The New Normal for my Patent Translation Business in the Age of Corona Virus Hysteria Is Not Too Bad

Somewhat to my surprise, my small patent translation business is doing quite well, definitely much better than I thought it would, given the big changes in my life over the last three years, including the fact that officially I have been retired for three years now.

After being married for 34 years to the same person, I could no longer stand my wife, and she could no longer stand me either. So one morning when she gave me a hateful look as I was going down the stairs and called me a “lemon”, which she never did before, although she was not shy about giving me nasty names, I promptly suggested a divorce. We discussed the terms (money, there was nothing else to discuss) and within three months we were no longer burdened by being married to somebody we did not even like anymore … at all!

Shortly after that blessed event, I reached the long-awaited FRA status (full retirement age, which was 66 back then in US, it is 67 now and pretty soon it may be 70), we sold our lovely and beloved but now that our kids have been out of the house for more than a decade unnecessarily spacious house, my ex of course quickly grabbed most of the money from the sale (although she never paid a single cent for it) and ran away with it all the way back to Japan, while I moved back to Southern Bohemia, where I have been living for almost two years now in the fair city of Ceske Budejovice, a stone’s throw from my hometown of Cesky Krumlov.

Patent Translation Seems to Be a Fairly Covid-19-Resistant Occupation

After about half a year of Covid-19 hysteria which I followed in a number of languages on TV, in newspapers and in online media, designed to scare the general population as much as possible, I noticed that last month was the busiest month for me during the first eight months of this year and this month is pretty busy too. Fortunately, you don’t need no freaking mask to translate! I am still translating patents, although now I am doing a different kind of patent translation work, which I am not really at liberty to discuss here. But it’s still patent translation and it keeps me busy and happy.

I talked to a number of severely embittered people, some obediently wearing ugly muzzles on their faces, some defiantly unmuzzled, who were telling me how the government (the Czech one in this case) is for reasons that are difficult to understand intent on killing their business and deprive them of their livelihood. In case you are wondering, Mad Patent Translator, who ought to be retired by now but isn’t really, is more or less in compliance with various regulations, regardless of what he thinks of them. So I too am muzzled occasionally now, but only on public transportation and in some stores.

At first I thought that the strict and frequently changing regulations were for our own good and in the interest of public safety. I did not really mind them too much because I was scared, intentionally and mostly needlessly, I think, like everybody else. But now I am properly pissed at dumb rules that appear to be more and more arbitrary and too absurd when one thinks about them.

But I am doing fine, the pension keeps hitting my bank account on time, and my business is doing well too.

Although, judging by what happened so far, 2020 is probably going to turn out to be a jinxed or even cursed year. Hopefully just jinxed and not cursed. After all, it is such a weird number for a year!

Wouldn’t you agree? It is an uncommon number, for counting years, anyway. The last time we had a very similar number to the year we have now was 1010, which was a very long time ago, still in the early Middle Ages, and the next one would be 3030, if humans are still living on this planet by then. Right now, it looks kind of very unlikely.

After relatively peaceful and almost idyllic Middle Ages – compared to our times, there were just a few bubonic plagues, some interesting witch hunts, silly wars with totally primitive weapons compared to our advanced weaponry and other relatively minor glitches, while we have now managed to screw up our world so perfectly that it is pretty clear to me that there will be no year 3030 for humans on this planet. All humans will be long gone by then, erased from the face of the Earth, if not by a major nuclear conflict, then for sure by some sneaky, disgusting and painful diseases that will eventually turn a few thousand survivors into crazed, flesh-eating zombies, until there is no trace on the blue planet of what used to be called human civilization. The blue planet will probably think, if planets think “good riddance”.

Oh, well, who cares. We will be all dead by then, along with our children, grandchildren, and their grand-grand-grand-children. All we can do is hope that the zombie era is not going to surprise us much sooner than we might be expecting it now.

Unlike our wise, learned politicians, I obviously have no idea what the rest of the highly significant year 2020 will be like. But it seems clear to me that no matter what happens, there will still be plenty of translating work for me to do if I am interested until …. well, until all of us have been eaten up by flesh eating zombies.