One day at a time

 Spendings three weeks off work over the Christmas and New Year break. In the second week and enjoying the weather, it’s warm enough for shorts and t-shirt during the day with a nice cool breeze. The building site has closed down for the holiday period so I can enjoy my balcony without any construction noises, but there are still plenty of traffic noise. Had a very nice Christmas Day and Boxing Day, although I haven’t done that much with my time off.

 

I have been in the UK for the last few weeks. I was granted an exemption to leave Australia and I am here to farewell my father, who has sadly passed away. Life in the UK appears to be very much like it was pre-COVID apart from social distancing messages around and some people wearing masks. I hope that my return to Australia will go as smoothly as my departure, but I do need to get a negative COVID result before I will be allowed to fly back.

Short working week, as I took Monday off as part of a long weekend, when I was supposed to be in Sydney, but due to the current lockdown was stuck at home. Not sure when the current lockdown will come to an end, I've stopped following the news about the pandemic as it's just too depressing to keep hearing about infections and deaths. I know the lifting of the lockdown is linked to the vaccination rates. Been looking at air fares to get over to the UK, but at the moment, the borders are still closed here in Australia and I don't have the information necessary to apply for an exemption. I have been looking at going over during my Christmas and New year leave, but the prices are exuberant and will probably cost me several thousands of dollars to get over there. At least more airlines are being to schedule flights to Australia and hopefully the more that come back, will help lower the cost. My dad is still in hospital but there have been moves to get him home (because the hospi...

Once again I celebrated my birthday in lockdown, at least with have a road map (again) out of this one, depending on how the vaccination rates go. I had planned to be in Sydney this weekend and although I can not travel, I have still taken the annual leave that I booked for the trip. I did manage to see my social bubble mate on my birthday. My father is still in hospital but there is very little that I can do from here, with the international borders still closed here in Australia. He is in very good spirits even though it's not looking that good in terms of a full recovery.

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 ...