march ended with the clocks going forwards, and the gradual ushering in of o mês das mil aguas (the month of a thousand rains). the bad weather has come at a good time. after nearly 3 weeks of a quarantena it would have been difficult to continue to see light at the end of the tunnel, if we were already being seduced by it outside.
i've been lucky over the past weeks as i've managed to maintain regular sleeping patterns. a notable proportion of people that i've been speaking to have mentioned sleep difficulties. a consequence of enjoying these lengthy periods of slumber has meant that the days have started to race by. regular schedules & patterns flow ceaselessly into the next. periods of sleep breaking up a low-lit evening reading, watching, playing, talking, and the next morning's wait to reacquaint myself with the desk where i work.
i worried about the weekends to start with. whether i would just find myself turning to my 9-5 day job in order to stave off boredom. but this hasn't really been an issue at all.
no. do not take this to mean that i'm turning my hand to a series of tasks and projects showcasing a meaningful modicum of creativity. at the start of a weekend (friday evening, where all my hopes & dreams begin & end) i'll think about the possibilities. the raw potential available at my fingertips. by sunday morning, the dread has set in. there's not enough left. i sift through the pages of my diary frantically. what have i done. i'm two days older, and i have wasted every moment. before i know it, it's wednesday. the first rays of hope filtering in through the dense, humid fog that clouds this tunnel that we're still crawling through.
the past two weeks have brought with it a flood of competition; games, solo & with others across the void of the internet. they started a while ago, but with an emphasis on co-operation: fortnite as a squad, tabletop RPGs. but recently the current sharpened, directed towards a rapidly approaching cliff. fighting tooth and nail for scraps of buoyancy that will be thrown into open-space when we reach the end. at the mercy only of gravitational force.
there are the usual suspects. ticket to ride (original US edition, available on Steam): a densely packed map with many alternate routes, seemingly rewarding those who commit to the long, desolate journey along the canadian border. catan (https://colonist.io/https://catanuniverse.com): in my opinion, the best way of simulating the act of being strangled to death for around an hour. there are also others that wouldn't normally recognise in the mugshot line-up. the most prominent of all being chess.
i don't know why i never got into chess. i've always known the rules, but i think the back-catalogue of strategy was too long, too fearsome. i like video games like rocket league because i can pick it up, move my thumbs a little, and claim the reward of victory. i think that chess offered the exact opposite. a mind whirring, watching strategy blown to smithereens by a knight that went unaccounted for. too narrow a mind to imagine the future of 2/3 moves. obsessed over what may go wrong if i move even a single piece.
so anyway, the game was being played by people i knew and i have a lot of time on my hands. it's been a chastening experience. mistakes, blunders, checkmates. hours of agonising how to best manoeuvre the king out of harms way. wave after wave of defeats, with little improvement in fortunes. a wild approach to the game (see below), without the results to show for it. i've enjoyed it a lot, you really should try it. just do some background reading before you do.
tangents, tangents. i came hear to solemnly declare how i was spilling the precious moments afforded to me for the last two weeks. so i'll get started.
march 29
the clocks went forward and we were caught out! an 11am call to an old friend requiring postponement for another hour, after waking at 10:50am. we dared to believe that we could fit in breakfast, but we were even rushing for the rearrangement. we spoke at length about the places we could go to when everything returns to normal. it was great to speak to him.
the rest of the day was dedicated to writing the last iteration of this blog post. it's such a long activity that it deserves this meta mention. it's partly why i have been reduced to a fortnightly schedule.
in the evening, we watched an episode of terrace house as we brought the weekend to a close. the events on screen came second to us reminiscing about the 2018 period that we took living in tokyo. we resolved to unearth the scriptures that we came about during the beginner's japanese language course that we took in london last year.
march 30 -> april 1
the rain started early. the month of a thousand rains too pregnant with the anticipation of the designated start date to wait any longer. we spent these days with our typical meals of rice and steamed vegetables. working quite late. i was enticed into playing chess by people who better understand the scale and topology of the perilous landscape ahead.
