This.
Op do what you can to either move closer to work, or find work closer to you.
The perks of living in a mega city is that you don’t have to go far for anything… what’s the point of living in the most dense and connected place if you work 3 hours away from your home and also have to drive there?
For me yes.
Even when I’m done, I’ll still never live someplace where I can’t get a coffee or a beer without driving.
I never eat McDonalds in the US or anywhere while travelling but some reason whenever I’m waiting for a train, the train station McD’s is so appealing. It’s also fun to see the differences in the menus. I had McD’s at the Ljubljana train station, Zagreb train station, and some train station in Serbia somewhere I think.
But the second I leave the train station, getting McDonalds in Europe becomes entirely unpalatable again.
Also cyber security engineer - those threats are so overstated it’s hilarious. No one is hacking you at a Starbucks. HTTPS is more than sufficient for everything. Just practice basic cybersecurity like checking the URL before you type your password in. If you are going to get scammed on the internet, there’s a 99% chance it starts with an email or a text message (and it’ll be your own fault), not a hacker on Starbucks wifi.
That said, I do have a WireGuard VPN I built in a raspberry pi. It cost Line $30 total and will last for a decade. There’s no need at all for any VPN service like the ones they advertise in YouTube. They only make money by paying YouTubers to scare you into thinking your porn habits will be disclosed. That is not a reasonable fear, that’s not how internet security breaches work.