Day 1 of the NZ Lockdown Extravaganza. The sun is shining and I have a powerful urge to travel far and wide. So instead I did some washing, had some meetings and am contemplating packing it in for the day at 2pm with fuck all else to do (work-wise).

Thankfully my employer is government funded and they have said even if I don't have any work to do, I'm still being paid during the time away from the office. Gotta love that kind of benefit. I don't want to just sit around for 4 weeks but if nothing comes to my work station I'm just gonna have to get really good at some more video games.

Ooh I could stream on the Hubski discord for those who are super bored.

Nice! I just tried some Talisker recently, apparently is can be polarizing but I enjoyed it. Currently on a nice Islay.

Dr Wiles has been a wonderful source of easily digestible info for the panicked average Kiwi - https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/covid-19/412585/covid-19-siouxsie-wiles-answers-your-lockdown-questions

Yeah I can see my cat in a monologue like this!

He brought his first bird in to us the other week, it was still alive so I made him drop it and let it outside where it flew away and the look he gave me was legitimate contempt.

"That. Was. Your. Lunch."

Gutting about missing the rugby. I am already watching highlights in lieu of actual matches.

Did you bring any cool shit back from the UK? Some sweet duty free?

I, too, read that as "pinched a loaf".

My partner is using my PC and monitors as she needs two screens more than I need them, as handy as they are for me. So my work station is currently this via laptop.

Could be worse!

In general, that’s the really cool thing about polyamory: I don’t feel the pressure of being everything for someone

This is interesting - to me it sounds like the person doesn't handle relationships well. Or at least, doesn't handle relationships the way I understand it. I've been with my partner for 3 years now, and we have our own bedrooms in our house, but we sleep in the same bed. We have our own hobbies and circle of friends that overlap every so often, but have enough room that we can both go out one night and not encounter each other.

I think our method is healthy. We support each other, we do a lot together, but we certainly aren't being everything for one another. Alone time can be in the same house as each other, neither her nor I need to go to someone else to get everything we need.

Poly is like playing the relationships game on hard mode.

My thoughts too - I have some friends who are in these relationships and I just do not get it. I don't want to talk anyone out of it, and if it makes them happy I'm all for it but the drama oh the drama.

Plus as you say, there's so much to try and understand before you even get to know someone in that setup.

Matched with one or two when I was using tinder and we would start talking then they'd have the spiel that was very kind of them to produce, but it also served as a mighty signal for me to not go any further.

In NZ some are thinking it might be 18 months. But we've had the luxury of watching things unfold long before we had our first case, plenty of time to learn what might be useful.

Man, I got an email from Netflix saying "please come back", and learned I had somehow cancelled my membership. So I went to re-do it and they wouldn't accept my card. Or my partners. For like three days we tried to give them money and I gave up.

However, my family latch onto my account like baby possums so they noticed the lack of Netflix. Mum eventually tried her hand and her card was rejected under my account, so she made her own account.

Now I am the baby possum.

Here we go, excellent work!

If I wind up buying the place I'm renting I already have a plan for what I'm doing with the garden/outdoor area. Raised beds, firepit, pathway.

So amidst this panic, my friend came round over the weekend with 10 different samples of whisky. We started with Famous Grouse and I hated it, barely finished my serving. On to Talisker, Mortlach, Monkey Shoulder, Islay Mist and Ardbeg. All of which I thoroughly enjoyed, particularly the Islay Mist and Ardbeg. We never got round to the Laphroaig but I hear good things, especially around pronouncing it after a few drinks.

I enjoyed it enough that I went out and bought myself a bottle of Islay Mist - it doubled as an anniversary present - 3 years with my lady as of St Patricks Day. She was trying the whisky's as well and her tastes mirrored mine.

Rugby has been cancelled for the foreseeable future, both club and professional setups. If my gym closes I'll be buying some dumbbells and doing whatever I can to maintain strength.

We've hit 20 known cases in New Zealand, and it's kind of endearing in a small-town way, that we can very accurately track the cases. One of our PhD students has a sister in London who has had the virus and is recovering so that was some interesting information to hear from said student.

I'm ready to work from home but the Ministry of Education is being quite steadfast in not letting University staff leave at the moment. They want us to have a face for the students and from the meeting I was in yesterday, one of their massive concerns alongside financial loss is the public losing faith in the institution. Either way, lemme do my job from home it'll be fine I promise - no whisky till like 5pm. OK 4pm.

Our PM has issued some strong thoughts on tourists arriving with no plans to self-isolate - could be looking at straight up deportation.

In non-COVID-19 news, abortion is set to officially be legal in New Zealand, finally.

Might have to go do this too..

Journey is just wonderful huh. I got the game and the PS4 theme that came with it and it's been my theme on the console for the last like 2 years. The music is so lovely.

Our city finally got our first case, and second one soon after. A father and his son, the son goes to a local high school in the same class as the daughter of one of our professors so they are all at home now. It's actually affecting us, wow. I had just been watching my retirement/first house fund sink but now it's here.

I hate certain words partly because of the people who use them

I feel this, though I will continue describing it as corporatespeak despite their claim it is dated. Every company I've worked in, it's middle-management that push the language. Worse yet, the people I've encountered using it almost exclusively want someone else to take the reigns on whatever they're proposing. When asked to touchbase with someone, I discovered they had intended for me to contact them despite them approaching me initially - as though contacting me with an idea was their job done, now I would see it through.

I also hate the titles of projects and processes being trotted out. Just last week I was informed of our new "Operating Rhythm" as a part of the "Uplift Phase" of the "Support Services Review". What they mean is, "everyone is phenomenally fucked off that our Review gutted the support staff and now everyone left over has to paper over the cracks to keep the institution running on fumes. But this is your fault for not conforming to our new processes we paid a lot of consultants to develop, with money we saved by firing a bunch of you fuckwits. Now shut up, waste more time in pointless meetings and do more work than we can ever put into your contract."

Err whoops got a bit carried away. It's an interesting read but I seem to have been triggered by the corporatespeak. It never means positive things to me.

Yeah we're just trying to get things ready in case we have to - we're a part of the Medical School unfortunately so I have no idea how they're going to handle the clinical side of things for the aspiring Drs. They'll figure it out though.

Yeah we have a lot of back and forth with Australia though it's more us to them than the reverse. Tourism is a huge part of the NZ economy too, we'll feel a pinch eventually I think. Right now it's business as usual, but everyone is giving the future a side-eye just in case.

I say we haven't been hit, we've actually had 5 cases but the number hasn't jumped for a while. But the old incubation time before symptoms show might be holding things back.

Good call on the online stuff - we're just going through some tests of our systems to shift entirely to online here in NZ. Our postgrad papers are all online but the undergrad is normally exam based and comes with some decent tutorials. We haven't been hit by it but I'm glad we're preparing as we're going to enter our flu season next month!