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First time
Despite the mask mandates almost completely disappearing here, I have continued to wear them. In all these months, nobody has commented on the fact I’ve been wearing one at all. And that’s just fine. Well, that was the case until about a week ago. I was shopping and the cashier was asking me if I was masking because I was afraid of COVID. She went on to say that COVID isn’t near as bad as getting the flu…It’s been over a week and I still fume when I think about it. I felt like she was judging me when it was none of her business. Of course, I was silently judging her and all the others around who don’t wear masks now. But that’s a thought I keep to myself as there is no point in expressing it out loud.
My mom made a bunch of masks for me when I was home and I still wear them all the time when I am in the community. They may not be the highest quality but I think they suit their purpose for me. Fortunately, we have all avoided the virus so far to the best of our knowledge.
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Open
As of today (March 3rd), Western Australia is open again. For those who are vaxed, no quarantine is required unless there are positive covid tests and symptoms.
The numbers continue to increase but the current prediction is that our peak will be in the next couple of weeks. It seems the vaccination may be helping keep numbers down. There was another death reported today but the hospitalisation rate is quite good. Today there were over 2400 cases reported and I think only 22 are in the hospital.
We do have more restrictions in place now, which limit some events to the point they have been cancelled. I just saw that one of the food truck events will stop running for the rest of the season as the logistics are too hard to work around. The fair we went to last year was also cancelled at some point, which is a shame because we really enjoyed that. But we had a covid free state at the time so things were different.
One thing I have noticed is that the hot spots almost all are outside of the Perth area. I know there are cases locally but it would seem they are worse in some of the country towns. At least that’s my impression.
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Weekend
The boys had their boosters today so we are a fully triple vaxed family now. :)
COVID-19 is now a major thing around here. Over 1000 cases the past two days and I assume it’s going to move to a much higher number soon. I feel like I am going to get it every time I go out now. I’d like to limit shopping but it’s hard to do that when so much is still missing. There have been some alternate shops that have supplies but now everybody realised it and now there are bigger crowds there and longer lines. And lower supplies.
Today we got a mesh system for our wi-fi. We’ve had some problem spots in the house from way back and this is a means to support our internet use, I guess. Several of my devices have gotten much faster now. The main problem is my laptop, which sometimes is fine and other times is not. It’s not so different than it was before the mesh.
News of current events is hard to watch right now. Tonight the Scientist and I started to watch the “series” Get Back about the Beatles making the Let it Be album and it was fascinating to watch. Each episode runs well over two hours and we saw about half an hour so. I look forward to seeing more.
Here in Australia autumn begins on the first day of March. Our temperatures are staying reasonably hot until Monday. From Tuesday they will be dropping considerably, as though that’s the end of the hot weather. Of course, I know there’s more heat to come but it’s kind of funny the way the forecast is set out.
I had a couple of bunches of bananas that were getting really ripe and finally made a banana bread tonight. It came out rather nice except that it didn’t rise. Or I should say it rose and then fell once it was out of the oven. I’m doing the recipe from memory so maybe I need to adjust the baking powder or soda amount…I’m making another one tomorrow but a request has come to add chocolate chips and we don’t have any. I hope to find some to add and I might make them muffins instead.
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Totally in it
Our local covid numbers continue to grow with 213 cases announced today. This is similar to the past few days so it still seems to be growing more slowly than those over east did. We do have the advantage of learning from the experience of the other states though, so perhaps we will avoid the super high numbers they’ve had. There are currently two cases in the hospital, which isn’t bad considering there are over 1000 active cases. It does make me wary of being in public too much and for the most part, I’ve been avoiding crowds as much as possible.
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Travel hiccups due to COVID
I got a message last week telling me the itinerary of my travel had changed and I now had to change airports in Tokyo. The problem with this is that foreign nationals aren’t able to use public transport in Tokyo, leaving me without a valid flight. I called them and was on hold for some time then gave up. The next morning, the Scientist phone when their customer service opened and waited for close to an hour while he was working. He then put me on to the representative who had found alternative flights that would help me reach my destination. The problem was they only had code-share flights which would mean I wouldn’t have the generous seating space that I purposely chose. And the code share flight was a considerably cheaper option, based on what I saw while searching flights. After discussions on a couple of days with the representative, I finally chose to cancel the flight and choose another option. I will point out this was a call center in Hong Kong and the connection by phone was terrible. Also the last rep I spoke with was so hard to understand because every time he spoke there was static on the line. I don’t fault the reps at all but the rest of the service was rather poor. Even the hold message was done in quite broken English. The app for the airline was also rather poor so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. It’s unlikely I would book any further flights with the airline in the future. By the way, it’s going to be two to three months to process the refund. :(
While waiting for return communications on the previously booked flight, I went searching for flights through other airlines. I might have gone with Singapore Airlines except the flights would be in and out of Perth and I didn’t want to risk not being able to get back into the state. Also the flights were a bit more expensive than they had been when I booked my original tickets. But I had a pretty good experience on my previous flights with them and the food was good too.
