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- Jul 25, 2020, 10:54am
- ☁️ 9 °C
- Altitude: 27 m
AustraliaVictoriaMelbourneEaglemontWarringal Park37°45’22” S 145°4’10” E
Covid Life in Melbourne
July 25, 2020 in Australia ⋅ ☁️ 9 °C
Well this second lockdown seems worse than the initial one back in March. Life in a new normal with social distancing, constant hand washing and isolating each time we sneeze or cough wasn’t that bad. But this ramp up has seen most people being treated like lepers, crossing the road if someone comes near, mask production and wearing them whenever outside the home office.
With mandatory mask wearing, only people running or cycling can go without when outside. Luckily the banks have stated that no masks are to be worn inside. At least that way they will be able to recognise the customers from the robbers.
Life at home. Well that has really become like living at work. Managing to separate between work and home can sometimes be difficult. Not so much the physical difference within the apartment. More of the fact that there is not always a time that we stop work and start home life. This is called flexible working and all in all there are some really good advantages with that. Julie had to admit we weren’t having any visitors for the rest of the year and turned our spare room into her office. Also the office cleaner is pretty useless and the kitchen bench is always cluttered with tea cups.
The odd wine arrives on the office desk and always good food from the well-stocked kitchen. The travel time is non-existent and of course the financial saving of this is also good. Disadvantage of no travel time is that I tend to have donated this time saved to my hours worked for the company so instead of doing 7.6hr days with 1hr travel I now tend to do 8- 9 hr days. I am also feeling like I am available for all business hours plus more. I’m an early starter and some of my team prefer to work later in the evening to suit their personal circumstances. This of course is great but it does sometimes extend the working day a bit if there are chats required. I have also had a few people saying that they feel guilty if they log off after their designated hours as they know a lot of people are working later.
I’m also wondering if we will ever feel ok returning to the office environment. Travel by public transport crammed in with others may actually never happen again. People are getting used to having a greater personal space around them and due to the constant reminders to keep distancing rules I feel that this habit will be hard to break if and when people in close proximity to each other is safe again.
Most days are Groundhog day. We wake up, get breakfast, open the laptop and work. The mid-winter weather doesn’t help either of course as we do tend to hibernate a little when it’s cold outside. Luckily we have an amazing view and get the best sunrises. We are starting to notice our neighbours movements with one who waters his plants at about 8.15am most days. Nice to see movement but he must look up at me from 2 floors down and say that I am always sitting watching him. I apologise. It’s the only human movement I see from my window.
The Australian birdlife is always exciting. We have Ravens and Sulphur Crested Cockatoos that come visiting. You can hear them before you see them. The Ravens are real thinkers. They land on the balconies and just watch until they decide what they will do. Then they strut around cawing to each other. The cockatoos are too busy dive bombing and screeching with each other until they get bored and head off to the trees in the park opposite. They certainly like to be heard. They are definitely the comedians of the bird world.
Since lockdown the evening traffic has reduced. We live on a busy road and during the day it doesn’t seem to have slowed down much. What are all these people doing? I am guessing that the daily walkers have increased a bit with people working from home flexibly. It's difficult to tell since we have moved suburbs and there are lovely river trails to use. Thes trails are always busy and with the mix of bikes, runners and walkers it can create a lot of traffic at times.Read more
Traveler Boy that sounds all familiar, we thought we would take a long time to get close again but people seem to have reverted back quickly to their old habits. Your neighbour probably looks up to you and thinks its nice having someone take notice of him. We were fortunate to have fabulous weather first lockdown. Wish you both well.xxxxxxxxx
Traveler Sounds awful. Up here, we are in LaLa land, thinking, hoping, crossing fingers that it won't reach here. I fear it is wishful thinking, do hope I am wrong. Hang in there and fight the good fight, hunker down and remember how you craved the leisure to veggie out and watch Netflix in your trackies. Betty must be despairing as to when you will be together again.....Much love from LaLa land........ xxx🤷♀️