Today I practiced vocal German and I found it relaxing compared to being with people in person. This pandemic sees the opportunities almost impossible.
Learning German with Babbel
When I played with voice recognition on the laptop it failed but when I use it on the phone it works fine. Practice speaking with a phone, when you’re in a quiet room.
During a pandemic one of the safest places to be is on a bike on quiet rural roads. The only people you meet are sporty so there is a higher likelihood that they are sporty.
Today I had to be respectful when passing two horses. They can often be afraid when they see cyclists, as we look strange. Bright colours, a strange machine underneath us. It can also be that the rider is also a little afraid.
It is important to know that you are in Justified Self-Isolation. Over the last three or four days I have felt like an idiot for self-isolating, but I now see that this is entirely justified. The R number for some canton went from 0.70 or so up to 1.4 or higher in recent days. This is for Bern, Geneva and Vaud, and it should spread more with the weekend.
As tough as it is to keep self-isolating and not meeting people the change of this board from light orange to dark red has been very fast.
The pandemic is still alive and well and the hope that we might have had that the pandemic would end has been scuppered because governments refuse to work towards COVID-Zero, and they refuse to be cautious. It is disheartening to see with which complacency governments are sleeping back into exactly the same mistake as last summer. Last summer they allowed the numbers to climb, and ignored the risk of another wave, and this summer they are making the same mistake.
Coping with solitude is one of the challenges that we, people who live alone, are going to become familiar with. It’s 65 days since I’ve had skin to skin contact, sixty-five days since I’ve given or received a hug. It’s sixty-five days since I’ve had a meal with anyone.
Happiness, whilst entirely and easily accomplished, is all about adjusting our goals and aspirations to remain positive, and even find happiness. As it’s lunchtime, and it’s Tuesday, I should be going to get food for the upcoming week but I don’t have the positivity to do that at this instant.
Earlier today or yesterday at some point I was thinking of the song When I’m 64, and that I should share it. I’m not 64. Quarantine hasn’t aged me so drastically. I felt the need to make that joke.
Recycling For the first time in two months I went to the recycling centre today. For at least two months I cleaned everything that could be recycled and sorted it into the correct bag.
Today I walked a 15-kilometre loop because I saw people walking two abreast and decided to retrace my steps a short distance before trying a new bifurcation. By the end of this walk, my legs were starting to get tired. I walked non stop for over two hours before a quick stop at a petrol station to get some drinks before heading home.
Before going on my walk I finished the CSS course on Linkedin Learning before starting another one on HTML.
Today I was going to go for a walk but when I saw how beautiful the conditions were and how empty the roads seemed it felt like it would be a shame not to take advantage so eventually I got a bee in my helmet. Usually, you’d think of them as being in bonnets, but not today.
When I passed by the border in Crassier it was completely closed and when I passed by another border people were speaking across the barriers.
It’s the sixtieth day of solitude for some of us and if we look at Twitter we see that people in other countries are suffering. One person spoke of the dark dog whilst another expressed distress. A third expresses another emotion. Around the world we see people suffering and trying to cope in their own unique ways.
I went for my daily walk but I wasn’t fully motivated so it was a relatively short circuit.
For once I walked in the drizzle, rather than the rain but I could hear thunder as I got home. I have almost reading Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home during this walk. Poetically I was listening to her about walking with a storm on its way whilst a storm was thundering over the Jura.
The rain became heavy just as I got close to home so today I am not drenched to the bone, and in need of a change of clothes like yesterday.