i met my parents at the airport where my mum greeted me as normal, and my dad bumped elbows with me as a humorous reference to the time that we are living in. during the taxi journey back to our apartment, we spoke mostly about the virus. my dad questioned whether it was really any different to influenza, given the number of people that die of the "common flu" each year. i didn't want to start the weekend by immediately refuting the accuracy of the conversation we were having. but i was also armed with the knowledge of someone that had asked similar questions a few weeks ago, and had been informed that i was very much mistaken. that this virus is far worse than the flu.
by the end of the weekend, my dad was telling me how he couldn't sleep very well as he was thinking about what will happen to elderly relatives who were unable to access basic care mechanisms that are essential to their livelihoods. the day after they left, TAP (the primary airline company serving portugal) cancelled 80% of flights in and out of the country. by wednesday, portugal had declared a state of emergency. i still don't really know what that means, but i'm sure we'll find out soon.
a diary
over the course of the previous week, i've spent a lot of my time working. this means staring at a computer screen for long periods of time, or at least reading documents and thinking about what i should do when i next stare at one. in the evenings, in the absence of really being able to take up anything that involves going anywhere/socialising (beyond doing solitary exercise), this usually means waiting until the holy hour when it is late enough to justify going to bed (usually around 22:30).
with the weekend approaching, i thought about what i could do to use the time most effectively. my narrow mind didn't immediately render anything that would be that worthwhile; the best option that presented itself was smothering myself in the comforting embrace of spending hours on football manager.
but returning to the scenes of my "glorious" youth and extracting joy is seemingly beyond me now. the next best option was to start writing a diary about what i've been doing during this global pandemic. along with the refugee and climate crises, the coronavirus outbreak may prove to be the defining moment in a number of generations. capitalism arguably lies in ruins as the tory government in the uk (yes, i'm still unable to read portuguese news without ctrl+c'ing into a translator) agrees to enforce ban evictions for tenants that are unable to pay rents, and to pay 80% of the wages of people forced into unpaid leave. obviously there is far more to do, and this crisis will undoubtedly be worsened by the manner in which the government has stripped and gambled with the healthcare provisions in the country. but these steps are still unprecedented for any government that i've lived under.
writing a diary requires reiterating on all of the things that i would normally do during a working week. reading, staring at screens, writing. there is also not a lot going on for someone that spends most of their time doing these things. but, documenting more of my life was my resolution at the start of the year, and if i can't find anything interesting to write about how i pass the time, then i have bigger problems to try and sort out!
so here it is, a weekly (i hope) diary of how i passed my time in effective isolation during a global pandemic.
sunday march 15
we didn't get out of bed until around 9am which i felt bad about since my parents were staying. we walked down to a local cafe and sat down to eat before realising that we were in a different place to the one that we thought we were in. the cafe we had planned to go to was actually next door, but was closed due to the virus. breakfast was a shambolic operation involving weak tea and dry toast but it is better left unsaid.
we finished around 11:30 and walked to the miradouros (viewpoints) close to our apartment. the weather was nice, the crowds were largely diminished, my parents had to leave for their flight at 2pm. my partner queued up outside of a supermarket to get some tofu and canned beans.
after my parents left we were going to go meet some friends who i did portuguese classes with, but one of them was forced into self-isolation as one of their work colleagues tested positive for the virus. we were rattled by the rapid spread of the virus from relative theory, into a prospect that was visibly altering our lives. we stayed indoors for the rest of the day.
that evening, we played a board game that i was given as a birthday present. there was a substantial rpg element which involved a lot of reading. i privately convinced myself that i was developing a cough and shortness of breath.
later that night we played fortnite with some friends in london and i went to bed feeling light headed. that night i woke u psweating and convinced myself that i was developing a fever.
monday march 16
i woke up feeling fine after a long old sleep. i missed the start of a work meeting at 10am because my meeting notifications are set to 10mins before and i forgot to keep remembering for the full 10 minutes afterwards.
work itself was difficult, the crisis was too obvious, too opaque. especially when you're sat at a computer all day. i had another meeting that was held to organise another future meeting.
we played fortnite again in the evening. it was nice to hear from friends, easily the best part of the day. but the silences between games were punctuated by an overt sense of foreboding that i hadn't encountered since reading a romantic poem in my english literature classes.
tuesday march 17
long old sleep again, but no meetings, so i had all day to alt-tab between work and minute-by-minute pandemic coverage. there were rumours that portugal would transition from a state of alert to a state of emergency.
