One day at a time

It's been an extraordinary week! Firstly we have the continuing lockdown and curfew, with a couple of minor tweaks (upping the distance people can travel and allowing two households to mix outside), but on the whole the same rules and regulations still apply to metro Melbourne. There is a "roadmap" to when all this will be lifted, which is dependent on the level of vaccinations in the state and across Australia more generally. Then on Wednesday we had an earthquake! Not something that happens very often in Melbourne and not to the magnitude that this one struck - 5.9. It was a very scary 20 seconds, as the apartment shock and things fell over. Thankfully there was little danger caused by the quake, a couple of walls on old buildings collapsed and some people lost power  but thankfully no one was hurt or lost their life. Then on Friday I found out that my father had been taken to hospital and was in a pretty bad way. I have spoken to him and he sounds in good spirits, but ...

The walls are going up, in my case quite literally at the building site down the road, The walls closest to our apartment building are going up first, which might act as a sound barrier but I doubt they will have much impact. The lockdown continues, although there have been a couple tweaks to the restrictions from Friday, with travel permitted up to 10km and small gatherings outside allowed. I had a visit from my social bubble friend, he turned up during the afternoon, when I was still working so I probably was’t the best host. I am on the owners committee for my building and we had our first meeting with the new owners corporation management company, it was a refreshing change to talk to someone who came across as professional and knowledgeable. Sounds like the transfer from the old company did not go smoothly but they are working through the issues. Work is getting to the pointy end of the latest publication, we have the big meeting with the “important” people next week and I had to ...

 Finally had enough of work and took a mental health day on Friday to do something completely different (well as different as I can in lockdown). I took the train to the next town and went shopping (all within my 5km limit). The other highlight from the week was arranging, conducting and editing a radio interview for the show I volunteer on, which we recorded on Sunday. I also went to see my elderly relative to check up on her and make sure she was okay over the weekend. One of the family will see her during the weekend as she does not receive support over the weekend. Apart from that my week has been very same same, there is very little to do in the evening but watch TV so it was nice to do something different this week. 

Lockdown in Victoria will stay in place until 70% of elibigle people have had their first vaccation and then there will be some lifting of the restriction, unfortunately that means that we are probably going to stay in lockdown for most of September. My elderly aunt had her 99 birthday in lockdown, although one of my cousin's children did make time to visit her and she had lots of phone calls and presents delivered. I had my second jab and have received my vaccination certificate to prove I have had both jabs, although at the moment that doesn't change anything for me, but hopefully when the international borders open up a bit, I will then be able to travel again. We have been having some nice weather and even though today was forecast to be wet and cool, I am out on my balcony enjoying the sunshine.

The current lockdown continues and the earliest it will be lifted is 2 September, but based on the numbers recently, that looks unlikely to happen. Been a bit lost at sea recently with work and took Friday afternoon off, I was supposed to get my second vaccination jab but had to reschedule due to usual problems caused by food intolerances. It has been rescheduled for Monday morning. Was going to see my friend this weekend, but he has called it off to work on a computer issue that he caused and is trying to fix. I will go and see my elderly aunt on Sunday and take the electric blanket I bought to replace her fan heater, hopefully she doesn’t put up a fight to keep the fan heater. Haven’t been out much, just to go shopping when I need to and then only locally. I did take the car out to go to a different supermarket and that was a nice change. We are only allowed to travel up to 5km for shopping and exercise at the moment. The building site down the road is supposed to get its crane next ...

This nightmare continues with lockdown until 2 September and a nightly curfew between 9pm to 5am. This means that my local supermarket now closes at 8:30pm! There have been violent protests about the lockdown and I share the frustration, but the protests will have no impact and can possible turn into super spreader events, only prolonging the lockdown! Work is not really helping, with numerous requests coming from another area of the department with no regard to the work I need to complete for my own role, hopefully I will be getting someone to assist me soon and I have sent some of the recent requests on to other members of the team so I can concentrate on my own work. I should get my second AZ vaccination on Friday coming, although recently there have been people dying from COVID who had been fully vaccinated so it's not a silver bullet the politicians keep saying it will be, I hope they make sure that we have got to over 80% fully vaccinated before removing all the restrictions ...