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Managing the Isolation
Oct. 17th, 2020 09:58 amI started this Dreamwidth as my 'sherry journal' back in the days when I still kept a LiveJournal for my actual thoughts, though obviously people had been jumping ship. Something about Russians; it seems so quaint now, but there's no going back. As Jo said, there are about six people here, so who knows maybe I will have someone who reads this? However, it struck me that Facebook, while it is excellent for actually getting a response from people -- not always the people I want a response from, to be fair, but a lot of my NZ friends are on it so that's enough for now -- but it's not great for longform diary stuff. And it feels like right now, I have a lot of diary stuff I want to record, so hello Dreamwidth! Raise a sherry with me and let's go on a journey...
I am in Auckland now, in a hotel which has been commandeered by the government as a 'managed isolation' facility. This means in practice that planeloads of passengers (and I would think there are quite a lot of planeloads because it's a really big hotel) spend 14 day periods in quarantine. This is pretty strictly enforced now by armed forces personnel, after a period when a few people 'escaped' and it was a bit of a scandal (I think mainly because of the pandemic spreading a little bit), so you can now see these guys in their fatigues at all the hotel doors and at the ends of corridors and other prime surveillance positions. There's a yard area that about 10 people at a time can walk around, and access to it is also managed by the armed forces people (presumably because it's another potential escape route despite being on the fourth floor), and you have to book in a slot. We went out the first time yesterday, when they were doing 25 minute slots, and as it was afternoon there was a lot of dodging kids playing while the rest of us walked in circles around the outside. "No vigorous exercise" say the serious, official signs, and walking is the main form of exercise enocuraged here. Dispiritingly, you have to walk past the hotel's gym and swimming pool, which given the size of the place are pretty big, but they're also very strictly out of bounds, so walking in a circle it is. We did it again this morning when it opened at 7am, and this was very much a more serious group, plus you get 45 minutes now (or maybe that's just the morning).
Anyway, we are in Auckland now and will be for another 11 days at least. This is our third day, and today someone will summon us for our first swab test -- which will also be my first ever Covid test, "excitingly" enough. Well, it's another experience and I'm having a few of them right now. Before we get into it, if I didn't get a chance to visit and say goodbye before I left the UK, then I apologise. Things were all a little fraught and it was difficult to travel around safely. The flight from the UK to NZ was probably as safe as it could be, though (I'd say there was a better uptake of mask wearing, except for one mother who I never saw with her mask over both her mouth and nose, but one mustn't judge eh; the airline made lots of tannoy announcements to ensure masks were worn at all times, but obviously impossible when eating and drinking, so wearing a mask for so longwasn't as unpleasant an experience as I had initially worried). Each person had their own block of three seats in Singapore Airlines economy, though felt like plenty were around, unlike in Business Class where Kerry was pretty much on her own with one other person. However, I can hardly justify the extra expense; Singapore Airlines economy is really comfortable and so I can thoroughly recommend it. Airports were fairly quiet, though, and it all felt a little strange, if not the kind of dystopian nightmare the films would try to depict this kind of thing as. Just very dull and bureaucratic really.
Auckland, where we are now and will be for a week and a half more, isn't a very beautiful city, at least not the centre. We have a view of the Sky Tower, the back of the Aotea Centre (under refurbishment, so covered in scaffolding) and a large tower block being constructed. The other buildings are unremarkable in a 'city centre' business skyscrapers kind of way (taller than I'd expect really given the seismic activity this country is known for), but none of them are particularly interesting to look at. Well, it's a nice enough hotel, geared to business travellers one suspects. The main problem is just spending two weeks confined to the same room (and a fairly spacious bathroom) with scant ability to be in different places. We have our various entertainments -- a new Nintendo Switch which is getting a lot of use and is now plugged into the TV, a multi-zone Blu-ray player I brought so I could watch some of my imported American Blu-rays (Criterion Collection) and our laptops and drives filled with (for me) more films, some TV shows, things we can watch together and which I can watch by myself. Plus some books, but reading has become quite hard during these last six months for me; I always did most of it during my commute. But I want to try and read more, and these are three highly-rated NZ novels that I thought I really should get through (Bone People, Potiki and the one I'm reading for my Book Club, The Vintner's Luck). Got to reacquaint myself with the culture.
