Day Thirty-One of ORCA in Switzerland — Plenty of Dust
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Day Thirty-One of ORCA in Switzerland — Plenty of Dust

You build up plenty of dust as you plow the fields at the moment. The drought continues, as does the desire for this pandemic to be over. For now, the downward trend continues so we could feel optimistic. I’m still optimistic than in two or three weeks recycling centres will go back to normal. At the moment recycling centres remind me of something else.





Looking at this queue of cars reminds me of something. All the engines are off. All the cars are lined up. Plenty of people are in their cars waiting. If you saw this in Calais you’d expect them either to be waiting for the Eurotunnel train to get back to England or for the ferries to take them.


This is an image of Swiss people waiting to get into a recycling centre. Despite this being the 31st day of the pandemic Swiss peoples’ desire and compulsion remains strong. For many people this is the lazy person’s equivalent of “getting out of the house for a bit”. I go for a one and a half hour walk and they sit in their cars, enjoying the fresh air, the tweets of the birds, and best of all a great view on the Mont Blanc. For the last two days we’ve had a good view.



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Colza and the Mt Blanc.

A post shared by Richard Azia (@richardazia) on




Today I have spent very little time on Twitter and Facebook because I still can’t stand either of them. I’m thinking of deleting both accounts when this pandemic is over. I spent time modernising my weebsite instead. Pages that haven’t been changed since the late 90s are finally being updated and included within this CMS. The inspiration came as a result of seeing that Google told me in an e-mail that 21 pages were not AMP compatible.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEujwsNUxiE
in 1919 people made their own face masks as well. Getting a face mask on a cat does seem troublesome.


Last night I watched this during and after having dinner last night. I feel the need for watching people hike, and socialising. We’re now on day 31. We’re officially a month in. If we were in a different context then I would have almost completed one Via Alpina route by walking several hundred kilometres.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxg6Z6I4mxk


When I started reading about Thur-Hiking it was in blog form, with pictures, and then books, and occassionaly podcasts and then, during this pandemic, I started watching videos of people’s hiking adventures. It’s a way of seeing nice landscapes and imagining what would be possible in Europe. It’s good to plan for the future, and it’s good to have plans that do not require much or any contact with others. Via Ferrata, climbing and other sports may not start again for a while after the last new transmission of the virus. Hiking, however should be possible.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5F1llzscsQ
I haven’t watched this yet.


My project, for the next few days, is to continue shifting all my old website content to this blog. I should learn something new in the process.


I need to eat dinner now.

Day Six of Orca in Switzerland – Stricter measures.

Today’ I’d like to discuss stricter measures. Coop and Migros both have online shops set up for home delivery but the system is overloaded by people ordering at the same time. They don’t have the truck fleet or staff to cope with the demand so I suggest a better solution.


Both Digitec and Galaxus allow people to order online and choose which shop they want to pick up their purchases. This idea is relevant today because Migros, Coop and other shops are now forcing people to queue outside shops before being allowed to go in and make their purchases.


Queuing, whilst keeping shops from getting crowded inside, will increase the risk of propagation of the virus outside the shops. People have a tendency not to stand with the minimum of two-meter distance separation. The larger the crowd the longer the queue, and the longer the wait the higher the probability of contagion.


If we could shop online and request distribution from a specific point the time we spend at the shops would be cut down to a minute or two and it would have the added benefit that we would not even need to go into the shop. I don’t want to go to the shops at all if I need to queue but there is no choice.


The system they put in place yesterday will result in more, rather than less hoarding and increase the amount of time people spend in proximity to others.


Vaud has flattened. Source


Having said this the graph for Vaud has flattened but I don’t know whether this is because they ran out of test kits or whether they have failed to update the figures at the time when I wrote this blog post. I hope the worst is over for this Canton.