If you read this post you might be wondering what’s up with that USA flag in my office? Filip, I thought you are Romanian.

Well, that means you did not read my old posts from this blog. You might start from this post called “Why we’d like to move to the USA?” and you’ll get it.

But also, here’s the short story: I started watching The Pacific on HBO Max. In the first episode, one of the first shots you’ll see is about a man that will go to war and before that goes to a church to pray. On the outside of that church, I saw the mighty USA flag on a pole.

It’s a subtle detail, maybe most of you won’t notice that or give it importance, but I always liked the way Americans are proud of their flag and are not afraid of showing that by putting up flags near buildings and homes, not only governmental or public buildings but personal houses too.

(BTW, I’ve now learned that if you screenshot something on HBO Max you’d end up with a black picture instead, you can’t actually screenshot at least on the Mac)

I paused the show right here and searched where I can buy the USA flag in Romania. I’ve found out steag.ro and I immediately ordered the biggest size available. It is one of the greatest things I now have in my office.

I don’t know if you noticed, but there are some random things on my blog page. First of all, the grid is always laid out in a random order/placement. If you keep refreshing the page on the blog page (/blog) you can see that the size of the post boxes is different on each refresh. Also, there’s one box that is not even a post box but shows random information or things. I thought I can add a note of personality on my website with this randomness. And one of the pieces of information you can see on that random box is this:

I know that we have little to no chances of winning the Diversity Visa 2023 but we keep on dreaming that we will and we will be able to start a new life in the US. We look forward to May 7 when we’ll find out the results about the status of our application. We have 2 chances cause we (me and Catalina my wife) both applied. When you apply you are the main applicant but you have to enter your full family also. So if I win, Catalina and my 2 boys also win. If Catalina wins, I also win with the boys. The first year we applied I only applied so we had only one chance. Now… we’ve doubled the chances. So instead of 1.5% chances to win in Romania, we now have 3%. That’s better, right?

Anyway, we look forward to May 7th. #hopeful.