Sunday 1^st March – Halim’s Indian Taj

Morning

I spent a quiet morning at home by myself.

6pm

I drove down to Algester to pick up Bronwen, who had got back from her canyoning adventure. She was very dirty so we drove home to shower.

Halim’s Indian Taj

After cleaning Bronwen, we drove over to Maz’s place to get Maz and Tess, and then drove down to Halim’s Indian Taj for a curry dinner to celebrate Maz and Tess winning their auction yesterday.

Monday 2^nd March – Chocolate

Home

I spent a quiet day at home trying to break chocolate along the lines the manufacturer thoughtfully put in place for precisely that purpose.

Tuesday 3^rd March – Sick & Shopping

Shopping

I woke up with a headache, which isn’t normal for me. Bronwen and I then drove to the shops to buy some supplies—we were running low on a few things such as toilet paper—but it turned out that people were panic buying most of the things we had wanted to buy—there was no toilet paper at ALDI or Woolworths, and Coles had a crate of toilet paper they didn’t bother unpacking and just set out at the front of the store for their customers to fight over. There were also almost no painkillers, no hand disinfectant and almost no handwash, no rice, very few baked beans, and so forth. We ended up going to ALDI, Coles, Woolworths, two chemists, and ALDI again, just to buy the things we wanted (though still couldn’t buy any rice)

Sick

By the evening, after rushing around trying to do shopping for half the morning, I was feeling quite sick. My headache had turned into a full-blown head-cold with blocked and running nose and all the works.

Wednesday 4^th March – Sick

Home

I stayed home sick. I watched lots of JAG.

Thursday 5^th March – Sick

Home

I stayed home sick.

Because I’d been to the Holi celebrations, and had water and powder thrown at my face by a huge amount of random strangers, I figured there was a very slim chance I could have caught coronavirus, and I didn’t want to infect anyone else by not doing the right thing, so I called the coronavirus hotline to check. They got me to call a nurse, who asked many questions and then said she wanted me to see a doctor within 12 hours. This wasn’t quite possible, but I made an appointment to see a doctor tomorrow.

Friday 6^th March – Coronavirus

Doctor

I drove to the doctor, where I was given a mask and made to sit and wait for 40 minutes. For some reason the flu decided now would be a good time for me to sweat a lot, so I sat in the corner wearing my face mask, dripping sweat, imagining everyone staring at me, until the doctor finally called me. The doctor listened to my chest, decided I wasn’t dying, and sent me off to be tested for the coronavirus.

QML Pathology

I called the closest coronavirus testing place, but the earliest they could see me was 2 PM on Monday, so I called the second-closest place, and they didn’t take appointments and could see me in 15 minutes, so I drove to QML in Carina. I had to wait a few minutes while someone else was tested, but it didn’t take too long. It is quite wasteful—the lady used an entire body-suit of protective gear just to test me. The test itself was a swab from each nostril. I hadn’t had nostril swabs before, and was expecting them to be taken slowly and carefully from inside my nostrils. I was quite wrong. The lady inserted a long swabby thing straight into my nose, right through it, and into the back of my head. She did it so fast that it was in and out before I realised what was happening. It felt like a little fire in my nose. Then, as I was sitting there in shock, she did the other nostril. Overall, much better than the anticipation of it happening, though I’m amazed at just how fast and deep the swab goes.

Home

I then drove home and spent the rest of the day being lazy and sick.

Saturday 7^th March – Flu

Home

I spent the day at home relaxing and recovering from my flu.

Sunday 8^th March – Negative for Coronavirus

Home

I spent the day at home, watching TV and relaxing. I phoned the doctor to check my results, and was told that I can only get the results by seeing a doctor, but that they were negative pending further testing.

Monday 9^th March – Shopping

Morning

I drove down to the supermarket to buy some milk. There’s still very limited toilet paper.

Home

I spent the rest of the day at home.

Tuesday 10^th March – Home

Home

I spent a quiet day at home, avoiding the scary outdoors and its coronaviruses.

Wednesday 11^th March – Home

Home

I had a quiet day at home, walking down to the service station to buy some milk in the evening.

Thursday 12^th March – Halim’s Indian Taj

ALDI

Bronwen needed to spend the night at her parents’ place so she could let some air-conditioning servicemen into her property early in the morning, so we decided we’d drop past ALDI on the way to Maz’s place, go out to dinner, and then spend the night at Bronwen’s parents’ place.