on the 1st of april, we watched a webinar by the head of data science at sl benfica. i'm not sure what we were hoping to learn; i like football, i don't know what i think about data science. he showed us some videos of football players moving and asking us what we thought about the space they had created. he showed us a defender making a pass, where there was a slightly better option in a more central position. i was left in the dark about what this all meant. did we just need to know statistics? did we just need access to a rich source of data? why did we care if the defender didn't make the most optimal pass? shouldn't we just tell them to always pass centrally, if they can? so many questions, and not many answers. i didn't come to any meaningful conclusions. this is the first time that i've revisited my thoughts on the matter.
the company that i work for released a feature that mistakenly blocked a significant number of LGBTQIA+ websites in a product that provides an optional (unmodifiable) filter on what is classed as "safe content". the mistake was rectified after a public outcry. but the product remains. i don't like the branding. i don't like what happened. there were very valid points raised by the community, and i hope that something has been learnt from it all.
april 2 -> april 3
the sun returned, and my great-aunt doreen died. my grandad's sister. i hadn't seen her for a long time. it reminded me of the times that i spent in her living room and garden. we never spent much time anywhere else in her house. there was always a lot of people that i didn't really know, but who i was assured that i should know. occasional stories of second-cousins and their children. brief snapshots of where they were living, the jobs that they were doing. it was in this house, this living room, that these stories would take the human form. somebody that i could have a conversation with; ask questions of; someone to eat the scones & cakes that my great-aunt would bake with. and then we'd return back to our home, and they'd be fragmented into tales again.
her husband, my great-uncle, was the first person that i remember dying. i didn't go to his funeral because i was too young.
i tried to call my granddad but i couldn't get through. i managed to the next day, and he told me that she was pleased to be passing away in the end. that she didn't want to make it to 90 in may anyway. he spoke a little about being at home, going to the pub close-by that has been turned into a small grocery shop. the funeral would just be immediate family. but he brought the conversation to a close not long after, it was nice to hear from me, he said.
ants finally made it into the part of our kitchen where we keep the food. but we've managed to coax them back outside. a jar of peanut better and half a tin of banana bread laid to waste overnight.
on the 3rd of april, we went for a walk to close to the centre of lisbon. it was quiet, but not completely dead. people sitting, chatting. a small group of people playing music outside of a closed restaurant. some people sitting on the steps as we walked past home. an empty tram rolled past, past the empty tram-stops, and the empty pavements.
april 4 -> april 5
the weekend was mostly spent on some hastily put together projects that never really turned into anything. many hours sitting & writing. on monday i found out that what i had been working on would never be able to come to fruition anyway.
we went to the supermarket on saturday. the queue a bit longer than normal, the shop a bit quieter than normal. a police car drove past, blaring out something like: stay at home, the future depends on all of us. if that's not dystopian, then i don't know what is.
on both saturday and sunday evening we spoke to friends and took part in some sort of game of a competitive nature. a pub quiz on the saturday: a team made up of 11, up against a selection of teams of 1 or 2. we won by an embarrassing margin. so much so that we almost didn't own up to winning. on the sunday, we had evening games of ticket to ride and catan. as a team in ticket to ride, we got too bogged down in the east coast, to ever really see the bigger picture. we came last. as individuals in catan, i watched everything fall to pieces from a poor starting position. i probably ruin all board games for everyone else with my singular attitude of play to win. no matter the context or who the adversary is. such emphatic defeats were a severe blow to my confidence going forward. we went for a late run in an attempt to exorcise these demons with questionable success.
the prime minister in the uk went into hospital after a long period of being ill with the virus.
april 6 -> april 8
the start of the working week brought with it the news that the prime minister was severely ill and moved to an intensive care unit. i think this was the first tangible event that really brought home how inadequate the uk's response to this crisis has really been. a country that has played division politics for too long. the number of deaths each day appears to be a tragedy on a scale that was eminently preventable, when compared with the responses of nations in similar positions (in addition to those that are regarded to be much poorer).
i was still struggling with dry eyes, which had been causing me a lot of discomfort when having to stare at a computer screen for such a long time in the weekdays. this had been an ongoing problem for nearly two months. coming on after a period of horrendous sleep, the likes of which i had never experienced before.
