Today I practiced vocal German and I found it relaxing compared to being with people in person. This pandemic sees the opportunities almost impossible.
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. I always pass or let horses pass with caution.
A few bike rides ago I was told that they get spooked when they don’t know what is behind them. In this case I was in front of the horses.
I take the paths because I want to avoid dangerous roads and cars. The weather was good for cycling today.
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. What’s worse is that this data is from the 25th of June. This isn’t data from today.
The R number for Switzerland is 1.45 and the Delta Variant, at the time of their data was 40 percent. This means that we are in for another autumn and winter of self-isolation. There is talk from Pfizer of a third booster shot. It seems that the effectiveness declines after 6 months.
In the past when I heard about pandemics, and highly infectious diseases, I was always under the impression that the aim was to contain and prevent the spread of a virus. During this pandemic, this was definitely true during the first few months of the pandemic. As we move forward though the aim of getting to a transmission rate of zero for two weeks in a row, before easing restrictions seems to have been abandoned. This does not make sense. Containing a virus makes sense, because as we have seen, if it is given enough opportunities it mutates, again and again, and each time the danger and threat level increase.
This time from the lifting of sanctions to the R number increasing has been short. Within two or three weeks of the lifting of restrictions, we see that active self-isolation is justified. It is a shame that more people do not watch the news, and react appropriately. It feels as though, if the government does not give people orders, they will not protect themselves, or each other. Furthermore, it is a shame, as self-motivation is better, than having to be told what to do.
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.
I am confused by this, because when there was BSE and Foot And Mouth, and the first SARS crisis, that I remember of, everyone was told to be careful, to avoid spreading the diseases and more. We washed our hands and our feet, and the feet of animals. There was a genuine care for the well being of animals and humans.
This pandemic is different because it seems that all of the norms for keeping a pandemic under control, and mitigating the fallout have been forgotten. Yesterday the Swiss health minister practically said “There is nothing to worry about for vaccinated people.” Of all the people to make such a statement he is the worst, for the simple reason that it puts us all at risk.
Another interesting aspect of this pandemic is that because it is global we can see what is happening in England, in Israel, in New Zealand and other countries. It means that we can follow this pandemic as it happens, day by day, and decision and consequence by decision and consequence.
Both England and Israel vaccinated, and then reopened their societies, and both thought they were safe but eventually saw that they were not. We can see that Switzerland is making that mistake too, but Switzerland just has to spend a few minutes looking at Twitter, and English and Israeli news, to see what to expect next.
During this pandemic poor decisions are being made despite the benefit of hindsight and this is a shame. It’s a shame because if you’re single, and between friend groups it means that you’ve had four hundred and sixty eight days with a hug, without flirting and without a handshake. That’s a long time to go without those things, especially if we’re meant to get eight to twelve hugs a day.
What is terrible about this situation is that there is no hope of it ending for years at the current level of incompetence that governments are showing. How can a pandemic come to an end when leaders are doing nothing to stop the transmission of a virus. Being under quarantine sucks, but at least self-isolation gives us a hope of the pandemic ending. Switzerland was in a straight line down to zero new cases per day and it threw that away as of this week. Now we will have another winter of self-isolation of solitude. Year two of pandemic solitude. I think that after one summer without a car, one summer with a broken arm, and two summers of pandemic solitude I will be changed forever.
I’m happy to socialise on Twitter, but I feel no need or desire to do anything more. It would be agonising if I had a burning desire to socialise, just as the pandemic wave is getting ready to hit. This time Switzerland got down to 140 cases before the wave started to build up again. Now we’re committed to the next pandemic wave. This time young people will suffer, and that is through the mistakes of adults.
Before I end this post, I want to add that I had my first vaccine on the 5th of May and the second on the 9th of June and that I am fully vaccinated as of the writing of this blog post. In theory, I’m perfectly safe and can resume normal life, but according to the news I’m seeing from around the world this “in theory” is not trustworthy. The vaccine was good for the last two variants, but not for the current one.
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.
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.
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.
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. I was waiting for an auspicious time to take all this stuff to the recycle centre and today was that day.
I still spent more time waiting in the car, to get into the recycling centre, than actually in the centre. I’m organised with recycling so that it takes me seconds rather than minutes. I need to improve my paper recycling habits so that I can take seconds, as I do with everything else. Years ago I used to be disorganised about how I sorted things. I became systematic because I wanted to make the process almost instantaneous and it works.
Some writers or journalists were encouraging people to spring clean at the height of the pandemic but this made no sense to me. Why would you want to generate more rubbish and more things to recycle when going to recycle would take hours rather than minutes?
It feels nice to have finally got plastic, aluminium, PET, Glass and other things back under control. The next stage is to “turn the home into a museum” stage. It’s my way of saying “cleaning a place so that you can no longer tell that someone lives there.”
In a few weeks the idea of having guests may no longer be an alien concept so we might as well be ready.
On social Media and Activities websites you see that there are two types of people. Those who are desperate to do something social, after two months of solitude, and those who are cruel and make it clear that they want to exclude people. It’s cruel because self-isolation and solitude are hard. I’m impatient for the chance to go hiking with people, of cycling with people, of shaking hands, or even simply having a conversation at a normal distance.
Although faceplanting is not an academic term it does reflect how impatient I am for the pandemic to be over so that I can get back to having a life in the physical world. By physical I mean handshakes and riding in the same car as someone else. It’s been at least 64 days since I did either.
