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Pan-fried pork-liver:

Don't know what the prices are in the west cos when I was living in the UK I hadn't developed the pork-liver addiction that's currently got a hold on me but here you can buy a kilo of pork liver for a little bit under 2 quid. That's enough for three solid meals of pork liver.

Recipe is:
Get the liver and cut it in thin slices. Cover it up in olive or sunflower oil, garlic and black pepper. Maybe add a bit of white wine. Let it rest for a few minutes. Throw it in a pan with some onions and mushrooms. Fry but not for too long, you want it nearly pink. Add a bit of white wine while frying for optimum taste, but not necessary if done on super tight budget. Make sure you cover the pan after a bit of frying so that all the tastes can get infused. Enjoy pork liver.

Very importantly make sure you add salt once the liver is cooked rather than before as salt before cooking fucks up the texture.

Goes well with mashed potatoes.

I've found this website to be really interesting - it allows comparing the curves of diferent countries. The curve for Bulgaria has been quite strange in comparison to our neighbours so I'm currently trying to get to the bottom of why that is the case. Might spend the next couple of days comparing the curves of different countries and taking into account various factors such as tuberculosis vaccine (currently the theory of why ex soviet states are getting hit less hard), press freedom and overall type of regime (to see to what extent the data just reflects strategies of obfuscation by governments) and everything else I can think of, so that I can get a better idea of what the actual situation is. Probably best done with a neural network, but I don't know where to start with one so good old Social Science bachelor's methods are the best I have.

https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/

16.04.2020

Personal diary entry:

I've realized that the greatest battle at least in my perspective is staying on top of everything, being there for other people, supporting my family and my friends as much as possible. Doing my best to not let the lockdown get to me psychologically so that I can support others who have been affected worse than me.

So far I've been lucky, managed to cash in some tax rebates and the conversion rate means I have a month or two of all living expenses covered. Spent the last two days sorting out reduced rent for my parents who are currently in Bradford of all places and instructing them on how to delay bill payments. For the first time my experience of being a reprobate and a liability is of value to those around me - while all the respectable people around me were paying bills on time and working I was learning how to get away with debt, delay bills and do those sad phone-calls to agencies that you owe money to, where you tell them that due to unforeseen personal issues you will only be able to pay them back the 500 quid that you owe them in monthly installments of 50 pounds.

Managed to cut out getting high, stopped getting drunk every day and I'm now practicing some relaxation exercises of Regardie's "One Year Manual" to stay relaxed and on top game. Bizarrely found out that none of these things were the culprit in me being useless on most days and found out that eating sugar early in the morning is the number one cause of me being an inflamed and depressed sack of shit. Getting productivity up has been a struggle still, but plan on disabling facebook in the next couple of days and switching to brick phone so that I can get that "aint got no internet" boredom that makes you get all the useful things done.

The potential of civil unrest and people trying to loot my house (squatting teaches you a lot about how unsecure most buildings are) has caused me to start practicing my sword fighting skills, using my great grandfather's sword from  the Balkan War (gradually turning into the living embodiment of the I studied the sword meme, but I take it that I'll be quite happy to help those that were busy doing other shit loll) . This has lead to a lot of reminiscing about crisis and my ancestry's history of dealing with it. When communists came into power my Grandfather's family had their house taken from them. He was sent to a small village to live there with his mom. Within a month he'd taught himself how to be an electrician from some books he had and was making money, gradually helping my family to get brought back together and return to the city. From then on for the rest of his life he was the go to guy if you were trying to escape the country, get illegal books and records, want to know how to hack a radio to catch BBC or are on the run from the KGB.

In light of that my initial response to the crisis being mainly getting drunk and browsing the web seems downright pitiful. All of the "its a very traumatic event for everyone, take time for self-care" stuff I see my western friends post on facebook does not look like the right take, especially when said "self-care" seems to consist of binge watching netflix and I try to put as much pressure on myself as possible. Of course getting stressed out isnt the way forward either. I've found that using some of Regardie and Hyatt's techniques for Undoing to be the most efficient way to clear my head enough to allow me to do things in a focused manner so sticking to doing them daily is where the battle is for me.

Still feel slightly lost, but I am grateful that I took as much acid as I did when I was growing up - the uncertainty and the chaos feel somewhat homely the whole influx of chaotic novelty isn't all that novel of a feeling.

Diary entry. Month in review 13.03.2020-16.04.2020

One month into lockdown in Bulgaria. Was quite surreal when it hit initially, I was only flying back to sort out some documents with the idea that I'm going back to the UK to sort my life out. I'd been living off grid in squats and caravans and had made a point of not paying too much attention to the news over the last few months and fully thought the whole covid shit was just another meme about something that's gonna kill us all that everyone's getting hyped on.

Was recording some raps at a friend of a friend's studio, having some drinks. Finished a song and sat down to roll a spliff, the recording engineer turned on the TV and the Prime Minister announced we're in lockdown. Recording engineer is typical woke Bulgarian boomer - head's a mish mash of new age nonsense, Russian fake news propaganda and all the bullshit clickbait you can find. Everyone's high as fuck and he's ranting about how this is it and the New World Order have finally got their global domination plan in full swing and we'll all be microchipped and arrested. Got a taxi back home, because I didn't want to be walking around the newly announced police state with my weed on me. Next day is smoking and reading everything I can find about Covid, catching up on a few weeks of mass hysteria I'd missed out on. Start freaking out trying to figure out whether to get back on my flight to the UK, where I used to live in a caravan or stay in Bulgaria where I have a house to myself. Difficult decision, eventually donate my weed to a friend so that I can clear my head, start meditating regularly and realize that Bulgaria might be my best bet for having a chill time during the pandemic.

Following couple of weeks are surreal - for the first time in my life I fully support the Bulgarian government. I always thought we were the idiots and we had to learn from western leaders, but so far Boris Johnson's essentially told people "yeah sorry your loved ones are gonna die" and Trump is trying to convince his supporters that it's all a plot by the Dems to fuck up the election for him. Obviously this whole madness goes through thirty different iterations of "This was the truth all along" over the next few weeks. Meanwhile prime minister Boyko Borisov's mafioso swagger seems surprisingly fit for the handling of the crisis. "Look western leaders keep saying two-three weeks. They say that so that people don't panic. Realistically they don't have any clue and neither do I" he says on the question of how long the lockdown is going to last. When asked about what the long-term effects will be he says that Bulgarians will forget about the whole thing in three days as soon as its over much like we get over anything else. This gives me some weird kind of hope - our general backwardness and refusal to integrate new technologies might just mean that once everything is done we'll have less of a cyberpunk dystopia than in other places.


There's something endearing about being in an East European state that isn't as immersed in the simulacra as the UK is: people here know that disaster is a part of life so they don't need to automatically assume we're living in Mad Max. Everyone's fairly chill if annoyed that there is no financial support from the government. This might be our biggest issue going forward - if the government doesn't curb their stealing of EU funds and start supporting small businesses and everyone that's become unemployed in the last few weeks people are going to stop giving a fuck about the virus and start organizing to take down the government. Such attempts have already started, but the stupidity of the organizers has been too detrimental to it being anything but people getting hyped up on Facebook Live.  As much as I dislike those currently in power I'm fairly certain that any attempts at taking them down will be co-opted by "Brotherly Russia" and we'll end up in some completely new nightmare scenario. So here I am, for the first time in my life firmly supporting the Bulgarian government and praying that they realize the threat they are under if they don't offer financial assistance to the people.