Day 8 of Quarantine

I think my body clock is changing. Anybody who knows me would already be aware that I am something of an early riser, but the situation is getting more extreme. Since I am not watching TV, I find myself with nothing worthwhile to do after about 8.30 pm. That means I go to bed and listen to my Internet radio instead.

BBC Radio 4 Extra is my station of choice as they have an interesting mix of radio dramas and comedy. When you are really lucky you can even catch an episode of my favourite TV comedy - Dad's Army.

After an hour or so of radio, I drift off to sleep, sometimes waking in the middle of the night to discover the radio still on. At the other end of the evening, I have been waking up around 5 am. Although I have tried to go back to sleep, once my mind is alert, there is little use looking for more refuge in the Land of Nod. I listen to a little more radio and then get up and start the day.

After all the financial disasters of the past couple of weeks, today I had my first little win. For the past couple of days I had battling to cancel a booking for 5 nights in a hotel in Vancouver. I made the booking through Booking.com some months ago and paid the full amount of $AUD 651 in advance.

Although the original booking had been non refundable, I had rung the hotel a couple of times and explained my situation. It was not so simple working with Booking.com, however I think I have now been successful in getting the booking reversed. Even better is the fact that the AUD has collapsed so badly when compared to the CAD that I now stand to get a refund of over $700 AUD. I could pretend that it was a wise investment, but I will not celebrate until the money is actually back in my bank account.

I am still battling with webjet and Air Canada to get some sort of refund for the return flight that I was not able to use. The problem is that no one in the travel industry is currently answering their phones.

Since the weather was beautiful and since I am not able to walk or ride my bike, I took the opportunity to catch up on some painting that I had been postponing for months. Small achievements, but still worhwhile.Read more