Do you have that TGIF feeling like no one else does? In theory today is the day when people are happy, knowing that the weekend is about to start and they can do the things they love for the next two days. In this context though, that is unlikely. We’re meant to stay home.
This weekend is going to be extra special because the temperature is meant to reach 20°c, i.
Plumbing and scuba diving are not unrelated. If you understand o-rings and pipe/hose connections then you’ll be fine. I dismantled a system, cleaned it, and then reassembled it, checked for leaks and then ran the tap to see if all was well. Once I saw that everything was indeed well, I struggled to place the drawers and then moved onto the next issue. My website was hacked again so I am now writing this blog post in the day one app, rather than directly to the blog.
April Fool’s during self isolation is not fun. People made jokes about how our freedoms would be limited even further. In ordinary situations those jokes would be detected but because we have the freedom to get food, go for walks, and sit at home we have no other rewards as such. One of the jokes was that bandwidth would be throttled. The second was that Strava would be used to track people and the third was that bikes with handlebars would be allowed but not racing style bikes.
I was writing a Facebook post when I thought of the term Pandemic Solitude and I love it so much that I wanted to use it as a title for today’s blog post. For most people during the pandemic the order is, stay with the people you live with but avoid being close to others.
When you live with no one this means that you should avoid being close to anyone.
Now that we’re in week 5 of self-isolation and Day fifteen of ORCA I am getting pandemic fatigue. As it’s Monday I could make the effort of going to the shops to get fresh food rather than deplete the reserves I have but my motivation is not there. It has come cold and windy and the rate of infection is still high. I expect that by the end of today Vaud will hit the three thousand case mark.
This morning I watched the Simulating an epidemic and it’s interesting. The person is not an expert. He played with various models to show how epidemics spread over a period of time when variables such as infectiousness, social distancing, quarantining and other variables are implemented.
If one hundred percent of people self-isolate then the duration of an epidemic is cut short from lack of people to infect. This is what every nation should have done.
Life during a Pandemic is quite the existential challenge so reaching goals is good. Today I walked the last two kilometres to reach the March challenge goal of walking 298.8Km. In ordinary times this would be a great achievement but during a pandemic, it’s even more interesting.
Although it might seem superficial to reach such a goal it had two key benefits. The first of these benefits is that it got me to focus on the future, to think about the end of the month and not to focus on life one day at a time.
Today’s joke is that clothes have been barricaded away as you can see in the featured photo. I find the idea of hiding clothing behind a wall of beers amusing. How often would you see this. I hope that your underwear and socks are new because if they’re not you may spend weeks or even months feeling uncomfortable.
The queues to get into the shops are not bad and I did see at least two couples walking together in shops so the rules are not as strict as people thought.
Today I’m getting to grips with the new normal. The new normal is queuing like people did before self-checkout and other technology. We also need to queue to get into shops and you either need to take a trolley or a shopping bag if you want to buy things. No more baskets as they are harder to disinfect and keep clean.
“Pardon me, miss, but you can’t use these trolleys, you need to use those trolleys.
This is not our first epidemic. In the 21st century I saw the actions to spread Foot and Mouth from spreading in South West England. Dartmoor was closed and precautions were taken to protect animals. We also lived through the BSE crisis, i.e. Mad cow disease.
From 2002 we had the SARS outbreak and that was our first taste of a pandemic. During this time we disinfected our desks before every shift and at the end of every shift.