have one ID, part of my reason for wanting another one is as backup in case I lose the passport again), which pretty much is just a matter of having 2500 euros in the bank, a lease agreement, and health insurance (if you get a job, you don't need that money and the insurance is part of the pay conditions). I have everything I need to get this set up, I can even secure the apartment for 6 months - and I intend to be very picky when finding it, it MUST have all those things, bathtub, cats allowed and high up somewhere.

Then once all this business is done with, or maybe at the same time, after I get the apartment, I am getting a new workstation. I am very keen on these new Ryzen series 7 processors, and this 2400mhz DDR4 memory business. When I was first using these machines I was playing games on one of them, using the fancy Nvidia 1080 video card... Well, I play Stalker, and honestly, this onboard Intel video gives a satisfactory framerate and latency. I think that the onboard AMD video on Ryzen compatible motherboards is probably even better...

I was wary of getting a desktop computer with a PCI express socket because of the temptation to put a video card in it and set it to mining. Well, not only do I not really need anything better than an onboard video chip, the whole setup I have in mind is so neat - it's an ATX board, so it requires a big case, but with M.2 SSD hidden next to the PCI express socket, no optical drives, no video cards, a modular power supply - inside this case it will have the cables from the case and power supply, and that is IT, just the CPU and Motherboard power cables, fan cables... It's gonna be zen inside my next computer :)

So, I got up early this morning, I can't really help it with the sun glaring into my room at 6am in the morning, yesterday I finished up getting my miners ready to be remotely monitored using a connection through Zerotier, this morning I figured out what I am taking and basically I'm all ready to get on the road.

My primary mission in all this is to get into a situation where I can finally heal myself, I will be joining a gym and getting myself to half marathon with cardio and doing the splits :), eat the good paleo food that doesn't give me allergies, a pair of kittens to keep me company (cats are very good for my state of mind), and with my body in better condition my brain should work better and I can really dig into building the system I have designed.

I would like to thank @deearchi and her man, Vladimir for accommodating me and feeding me here, and to everyone else here who helped me out with things...