In US films a sock or other object on a door handle implies that there are two or more people enjoying bedroom sports. As a couple were in one room I took the opportunity of speaking about doing this joke and then doing it. It’s harmless fun in an original context. How often do you see this in an air raid shelter?
Glass of water thrown onto a person taking a shower
I always want to throw cold water onto people taking a shower so I tried with my hands. I mentioned this idea to someone else and he grabbed a glass of water and threw it onto his girlfriend. I think she was slightly disappointed that it hadn’t been me throwing the water.
Glass of water balanced on a door
Someone else liked the idea of glasses of water falling on people so he took a glass and placed it above the door and leaning. The intention was that when the next person opened the door it would soak them. As this was during a party it was normal behaviour.
Playing sounds through the ventilation shafts.
When you’re standing outside near one of the vents you can hear people speaking inside. It’s fun to play tricks on people so I queried what we could do to scare or surprise the people downstairs. One person decided to play the sound of an emergency vehicle.
When a person came up to the surface he spoke of hearing a fire truck or other vehicle so the joke was a partial success.
We’re in the middle of a pandemic. Some of us go without conversing with people in the real world for days or even weeks at a time. Is now the time to be offensive about people’s social media habits? For plenty of TikTok users, their only window into the social world is their phone.
Plenty of people are lonely, and in need of human connections. Social media is a great means by which to have moments of intimacy, to flirt or even just to have a convivial moment with someone else.
If we’re going to behave like bullies then it would make sense to comment on the people who do not wear a mask, and those who do not respect the two meter distance. How about all those people going to bars, restaurants and pubs where there is no respect for the two meter rule?
During a pandemic the behaviour that is harmful to society is that which spreads COVID-19, not instagramming or TikToking, or other. If people are dealing with the solitude of a pandemic by socialising online welcome, and thank them.
Their behaviour will cut the pandemic short, at least in some cases. Solitude is a positive, during a pandemic.
Never forget that just because you’re married, with children, or living in an apartment with others, that this is a reality for everyone. Remember that we’re six months into this pandemic and that some of us have yet to give a hug or even shake the hand of a stranger.
Pandemics are solitary affairs, so give “influencers” the benefit of the doubt.
Both Nik and Neil have tagged me to talk about eight random things about myself and since I have some time tonight I’ll work on this.
1) I reached competition level as a skier in France after progressing through all the levels but have never bothered to compete. I love the sport and the sensations rather than comparing myself to others. It’s a year after I reached competition level that I moved on to learning snowboarding.
2) I studied film theory, montage theory and created shot lists long before I ever had access to an edit suite. As a result I had a very good theoretical background to editing and shooting before I did any work.For two to three years I would film every theatre production at school as a way to perfect my shooting style. It’s demanding when every minute you shoot must be of the highest qualities.
3) In 2003 when I applied to go back to University I was accepted for every course and university I applied to in England. That meant I had a real choice. It’s a great feeling. I knew where I wanted to go anyway.
4) In one year I went to Germany, Italy (twice) Poland, England and Switzerland both for pleasure and studies. I love to travel and have been to over 20 countries on three continents by now. It’s not much compared to some but it’s fun nonetheless.
5) Working at Geneva airport was a really fun job for two reasons. Firstly because it’s physically and secondly because it taught me about real teamwork. When you’re kneeling in an aircraft hold lifting 20 kilo suitcases 50-70 times within 25 minutes you soon develop physical strength. If someone appears lazy they will be made to work twice as hard. Occasionally those with experience would tell me to work at a slower pace.
I’m glad it’s not my career but I’m happy I had the experience
6) I dived the English channel in November when the air temperature was hovering around 11°C. For the first dive I felt like an idiot and was scared. The visibility was no more than 30 seconds and the water was freezing. I shivered for at least three hours after the dives. A few months later I dived the same waters and I used a third of a tank in the time it took others to use two thirds 🙂
7) I have had content online since late 1996-97. I started by writing about the Romans and putting the content on iprolink, then geocities before finally putting it on main-vision.com. My extended essay was about information technology in a global society back pre 2000. I have always been among the early adopters because I enjoy new technology so much.
8) I hate when people use the word mate because of all the Natural history documentaries I’ve watched. When you hear about animals mating for a decade or more and people start calling you mate it just feels wrong, especially when it’s guys ;-). 8 years in England doesn’t make me feel any more comfortable with the term.
Now that I’ve done this I’m tagging the following 8 people:
In normal times a forest fire in the Chernobyl exlusion zone would attract attention and environmentalists would actively speak about it. The world would pay attention. Due to the pandemic the news story is low on the agenda.
I mentioned that a coffee shop and a pet shop had reopened on Monday and this morning I read that markets would be allowed to take place. Instead of the usual 160 stands, there would be just 30. In articles When reading other articles I saw that there was a mention that in order to be more confident that the virus was slowing down there would have to be zero transmissions for 14 days or more. We are still far from that today.
