Self isolation and social distancing

Dear readers,

Just a quick blog entry to let you know that we are well and hope that you are too. The only people I have spoken to, at a safe distance of course, have been the kids and two friends who came for hubby's birthday two weeks ago.

 

I didn't get the memo about wearing hats

Birthday boy with cake without candles due to
Corona of course

The chef with helper R busy in the kitchen cooking
canard aux oranges and other goodies

Other than that we see people walking by our living room window, mainly dog walkers and hard-core runners. The schools are closed now for the virus and for the Easter holiday so I guess there will be a lot of desperate parents trying to think of things to do with their kids at home. They have closed many of the beaches in Sydney but not down here so I guess they can still take the kids to play on the beach but keeping a safe distance to others.

Well, this turned out to be mainly about the Corona virus but it is hard to talk about anything else. I remember every time there was a flu epidemic when I grew up, for example the Hong Kong flu, my grandmother started reminiscing about the Spanish flu and the horror of that period in her life. She was born in 1896 so she was just a young adult when the great war ended.

Well, I better go and get dressed now since hubby is in a Skype conference for work and I don't want to be seen sitting here in my undies and a tee shirt. He is working from home now during the virus and it comes with its pro and cons mainly pros of course.

Until next time, keep your distance and wash wash wash!

Toilet paper crisis

Dear readers,

Australia is going through a serious crisis right now. It's a war of toilet paper!

We have three rolls left in our household and after that we have to get out to fight for more. The thing is we didn't hoard because we didn't think it would come to this. We saw on TV how people fought each other in the supermarket for the last rolls but it all seemed unreal at the time. But it turned out to be the grim reality.

Most shops near where we live have empty shelves, no toilet paper, no tissues etc.

Hubby came home with some household paper yesterday that we could maybe use in emergency but I am afraid it will clog up the plumbing. I spoke to our daughter and she said that she had quite a bit extra TP so maybe we can go up to Sydney and get some from her. People generally try to go to the toilet at work so as not to have to use TP at home as much.

It reminds me of films we used to see of Russia and people queueing in shops to buy things. Here we have seen scenes on TV of people fighting each other over toilet paper. This is not so surprising since Australians use about 88 toilet paper rolls per person, or slightly less than two rolls a week, over the course of the year, according to data from German market research company Statista. This means a family of four would need about 15 rolls for a 14-day quarantine period.

All this is obviously due to media scaring us over the corona virus. I don't mean to diminish the seriousness of the virus but the daily scare reports certainly do the trick with inducing people to hoard.

We are having a lunch next weekend and one of the people we invited asked what they could bring and I was almost going to say "a toilet paper roll would be nice" but it seemed crass. We will try to manage and hope for the best.

Otherwise all is well and we are slowly getting used to living the beach life down here in Wonoona. We are also slowly getting used to hubby working three days a week. Or let's put it this way. He is getting paid for three days a week but probably working five days a week as he did before.

Ending this with special greetings to women friends everywhere.