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Lockdown is the mother of invention
Yesterday I met a friend "accidentally" in a shopping centre. We cruised around the aisles, masked and be-gloved, trying to look as if we didn't know each other. That was the highlight of my week. That, and my fabulous IDEA.
As I mentioned last time, book writing, for the most part, is a ticket to starvation and death. But actually, that's only if you don't become a successful author. No, forget about the starvation. The worst thing about writing is the boredom (can't do other things while writing) and the physical pain in shoulders and wrists. So when I got a freelance job demanding eight hours of writing per day on top of the book writing, I thought: I need a proper office chair!
Two years ago I got an office chair from a charity shop:
Cool, eh? All I need is a long nail, an eyeglass and a white cat, and I'm good to start world domination. The only problem is: The chair is ONLY for looking at. Comfort or workwise it's actually worse than no chair at all. So if I don't want to wreck my back, I'll need a modern, comfortable, real office chair. But it's the kind of thing I really should try before buying, and I can't try when everything is closed. Also they're damned expensive.
Then, because I'm now totally self sufficient, it came to me. No chair! Stand and write! Like a pulpit or... or a lectern! Buy a lectern? Buy online? Buy... bu... BUILD a lectern!!!
Didn't I have a lot of wood in the garden, thriftily collected to use as firewood? Woo hooo! Full of pioneer spirit I set to work.
It worked. Now I do all the work standing up, and I can't recommend it enough. I also give speeches and sermons from behind my lectern, which my dog Koldbrann listens to with rapt attention in his sleep. This, combined with some Skype and secret meetings near the pickled cucumbers, makes being shut away not only bearable but enjoyable!
When the food shortages start to bite in earnest it will of course be different, but by then I will have grown my own vegetables and caught a couple of cows and chicken. I feel there's nothing I can't do now.
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Love of Spanish in the time of Coro-lera
Well, I'm officially one of the in-crowd! A few days ago I carried out yet another daring raid. A nearby friend, maybe the same one who lent me the DVDs, maybe not (I never kiss and tell, especially not now) gave me a proper MASK together with some hand sanitiser via a dead drop behind a tree 200 metres from his or her house. The mask is both stylish-ish and useful, and SO much more comfortable than what I had before, a too-small painter's dust mask covered in toilet paper. Now I can go to shops and what not, safe and politically correct.
Talking of which, on Sunday the government of Mallorca "allowed" children out for the first time since the lockdown started. But only for ONE hour, and within a ONE kilometre radius from their home, and with ONE adult. I saw some people eagerly taking advantage of this benevolent gesture that day, and oh how good it was to see children playing again - only one by one and in a suitably sombre fashion, of course. The next day, FB exploded with angry memes. Apparently parents had been talking to other parents, sitting near them and - gasp - chatting! Some children had even gone into the water. The little murderers! Here's what I think: These angry, fearful meme-writers are deeply envious of other people's joy. If they are so afraid of this virus, they are free to barricade themselves at home. They will soon come out when the food shortages begin, to forage for scraps. What, you don't think there will be food shortages? When no one's "allowed" to work? Yes we have deliveries and food shops are open, but who's going to produce the damn stuff?
Talking of a guaranteed way to kill people, or rather, oneself: Writing books. It's the highway to poverty. However, I keep writing away on the course Learn Spanish without Really Trying, now with lots of Corona related expressions! And I don't mean the Mexican beer.
So my friend Heather, an expert, teaches it (online), and I write and draw.
Sign up today! You know you want to.
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The danger of breaking the intelligent, well thought-out rules
Well, "quarantine" is supposed to be 40 days, so that's cool. Or at least it used to be, in the days when they quarantined the sick, not the well. It's easy to lose track of time and lose interest in the world when one is locked down/in, but some news manage to make it through the grey wall of indifference clouding my brain.
The other day, an evening before dark, I heard a helicopter flying low over my neighbourhood; so low that I was actually thinking it might crash into my house. Could it be... corveillance? (Corona surveillance.) Surely not, I thought. But yes, two days later I read in the Majorca Daily Bulletin 
that the local government is indeed flying low over the entire island, trying to catch those who "break the rules" by for example being inside a car with the windows rolled up.
Not for the first time I thought about my life in Hong Kong and the similarities between that island and Mallorca. I thought about my travels in China with its communism which, at the time, I mostly found surreal and hilarious. One example was being arrested for having hairspray.
That day I was more than 3,000 kilometres away from Beijing and moving in the opposite direction of that glorious city made more glorious by hosting the Olympic Games (to accommodate which people were being kicked out of their own houses even as late as two weeks before the opening ceremony, the houses being torn down to make way for flower beds) - but in all fairness it was the Olympic Games which had forced the government to take such necessary measures. It's for your own safety.