I’d rather sacrifice for two or three weeks now and preserve summer, than be too hasty, and lose the advantage we seem to have at the moment.
Click the image to read that story from Radio lac. According to Dider Pittet, speaking on RTSInfo we would need two and a half million masks per day to protect people in Switzerland alone. On a global scale many more masks would be needed.
Phone Addiction
Of course during this period when people are stuck at home, unable to socialise in person they are meant to turn towards the phone and use messaging and social media apps to share news with friends and family. Some people use this as an opportunity to say that people are all the more addicted to their phones than before.
I find the opposite is true. Yesterday I forgot my phone at home when I went for a walk and I could easily have gone back upstairs to get it but I didn’t because A) I didn’t need it and B) my walk was going to be short.
I should go for a walk now but I can’t really be bothered. I don’t want to avoid people. I don’t want to overcome my fear of dogs. I would love for this pandemic, so that I could try something different. I’d like to go for a bike ride but if I do that I need to be careful not to stray too far and I still need to avoid people.
The main reason for going out is to get some sunshine.
For exercise I have Zwift.
if you need a reason to stay indoors and to self-isolate watch the video below.
For those who are interested in community video French operator Free is providing one of the most interesting services around at the moment. They are offering you a user generated television channel and the technology to broadcast content live from the comfort of you own home. All you need is a subscription to ADSL 2 and the Freebox HD box.
The idea behind this service is to bring community video straight to the user. Youtube gives people the chance to upload poorly produced content so that the masses may view them. Current TV provides a website where users submit content and hope that it works it’s way up to being broadcast. Blogtv allows people to chat and is interesting for live events. Operator 11 is currently my little favourite thanks to it’s ability to switch from one webcam to another with participants from around the world. It’s great and offers you the ability to plug in a dv camera but is let down by picture quality.
Free are revolutionising the process. They are providing the user with break out boxes that take the video content, either via s-video or another method and encode the content within the box. From this point on there are two options. The first of these is to provide the content live at a lesser quality level or share it differed, in other words once the data has been transferred from one point to another. According to SVM the compressed video is around 1,4 gigabytes for an hour. Normal DV streams would be 12 gigabytes per hour but with the correct encoding they’ve saved on space.
If you want to find out more about this service then the SVM article can be found here. It includes a video. The content is only in French though.
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. I’m writing this blog post because I have found, on more than one occasion, that writing helps me organise thoughts into a positive context.
I’m still working on the future.
Today I finished the Linkedin Learning course on Essential CSS and I started the course on CSS Essential Training. I’m still moving forward and I’m working on being able to apply for a different set of jobs. I have already studied for 102 minutes and my weekly goal is just 120 minutes so I’m reaching that goal with speed.
According to the Productive App, I’m on day 69, with 69 “Total perfect days”. I’ve “done” 354 tasks so far with an average of 5.1 a day. With Duolingo, I have a 252-day streak of studying a new language every single day, with no “skip the weekend” or other cheats. I’m still moving forward.
Avoiding Reminders of What We Can’t Achieve.
During this pandemic one of the easiest ways for me to be happy and stable, is to avoid reminders of what I don’t have. By avoiding people who are not walking alone, by avoiding seeing families together, by avoiding romantic comedies, and by avoiding specific television shows, I can feel content with the life that is possible for a single person, living alone, in between jobs, not to fall into a negative feedback loop.
Happiness, is about being happy with what we have, and what is possible.
Driving to the mountains with a group of strangers to go for a hike, to go climbing or to do via ferrata is not possible. Even if we did go to climb on the Via Ferrata that are open we would have to respect the two meter distance, wear a mask, gloves, and then disinfect at the end of the activity.
With those limitations we might as well continue with our pandemic routine.
During this pandemic I get comfort from people doing things in solitude, like the horse rider in the image above. I was walking towards the horse and its rider and it seemed spooked so I stopped, and let it walk by. I went into the meadow between fields to give it more space.
Moments like this feel good, because they’re experienced between two individuals. I am not reminded of the solitude that I am currently unable to change. The person might not go back to solitude, but I draw strength from seeing other people dealing with solitude.
Thru Hiking, which is a topic I’ve been reading, and listening to podcasts about, is about spending hours, weeks, or even months in solitude with one’s thoughts.
I love hiking with people, and I look forward to when hiking can resume being a group activity. It is a pleasant way of starting new friendships although this pleasure will have to wait a few more weeks.
Réfuges, in the mountains, are re-opening and these opportunities are slowly coming back. I look forward to when things are back to normal. I look forward to when we can start to do group activities.
I knew I’d feel better, after writing this blog post and I was right. I do.
It might seem strange that I’d rather not meet people who are not alone through this, but it’s a coping mechanism, which is why I’m on day 65 of solitude, and ambitious, rather than the opposite.
It’s April fool’s day and the swiss have taken advantage of their reputation to start a funny promotional campaign. It’s about the birds soiling the mountains and having crews of people specifically to resolve this problem. Of course it’s an April fool’s joke.
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