we watched terrace house in the evening, i convinced myself that i was getting ill again. my left ear started to develop an annoying sensation of feeling blocked. i also went for a run that was unusually fast in relation to the times that i've been putting out recently. there were a lot of people exercising (press-ups, interval traning) at a park that i reach around halfway.
wednesday march 18
woke up fine again, with allowance for blocked ear. received some intriguing messages from different friends about the possibility of playing virtual rpgs (both sci-fi and pure dnd). i started to wonder whether the situation we were in may in fact lead to a solidification of the ties that bind us all together. in any case, playing a virtual rpg is something that i could get on board with.
portugal reluctantly declared a state of emergency, but with little details on what that would actually mean. i had a meeting with my manager where we spent a large part of it talking about the crisis and how it was affecting us both. it was good to speak to someone about it. work was a little bit easier, i think i was just acclimatising to the fact that there was no joy to be found from reading the news, and so i was reading much less of it.
we ordered some takeaway food but were brought to our knees by a box of cold, hard chips so it was not a great experience. we vowed to get back to our rice cooker steaming routine the next night.
our friends called and told us that they wouldn't be able to visit us in lisbon around easter after all, and so they were cancelling their flights. sad, but totally understandable. we played fortnite again and went to bed around 11pm.
thursday march 19
left ear annoyingly continuing to cause issues, but still sleeping well. i went through a period about a month ago of sleeping very badly and so this week had been a welcome tonic.
i had a virtual lunch with some of the people that i used to work with before i moved to lisbon. work far easier now, i'd learned that reading the news around 3-4pm was the most effective way of getting the latest rundown of events. sent a tonne of emails which i don't typically like doing, but is currently absolutely necessary to ensure that cryptographic standardisation efforts that i am part of continue to progress as planned. will we still need standardised cryptography if the world burns?
had tickets for glastonbury this year for the first time (this was engineered expertly by someone that knew what they were doing). i was cautiously optimistic after seeing the line-up, but it was cancelled.
we went to the little supermarket down the hill on our street searching for seitan and more canned beans. it was a one-in-one-out policy ensuring that only 7 people were in the shop at any one time. the queue was impressively being self-regulated by the people in the queue, rather than anyone on the door.
i spoke to my parents on the phone that night, they wanted to see how i was. they sounded well, and so i decided that it was unlikely that i had acted as an asymptomatic host for the transmission of the virus. this was something that i had worried about occasionally during the week.
friday march 20
slept like a log again, what a week! i sent some emails to former academic colleagues and worked for more hours than i would usually do in a day. i took this as an indicator of how normalised to the crisis i had become. in a slightly unexpected move, the uk announced that all people put on unpaid leave will have 80% of their wages paid, and that all pubs/bars/restaurants will be closing their doors from that night onwards.
i was dragged away from my work to play the rpg board game that we played last sunday. we watched the first episode of the new westworld series but i remembered almost nothing about the previous season, and i had no idea whose body was playing host to who. we watched 40 mins of it before getting frustrated and playing fortnite until we went to bed
saturday march 21
i woke up and decided to force myself out for another run. the temperature registered as a mere 13 degrees so i put on my thick top and was subsequently obliterated by the heat of the direct sunlight for the entire run. it felt hard, and i couldn't maintain the pace of the run on tuesday, but i still gave a decent account for myself. there were quite a few people around on the streets, more than i had perhaps expected.
i sat down to start writing this diary and realised that i couldn't yet write the entry for saturday. i congratulated myself at finding a successful way of procrastinating the task and excused myself of my self-enforced duties.
i was hit by a wave of panic as i realised that i had been asked to write a review of an academic paper for a journal that i had overstepped the deadline by 5 days! fortunately the review process had been extended by a week due to the current situation and so i had time over the weekend to rectify that.
in the afternoon i decided to sit down and have the sort of uninterrupted session playing football manager that i would routinely have had around a decade ago. it was difficult to extract joy from the game, especially when i was presented with the overwhelming number of possibilities. i settled on dulwich hamlets as i wouldn't be able to forgive myself for relieving philip cocu of his responsibilities.
i almost made it to the first game of the season but then decided to sit down and watch the WC98 final between france and brazil. oh lord the france bench: henry, trezeguet, vieira. i was dazzled by the performance of thuram at right back. zidane was imperious, obviously. brazil seemed pretty hopeless. anyway, surely i don't have to recount any of this.
the day itself was dominated by an endless procession of delicious food that was only made possible by the unrestricted creativity of someone confined to staying indoors on a day without obligations.
i finished the day playing an old real-time strategy game with some friends (dawn of war). it reminded me of this sketch a bit. we ordered a takeaway pizza and watched portuguese television as my methods for finding television programs shown exclusively in the uk failed me.