So the helicopter thing - I think it's a litte bit like that. No, a lot like that. Exactly like that, in fact.
Meanwhile, all this could have been avoided if China hadn't covered up what they knew was a dangerous epidemic. They stopped flights between Wuhan and other cities in China, but allowed international flights, for example. Me, I prefer the train, but that's beside the point. On that same train trip in 2008, I came across this poster:
One World One Dream. At the time I just smiled and thought, aw, good design! But now I can't help thinking: Belt and road, take over Africa, take advantage of the whole world being shut up at home leading to deflation, then global depression... then: One World! Led by you know who! That's the kind of thing I absolutely can't help thinking about, especially when I see each country's government joining in with various degrees of enthusiasm.
But oh, I miss train travel in China.
P.S. If you're not a fan of the Chinese Communist Party and all it has done to its own people and now the world, you should learn Cantonese! Cantonese is a pet peeve of the CCP and nothing irks them more than people being rebellious by speaking it. I give Skype lessons from my quarantine. 100% virus free.
快啲同我學廣東話！
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Hell is other people
- yes that's what Sartre said in his play No Exit. But after 26 days of lockdown, I for one am starting to look at other people with something resembling fondness. Of course I can imagine that people who already live together and have done for some time wish they had a room - or a city - to themselves. But for me, when it starts getting dark and the lights come on all over the neighbourhood, I sometimes wish I had had the wherewithal some time in the late 90s to acquire something like a husband and two children.
Because if I had that, we could have spent each night in lockdown playing Cho Dai Di.
Cho Dai Di is without exception the best card game in the world. It's really like life itself: You need good planning but also luck and a little bit of evil.
When I lived in Hong Kong/China we used to go on "language seminars" into the hinterlands of China, playing cards from morning till night while exploring everything that great country (so much more than a producer of viruses!) had to offer. The days would be: Hotel breakfast with cards, wandering around the town or countryside all day stopping for lunch with cards, then back to the hotel to shower, followed by dinner and cards. It was heaven.
My highest wish, "when all this is over" (blah) is that I find three like-minded people who love cards - as long as it's Cho dai di - and who want to play at least once a week.
Oh, and learn Cantonese from me on Skype! You know you want to.
(The photos are called "Chinese people relaxing". It's a rare sight. )
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Health, mental, physical. News from Mallorca
I'm sitting at my dining table as usual. It's Groundhog Day. Outside in the garden a welcome sun shines on the orange hairs of my ginga brute, Koldbrann. He is staring at me. When I wave, he wags his tail slowly, tentatively. Could it be dinner time again? (As if he doesn't know to the second what time it is.)
I don't know what I'd do without Koldbrann! For some reason, probably because they know not what to do, the local government has decided to keep everyone indoors ell the time, and have closed all parks, woods and beaches. Here, lockdown really is lockdown. However, you are "allowed" to go out on your balcony.
I get that everybody is afraid, afraid to make mistakes, to make the situation worse. Instead of trusting people to act in their own best interest by self-quarantining and staying away from others, however, the national government has decided to punish people with quite extraordinarily heavy fines for, for example, exercising outside. They call it "non-essential activities."
I wonder if that is such a good idea. Isn't this a time when it's more important than ever to do the old mens sana in corpore sano? Shouldn't we be exercising the hell out of especially our lungs, by doing aerobic exercises outside in the fresh air? In Norway and Britain people are encouraged to go out and exercise, as long as they don't do it in groups or drive for long distances, crossing county borders.
Just before the weekend, the government announced that it would increase punishments for disobedience, crack down harder, put up more checkpoints etc. At the same time, they keep pushing the lockdown back and back - April 26th is the latest date - without presenting a plan for what will happen on that date. Now we see people starting to take risks, to challenge the authorities by "recklessly" going running, cycling - and swimming. Yes yesterday I read in the Majorca Daily Bulletin that a man had been "caught" swimming to an island in full diving gear, by marine police patrolling the coast.
Human nature! I think it would be wiser to appeal to people's sense of responsibility instead of threatening, fining and cracking down. No one wants to catch this illness (although I'm starting to think if "everybody will get it" perhaps it's better for us younger fogeys to catch it now before we enter the danger zone in earnest) so I think most people will behave responsibly. A small minority won't give a shit of course, but they wouldn't have anyway. I think these over strict measures will just make the more rebellious take greater risks out of spite. I can feel it in myself: I'm not asking for permission to go outside my bloody house!
So if I didn't have Koldbrann I would be committing a crime if I went for a walk in the morning, without any purpose except keeping healthy physically and mentally. Walking is THE best exercise, in my opinion. So thank God for Koldbrann. When we're out together and I see a police car, I just wave in a manly, 'I've got this' way, and give the thumbs-up. That seems to do the trick. But it shouldn't be necessary.