So, Bronwen and I drove to Stones Corner ALDI—which is on the way—only to find that it was unexpectedly closed, with a little note saying it was closed for unforeseen circumstances. This was a bit annoying as we hadn’t foreseen the circumstances either, so we drove to Ashgrove ALDI—which is sort of nearly on the way if you drive a bit out of the way—only to find that it was closed as well.

Halim’s Indian Taj

Having given up on ALDI we drove to Maz’s place and then down to Halim’s Indian Taj, where we had a delicious curry dinner. I think the restaurant is being badly affected by the coronavirus—there were very few people dining.

After dinner we drove back to Maz’s place, and then on to Bronwen’s parents’ place, where we spent the night.

Friday 13^th March – ALDI

Morning

After Bronwen let air-conditioning servicemen into her property, and then had a work conference call, we drove home—via ALDI, which was open today and despite almost everyone carrying a bag of toilet rolls, seemed to have normal stock levels of everything, including toilet rolls.

Exchange

I renewed my Exchange certificate. Everything seems to be working, but who knows what unexpected things have secretly gone wrong.

Evening

Bronwen and I spent a quiet evening at home, trying not to take part in any pandemics.

Saturday 14^th March – Panic Shopping

Panic Shopping

Bronwen and I decided that we should go do some panic shopping. We drove to ALDI first, which seemed to have everything in stock and looked quite normal, though it was very busy. The only thing I noticed it didn’t have in stock was hand wash and hand sanitiser.

After ALDI we drove to Coles and Woolworths, and they were both chaos. The shelves were full of empty boxes and many things were either out of stock, or only had a very few items left.

However, after posting about this on Facebook, a friend sent me some photos of the same ALDI a few hours later, and it was full of empty shelves.

Afternoon

I drove Bronwen twenty minutes or so to Algester so she could get a lift down to the Gold Coast with a friend and attend Joni’s birthday party. This seemed like a fairly bad idea to me, what with the impending viral pandemic and all, so I stayed home.

Night

I ended up staying up all night working on editing some photos and adding some journal articles to my website. Bronwen got back fairly late and went straight to bed, but I stayed up until 7 AM.

Sunday 15^th March – Brisbane Airport

Morning

I slept in after not getting to bed until 7 AM.

Afternoon

I drove Bronwen to the airport so she could fly to a conference in Sydney. I stopped at the Airport Woolworths on the way home, but it was very busy and it occurred to me it’s probably the sort of place scary foreigners with their foreign coronaviruses would go, so I left without buying anything and stopped at Coles Barracks on the way home instead.

Monday 16^th March – Maz’s & The Airport

Day

I had a quiet day at home.

Night

I drove to the airport to pick up Bronwen, who was flying back from her terribly-ill-time conference in Sydney, and then to Maz’s to pick up network cable testers, and then to Bronwen’s property to test the upstairs tenants’ network. It turns out it’s been wired for phone, not internet—but they have used cat5 cables, so rewiring for internet should be possible.

Tuesday 17^th March – Shopping

Shopping

I went shopping at Coles and Woolworths—there are quite a lot of empty shelves now.

Home

The rest of the day was spent working from home.

Wednesday 18^th March – Home

Home

I spent the day at home—something that’s going to be increasingly common in these pandemic-ridden days.

Mt Gravatt

I walked up Mt Gravatt for some exercise.

Thursday 19^th March – Home

Home

I spent the day at home.

Friday 20^th March – Voting

Day

I went shopping in the morning.

Voting

Bronwen voted at the local pre-polling booth in the afternoon. Despite some precautions for the coronavirus crisis, the lady inside took Bronwen’s piece of paper, looked at it, and then handed it back to her (and presumably did the same for everyone else), and Bronwen did not see any hand sanitiser anywhere.

Mt Gravatt

I went for a walk up Mt Gravatt.

Saturday 21^st March – Sore Back

Sore Back

At around midday I stretched my arms above my head, like I normally do from time to time, and immediately had a sharp back pain.

Sunday 22^nd March – Toohey Forest

Day

Bronwen and I drove to Coles, Woolworths and ALDI—and then a suspiciously cheap BP on the way home for suspiciously cheap fuel.

Evening

Bronwen and I went for a 9km walk through Toohey Forest, half in the dark.

Night

I stayed up late working, because I’d been slack and not done the work earlier in the weekend.