The main focus of the stay, here in Auckland, so far has been the food the hotel provides: it's the thing most people seem interested in, and it's pretty good! No problems with my vegan diet, and tasty enough food. We ordered a takeaway from a North Vietnamese place last night for Friday and our first alcohol of the stay, a bottle of the hotel's "premium red wine". The alcohol can only be purchased on-site, mainly to ensure it doesn't get out of hand -- and from my point of view, I don't currently worry about it. I had no drinks the first day, and just a glass of wine was enough last night. Having spend a month or two drinking our way through what we had in London, I'm very keen for a break. The takeaway was via Uber Eats (apparently the only delivery game in town, but they were quick!) and was really good. The hotel food has been solid, and the menu changes every day so it's not the same thing for each meal; you get two or three options for each meal (well, I get one but whatever) and book in blocks of four days at a time. Otherwise, we got some snacking food in from a local supermarket (also quick! like they delivered same day as the order) -- some fizzy drinks, some bread, spread, salad veg, a really nice garlicky hummus. Maybe will order some crisps if we do a second order.
Still, my main worry remains staying sane. I had a hard day yesterday, combining both a general lack of sleep (woke at 2am yesterday, 4am today, so it's getting a bit better) and a sense of entrapment, nothing to do, nowhere to go, and let's be honest, a general ennui around 'why am I here?' I hate the British government, the situation seems to get worse every week, and the government response to the pandemic is terrible, but I love London and I am used to living there. I didn't really want to move back to NZ, but having made the move I need to find some peace with it. It is absurdly overprivileged to complain about it, and the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. It's just going to be hard to reestablish those rhythms of life, though it will help when we get somewhere that feels like 'home'. Right now it's two weeks in a hotel, a month in a suburban Airbnb, then a few months in a rented home nearer the city, before we need to make another decision.
There's probably a lot more I could say, but I'll put a pause on it for now. We were called away for the swab test while I was writing this, and it was unremarkable -- a little unpleasant to have a swab stuck so far up your nose, but it's over in a few seconds, and leaves you just feeling a little cleaned out. I won't look forward to another one, but I won't worry overly either. Hope the results are positive! Well, negative I mean; you know what I mean.
I am in Auckland now, in a hotel which has been commandeered by the government as a 'managed isolation' facility. This means in practice that planeloads of passengers (and I would think there are quite a lot of planeloads because it's a really big hotel) spend 14 day periods in quarantine. This is pretty strictly enforced now by armed forces personnel, after a period when a few people 'escaped' and it was a bit of a scandal (I think mainly because of the pandemic spreading a little bit), so you can now see these guys in their fatigues at all the hotel doors and at the ends of corridors and other prime surveillance positions. There's a yard area that about 10 people at a time can walk around, and access to it is also managed by the armed forces people (presumably because it's another potential escape route despite being on the fourth floor), and you have to book in a slot. We went out the first time yesterday, when they were doing 25 minute slots, and as it was afternoon there was a lot of dodging kids playing while the rest of us walked in circles around the outside. "No vigorous exercise" say the serious, official signs, and walking is the main form of exercise enocuraged here. Dispiritingly, you have to walk past the hotel's gym and swimming pool, which given the size of the place are pretty big, but they're also very strictly out of bounds, so walking in a circle it is. We did it again this morning when it opened at 7am, and this was very much a more serious group, plus you get 45 minutes now (or maybe that's just the morning).
