I hooked my worker up with a big budget job working on my friend's basement. It's a relief because I really haven't been able to save any money because I've been needing to keep him fed during a hard time. This meant spending money when I would have preferred to just create more of a financial buffer. So he knew that I was making sure that he was taken care of and so he also takes care of me. I think that people here who don't take care of their crew are just going to fail. It's basically a pre-civilized frontier here, so you just have to do people favors when they need it. I also did a big favor for my rich basement friend because he had no idea how to navigate the construction process here.

Now there are more reinforcing pathways on this group that is getting shit done. There is a huge majority of the native population here who wouldn't help me for shit, ever. There are a lot of reasons why they won't, but they just never will. They are very private, or paranoid, or lazy or too disillusioned. In other post-USSR frontiers there are also many foreigners who are narcissistic as fuck and they don't give a shit about anything but pussy, which they also don't respect. So it can be paranoid private locals and narcissistic foreigners. I've been able to build a crew here though which is a lot better than what I've had in other similar places. That is why I tested it out by building the garage first. The labor, government and community checked out and so I decided to go all in. People thought that the garage was super eccentric and just strange, but cool. It was all part of the plan though. I wanted to have a place to gather functional people to fuel the later stages of building a life here.

Here is a pic of the room for $3k owned in clear.

I'll be buying the $3k finished apartment without a bathroom in about 4 hours. In six months time I'm going to bring in water from the other side of the wall to put in a tiny wet room bathroom something like the image here. I'm thinking of making it very skinny and a bit longer than it needs to be. Then the bathroom doorway on the side will be next to the apartment doorway to save space from the door eating into another usable area. On the other side of the toilet will be probably the same dual basin sink that I'm setting up for my house. Then a single burner induction stove and a small food preparation table. It will basically be a tiny house but without all of the shit that goes along with needing to permanently live in a place.

Having an apartment, even a tiny one is very useful here. The quality cafes and bars within walking distance is very high for such a cash poor country. A $3k 15m^2, 161ft^2 place is plenty. I'll have; 1) a place to put guests, 2) a place to put clients for income, 3) an office, 4) bang shack for bros, 5) A place to crash later when I'm out driving and I get suddenly invited to the nearby pub, 6) a place to register people in pursuit of residency, 7) A place to live closer to the action during a harsh long Winter week, 8) A place to stop by while I'm coming up the hill on the other side of this district. So really not bad for $3k, $2/month garbage bill and $5/year property tax. Useful as fuck.

It's cheap because people are resenting the idea of having to live in a 160 square foot room with their spouse and infant, plus the virus situation making it all dollar starved. However, if these places were repurposed and rebranded into "office" then the price would have to double. It's not a bombed out raw concrete room like what you might find in Latin America. It's a fully finished room done with cheaper materials. A new good window, internal boiler heating pipes, access to fiber optic Internet of which the price options range from $6-15/month. The $15/month gives one hell of an upstream.

My ethereum mining friend just picked up an $80k basement for $30k. It has seven smaller rooms and two large ones. He'll be giving me access to a room. It's a bit on the other side of town, which although not terribly useful for me on a daily basis, does mean that I have keys over the entire city. So this bro will get access to my bang shack on the opposite side and I'll get possibly another bang shack as well. Another bro and I are going to taxi over to it so that he can see it and to drink beers. That friend also just bought a house near to my house and garage. So basically this is what it's looking like for me after being around here 1.5 years. I have other stuff going on but this clique seems to be the most promising.