on monday, we saw a pigeon fly into our garden and sit for a long period of time. it looked like it was asleep. by the time we sat down to eat lunch, it had died. fallen onto it's side. lying alongside one of the walls.
on tuesday afternoon, i spoke to my brother that lives in china. he saw more of my great-aunt than i really did, and so i wanted to check that he was okay. we spoke for a long period of time about the conditions in chengdu, where he lives, and the uk government's response to the crisis. he also explained me to how we was using his time at home to reinvest into the mmorpg runescape. a game that we used to play when we were younger. he explained the intricacies behind the global marketplace for buying and selling virtual flour and iron ore.
on wednesday afternoon, we went for a walk. past one of our favourite cafés where there is a dog park and a market every tuesday/saturday. the park was locked shut, why are they doing this? we elongated our walk to take in a bit of alfama, nearby to the castle, where we haven't been since the state of emergency was installed. the evening was notable for a change in fortune with ticket to ride! we had successfully learnt to utilsie the routes along the canadian border. a strategy that proved so profitable in the game we previously lost.
before i went to bed, i picked up the book i had been reading around two weeks ago. a copy of silus marner by george eliot (mary ann evans) that my mum had bought me as a christmas gift. i managed a couple of chapters before sleep took hold.
april 9
we got reviews back for a couple of long-running pieces of academic work, some very good reviews, some mixed reviews. the conference that we had submitted to has been cancelled/postponed anyway, but academic recognition still continues as normal. citations still to be accrued, my scholar profile will presumably still be meaningful, even after a global pandemic.
i achieved my first checkmate in chess. i had forced a few resignations, but i had never had to go through the motions of physically rendering the king piece from being able to escape my feeble clutches. this felt like an important moment. i immediately followed it up with some careless, error-stricken defeats.
we went for a 5km walk to help bring in the long weekend. past the museu nacional do azulejo (the tile museum). past restaurants open for takeaway. over an overpass above the train lines near santa apolónia filled with static passenger trains. back up the hill past a large cemetery close to our flat.
i drew the day to a close playing death stranding, while my partner wrote a pub quiz for our families. death stranding is a game released in december 2019 by hideo kojima (metal gear solid etc.). the plot centres on an earth that has been given over to the dead; where the remnants of humanity live in isolation underground, unlinked from each other. you spend most of your time delivering packages between these different locations. i never thought that it would be so salient. i managed to escape the clutches of mads mikkelsen and returned to building roads between the few settlements that i had discovered.
the prime minister of the uk was taken out of intensive care, on the road to recovery, it seemed.
april 10 -> april 11
the long weekend started. the dry eyes and ear weirdness that i had been struggling with seemed to magically lift. my eyes still ached a bit, but none of the dryness. my ear no longer seemed blocked. i don't know what it all meant, i'll add it to irrevocably growing log of health complaints that i can think back to when i'm next dealing with an illness.
the health secretary in the uk attempted to shift the blame for the lack of personal protective equipment onto the health workers tackling the virus. he could get away with attempting to turn the general public on football players, but this one (thankfully) seemed to be a step too far. the tories exposing themselves (yet again) as a group of individuals that are united only by their self-interest in turning the public in on each other.
in my virtual world of living as the football manager of alfreton town, i was faced with an insurmountable task that i am likely to give up on very soon. my partner made a lentil & seitan curry that lasted for two evenings, with accompanying naans and onion bhajis. mwah magnifico. it was a good job that it lasted for two days, as we comprehensively failed to order a pizza via the internet. this came as a shock, given that such a task is eminently very achievable.
on the saturday, we spent a lot of the afternoon reminiscing about the 2018 wc and watching portugal vs spain with a friend. missing the game live was one of my heaviest regrets. i remember waking up in the morning in tokyo, staring in disbelief at my phone. knowing that the highlights i was searching for would never repair what i was seeking to heal. it was the same waking up after belgium beat brazil. and after turning off the cl final in 2005 before the penalty shoot-out.
i finished saturday by attempting to devise the sequences behind a tabletop rpg game, designed for some friends that i had floated the idea with previously. i'm skeptical as to how it will turn out. unfortunately, i don't think that's a good enough reason to avoid attempting it. i'll let you know how it goes.