Ultimately I chose to use Qantas Airlines and book the most direct flight to Dallas, which includes 15 and 16 hour flights between Sydney and Dallas. This shortened my trip by nearly a day and the only layovers are in Sydney. On the way, I have a ten hour stop and I’m thinking of going into the city and being a tourist for a few hours, mostly outdoors. Anyway I booked my trip and went to pay and had an issue trying to use Paypal where I clicked on done to avoid the payment (there were reasons I tried Paypal that didn’t come to fruition). When I tried to go back to the payment page, it showed my ticket was confirmed and I soon got a strange email telling me they couldn’t issue the ticket until I filled out the information for entry into the US. Not that filling out the information made any difference. I tried to call the airline but the hold times were long so I didn’t stay with it. I decided to wait and see what happened over the next day. Still there was no way to make payment. I then noticed my account showed something in the “basket” and I went there and paid for a ticket. Except this had a different booking number. This time I got an itinerary and several other emails but nothing like the strange one I got with the previous ticket. My account now showed two trips that were the same except for one flight. There was no way to remove the other one. I ended up calling the airline and waited for three hours to speak to an agent. Once I got through, it was a matter of five minutes to fix the problem.
Within a day of getting that sorted, it was announced our border was going to open in full on March 4th. I don’t think I’d have been able to get a reasonable fare but it’s possible more airline options would have been available. Still I have always had pretty good experiences with Qantas so it should be fine.
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Widespread
I think we can now say COVID has become widespread in the community. Yesterday we had 37 cases and today it’s 51 cases. And sadly, we’ve had a second COVID death in the state. It’s amazing it’s only the second one and it’s been probably close to two years since the first one. The stats now include self-administered RATs, which may account for the increase in reported numbers.
Meanwhile, the grocery stores are still looking rather bare and there are limits on purchases. At the moment I’m just shopping a few days ahead of time as the chances of getting all that is needed are pretty low. The train tracks in South Australia are still being repaired and there’s an expectation normal supplies will start again sometime next week. The COVID issues are obviously a different story and may take much more time to return to normal.
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Assorted
The premier of our state just did his daily update and there were nine cases of covid. It seems all were related to previous clusters. So far the numbers haven’t exploded but it still seems likely to happen at some point. While I haven’t been avoiding going out, I haven’t been spending as much time in more crowded locations. The press conference also outlined the plan to deal with high case numbers when we reach that point. That is still a long way off but obviously could change at any time. I also noticed that rapid antigen tests are now available locally and must be in demand because my pharmacy has a sign saying they don’t have any. The Scientist ordered some tests a couple of weeks ago but they haven’t arrived yet.
I’ve been attending a pilates class at a local leisure center for the past few weeks and I feel like it’s really helping with core muscles. Meanwhile, in the gym, I’ve been avoiding those exercises and doing more cardio and more weight machines. Still, my muscle mass hasn’t changed from several months ago even though I can feel changes in arms and glutes, etc.
One of the support workers who share support for my client has been promoted to a coordinator position. This opens up several more hours per week with him and I’ve taken on Tuesday hours. I chose this day in order to provide an opportunity to attend a special exercise class on a regular basis. The changes in support workers are going to be disruptive for a while but I hope he is able to settle in for the longer term. This does create another day where he may be unsupported while I’m away though. The extra hours will nice after losing so many hours from my other client. I don’t want to take on too many with this client, though, because he’s a family friend and I want to keep a decent balance between work and personal life.
We had several days with milder weather but that has now ended and we’re back to another heatwave. We haven’t had any rain so far this year but that is pretty typical for this time of year.
I got out onto my bike almost two weeks ago and it went quite well. The last time I went out I had quite a struggle to go very far. This time I didn’t struggle at all and managed what might have been a normal ride back in the time I was riding regularly. This was a nice surprise. I will admit to being tempted to go farther than planned because I was feeling well enough. Common sense did prevail and I stuck to a normal distance in the end.
I got a message from my doctor’s office that I needed to come in to discuss some results. I was only there on Monday so I assume some of the tests took longer to be processed. There were two tests from earlier that had been repeated so I suspect this might have been one or both of them. I got an appointment with yet another gp that I’ve never seen since she has the earlier available time on Tuesday.
Yesterday I stopped at a local park to eat a sandwich I’d gotten from the nearby bakery. While there, a black swan approached the side of the pond/small lake where I was sitting and seemed quite interesting in making contact. I took several photos, even approaching the swan and taking an overhead shot. I’ve been to this park before but never had any of the creatures approach me. It was pretty neat.