Anyway, we are in Auckland now and will be for another 11 days at least. This is our third day, and today someone will summon us for our first swab test -- which will also be my first ever Covid test, "excitingly" enough. Well, it's another experience and I'm having a few of them right now. Before we get into it, if I didn't get a chance to visit and say goodbye before I left the UK, then I apologise. Things were all a little fraught and it was difficult to travel around safely. The flight from the UK to NZ was probably as safe as it could be, though (I'd say there was a better uptake of mask wearing, except for one mother who I never saw with her mask over both her mouth and nose, but one mustn't judge eh; the airline made lots of tannoy announcements to ensure masks were worn at all times, but obviously impossible when eating and drinking, so wearing a mask for so longwasn't as unpleasant an experience as I had initially worried). Each person had their own block of three seats in Singapore Airlines economy, though felt like plenty were around, unlike in Business Class where Kerry was pretty much on her own with one other person. However, I can hardly justify the extra expense; Singapore Airlines economy is really comfortable and so I can thoroughly recommend it. Airports were fairly quiet, though, and it all felt a little strange, if not the kind of dystopian nightmare the films would try to depict this kind of thing as. Just very dull and bureaucratic really.
Auckland, where we are now and will be for a week and a half more, isn't a very beautiful city, at least not the centre. We have a view of the Sky Tower, the back of the Aotea Centre (under refurbishment, so covered in scaffolding) and a large tower block being constructed. The other buildings are unremarkable in a 'city centre' business skyscrapers kind of way (taller than I'd expect really given the seismic activity this country is known for), but none of them are particularly interesting to look at. Well, it's a nice enough hotel, geared to business travellers one suspects. The main problem is just spending two weeks confined to the same room (and a fairly spacious bathroom) with scant ability to be in different places. We have our various entertainments -- a new Nintendo Switch which is getting a lot of use and is now plugged into the TV, a multi-zone Blu-ray player I brought so I could watch some of my imported American Blu-rays (Criterion Collection) and our laptops and drives filled with (for me) more films, some TV shows, things we can watch together and which I can watch by myself. Plus some books, but reading has become quite hard during these last six months for me; I always did most of it during my commute. But I want to try and read more, and these are three highly-rated NZ novels that I thought I really should get through (Bone People, Potiki and the one I'm reading for my Book Club, The Vintner's Luck). Got to reacquaint myself with the culture.
The main focus of the stay, here in Auckland, so far has been the food the hotel provides: it's the thing most people seem interested in, and it's pretty good! No problems with my vegan diet, and tasty enough food. We ordered a takeaway from a North Vietnamese place last night for Friday and our first alcohol of the stay, a bottle of the hotel's "premium red wine". The alcohol can only be purchased on-site, mainly to ensure it doesn't get out of hand -- and from my point of view, I don't currently worry about it. I had no drinks the first day, and just a glass of wine was enough last night. Having spend a month or two drinking our way through what we had in London, I'm very keen for a break. The takeaway was via Uber Eats (apparently the only delivery game in town, but they were quick!) and was really good. The hotel food has been solid, and the menu changes every day so it's not the same thing for each meal; you get two or three options for each meal (well, I get one but whatever) and book in blocks of four days at a time. Otherwise, we got some snacking food in from a local supermarket (also quick! like they delivered same day as the order) -- some fizzy drinks, some bread, spread, salad veg, a really nice garlicky hummus. Maybe will order some crisps if we do a second order.
Still, my main worry remains staying sane. I had a hard day yesterday, combining both a general lack of sleep (woke at 2am yesterday, 4am today, so it's getting a bit better) and a sense of entrapment, nothing to do, nowhere to go, and let's be honest, a general ennui around 'why am I here?' I hate the British government, the situation seems to get worse every week, and the government response to the pandemic is terrible, but I love London and I am used to living there. I didn't really want to move back to NZ, but having made the move I need to find some peace with it. It is absurdly overprivileged to complain about it, and the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. It's just going to be hard to reestablish those rhythms of life, though it will help when we get somewhere that feels like 'home'. Right now it's two weeks in a hotel, a month in a suburban Airbnb, then a few months in a rented home nearer the city, before we need to make another decision.
There's probably a lot more I could say, but I'll put a pause on it for now. We were called away for the swab test while I was writing this, and it was unremarkable -- a little unpleasant to have a swab stuck so far up your nose, but it's over in a few seconds, and leaves you just feeling a little cleaned out. I won't look forward to another one, but I won't worry overly either. Hope the results are positive! Well, negative I mean; you know what I mean.