At the moment my biggest investment of time is working on my website. I’m making sure that I understand the bits of CSS that I am learning and applying them to page after page. It may be time consuming and repetitive but the goal is to learn, and master new skills. Repetition is my friend.
It’s also a way of working on a new portfolio while considering another career pivot. If the pessimists are right and we still have months of solitude and self-isolation then web mastering is a good direction to take.
It’s easy to feel down for several hours a day during a pandemic and we need to find methods by which to stay sane and to stay stable. I believe that to a large extent I have but this is fragile.
We don’t know whether we will be able to socialise this summer. If we can’t then we have to survive another winter of solitude.
Take a look at the legacy part of my website. My Weathering page will make you dream of hiking.
If you have pictures of mountains outside of Europe I’d be interested. Leave a comment below
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. It’s not that I need to learn about HTML so much as I have a desire to complement what I already know.
After passive learning I re-worked some more pages on the HTML part of my website, adding CSS to two or three pages. As a result of what I have learned over the last two or three weeks doing the same thing as I did for the index page for another directory took half an hour or less. What I learned is sticking in my memory. I still cut and paste, but the process is much faster.
Links from HTML Essential Training by Jen Simmons
The more I look up and learn, the more ideas I have for how to modernise my website. For ages I wanted to keep my website as a museum of what the web used to be but as I made pages mobile friendly that desire to keep things the same has altered and now I want to modernise it.
From a visitor point of view this may be a waste of time, as certain parts of the website have little to no traffic. This doesn’t matter, because in the grand scheme of things every page I modernise gives me experience in dealing with CSS, Javascript, navigation design and more. I may be slow on the first pages but as I work my way through the website my efficiency will go up, and with that so will my employability.
We constantly need to learn skills and working on a website, rather than browsing social media, is a great way of doing so. As I looked through Flickr galleries I saw that some people have images of people re-enacting Roman soldiers and other people have images of Rome as it looks today. I could easily breath life back into that part of the website by contacting people and getting permission to share their images.
I’m glad I am working on my website as a project again. It is effectively filling my time, encouraging me to learn more, and getting me ready for a line of work I enjoy.
See you tomorrow.
Reading Time: 2 minutes Day 62 of Self Isolation in Switzerland – ikers, cyclists and cross country skiers move in single file. In some portions of society being single file while doing exercise is normal.
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. Just 7.65 kilometres according to my SUUNTO Spartan HR Sports Wrist, Black. 
There is a cruel irony in society going from soft lockdown to rebooting in safe mode because our consumerist habits can return and crowds are re-emerging but as single people living alone we are stil not allowed within two meters of others unless there is plexiglass or we’re on a video call.
I saw a large crowd of people all standing together. I write this as a joke. The “crowd” was a cluster of toddlers at a kindergarten. They were going out of their classroom to play on the swings outside. I didn’t linger as I saw this as I was starting my walk.
During most of this walk I felt warm enough to open two layers of clothing. In theory I would have been happy in a t-shirt while I was sheltered from the rain. I wasn’t rained on but the wind was active so when I was exposed to it I closed my layers.
I passed over the motorway and it’s back to pre-pandemic levels. People are once again using their cars as much as before. It’s a shame that despite the short re-starting of society the use of the car is so quick to grow in amplitude.
In the US the pandemic is affecting farmers. According to the New York Times meat plant closures mean pigs are gassed or shot instead. Some slaughterhouses are closed so there is no one to process the meat in some cases and in other cases the animals have become too big for the slaughterhouses to deal with them. Plenty of animals are dying needlessly as a result.
On the lighter side of the news people are experiencing flute solos at Stuttgart Airport. It’s interesting that they would choose to do this. It reminds me of an industry, although only theoretically.
The Economist wrote a column titled Casual sex is out, companionship is in but this column is boring because it looks mainly at dating apps and the cardinal sin of dating apps is that it forces lonely people to know who is interested for exorbitant amounts of money. They speak about video dating but the best app I played with was Seesmic back in the day. I’m still in contact with many of those people. Seesmic was as effective as Twitter for creating new friendships and relationships, back in the day.
The closest we have to online flirting in an open society is Tik Tok. On Tik Tok you see that we can play, flirt, and collaborate together in a way that is similar to what we did on Seesmic back in the day. During this pandemic Tik Tok may be the only place for us to have fun. Last night I did a planking duet, and I see a few more duets that tempt me. We will see if I get round to them.
I really need to play and laugh. Tik Tok made me laugh out loud several times yesterday. It is an oasis of companionship in a sea of solitude. As I mentioned at the start of this post, plenty of people are unhappy and struggling to cope during this pandemic so we must do what we can to endure it, and to come out ofthe other side in a good mental state.
I’ll leave you with a video about cooking Lasagna and cake in a van for a change of ideas.
A Demain.
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. I started today’s walk by running for the first two and a half kilometres, using the Guardian’s running podcast week three, for the fourth time. I didn’t run last week and I prefer to give my legs time to acclimate to running before pushing too much.
I spent most of my waking hours today working on the website. I’m still working on the front page and I think it’s almost ready to go live. It’s built with CSS, a little javascript, and grids. I have it behaving as I want it to behave. It looks good, whether viewed on a “desktop” or a mobile phone.
What I learned while working on the front page has helped. When I was making web pages mobile-friendly a week or two ago was bare bones and I didn’t change much. Now when I re-worked three or four pages today I used CSS where I could. I replaced tables with CSS and with pages where I had lists I used CSS to enhance lists. There is one page I still need to re-work, but I need to think about how to do something interesting.
See you tomorrow.