I started playing the Wordle game that has taken the internet by storm lately and I’m enjoying my daily dose. What I like about it is it’s just a single game that takes a couple to a few minutes and won’t be a major time sucker. It works much like the old Mastermind game but it’s for five-letter words. You get six tries and I’ve been able to solve each puzzle so far. I do it really curious how so many people need to share their results each day. And it’s weird how so many people get so annoyed by that. I personally don’t do it but I have no concerns about others. I just find it strange they need to share so much.
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Uncertainty
It was announced on Thursday that our state borders won’t be opening on February fifth after all. I’m not terribly surprised but there is no new goal in sight currently. My travel plans have reached some snags and they might turn out to be rather expensive. At the moment there’s not so much of an issue in traveling to the US but getting back into Western Australia is. There’s a cap of 40 arrivals per day internationally, based on hotel quarantine limits. The problem I have with this is there’s a totally different rule for people traveling from within Australia. I could return through another capital city in Australia, spend two weeks and then come home to quarantine at home instead. I’d have to change my ticket but it could be done. It’s still two months from travel so I won’t make any decisions yet as it can all change so quickly.
We now have omicron spreading locally so I am curious to see how things will play out here. Yesterday there were 24 local cases but today it was only thirteen. Today’s cases are almost all related to one cluster through close contacts and householders and I think many are already isolating. Interestingly, exposure sites have mostly been in the southern suburbs and not many are anywhere near us. Still, I think it’s unlikely we will be able to wipe this out locally like other strains. So it’s a watch-and-wait situation for the time being.
Meanwhile, my dad ended up at the ER again recently due to really high blood pressure and struggles with a bladder infection. That trip didn’t go well with his bp supposedly being normal even though it was something like 196/89 before they left home. After that, he was left waiting for hours and got agitated enough that my mom took him home, where his bp was still quite high but better than it had been earlier.
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It’s here
Omicron has now been confirmed to be in Western Australia. I should clarify and say it’s now in the community because I suspect many of the positive cases coming from elsewhere have been omicron already. But those people have been in quarantine or isolation. But now it’s in the community I am curious to see how things play out. We are back to wearing masks here, which I don’t have a problem with. It’s more just getting used to doing so right now. Our borders are still set to open on February 5th so I guess this will just get us ready. One thing I liked that our premier did on that announcement is his acknowledgment of concerns from those who are immuno-compromised. But even so, our hospital system is in terrible shape so I really hope the local spread is kept controlled. But I just don’t see it happening based on what I’ve seen in other states. Even those with better control measures are struggling with high numbers.
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Changes already and other things
Yesterday I received an email from Japan Airlines that my stopover in Sydney is now five hours instead of three. This means I’ll be in Tokyo for fifteen hours. This doesn’t affect my travel time in any way so I accepted the changes. I recall when I made travel arrangements two years ago that there was a change in that plan too. Of course, that trip never happened in the end.
Originally I wasn’t bothered about spending the better part of the day in Tokyo. But I have learned I won’t be able to use the capsule hotel as I am not a Japanese resident, due to COVID issues. So I now don’t know how I will spend so much time. The one hotel is expensive and is not an option unless they lower the rates when I get there. In any case, the capsule hotel is also in a different terminal and I’m not sure how much hassle going to a different terminal might be. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem but there might be limitations.
In other news, even though we have low numbers of COVID cases here in WA, the supermarkets have started placing limits on some items due to shortages. In a lot of cases, it’s hard to source the items at the moment. I suspect in others it’s just some forward planning. I was surprised to find toilet paper shelves empty last night and today while shopping. This is not an issue for us since we have been having it delivered every few months since last year. But it must be quite a problem for others.
I had ordered a few new masks a week ago or so and they hadn’t yet arrived. I wasn’t worried as there have been delays with the postal deliveries. But I got a notice from the post office that another package had arrived today. This was for some melatonin for Lego Lover that I ordered a while back. It’s been sitting in limbo at some place here in Perth for a while. But today it was delivered to a parcel locker. While checking the postal service app I noticed the other package should have been picked up from a parcel locker and was being moved to the post office. I never got a notice to pick it up and most certainly would have done so in a timely manner. Hopefully, it will be available tomorrow and I can pick it up.
I have a follow-up appointment (from the colonoscopy/endoscopy) with the gastro doctor tomorrow. I’m not quite sure what to expect as this will be the first time I see her in an appointment setting. I haven’t had my iron levels checked since my infusion so I don’t know if the levels are dropping still. Like the previous infusion, I haven’t noticed any marked improvement in energy although I am pretty sure I am doing somewhat better.