March has been a long year.

“NZ has become a police state for at least four weeks… and the control over Kiwis — and activities like going for a walk — is broad, discretionary, and so far poorly defined.” We need to keep our police accountable and under close scrutiny right now, and if they don’t act soon to assure the public that they do have well defined, consistent and fair strategies for interacting with the public in various scenarios, they may well lose the public’s confidence. Policing the pandemic

“The stand-out need for change however is that we can never again allow our economy to become so heavily dependent on unreliable international tourism.” Perhaps if we weren’t so dependant on so much international tourism, we could close our borders much quicker if we needed to, and with much less economic disruption. The change NZ needs

Today I learned that there are about 4500 species of mammals. Half of them are rodents and a quarter of them are bats. #til

We watched Leave No Trace and holy smokes our girl Thomasin can still act. 🍿

I think my boy and his mates have discovered group chat, there’s about five of them having a good old yarn over their phones together from their bedrooms and I haven’t heard that before.

We’re lucky here in NZ to have mostly reasonable fair-minded people. Which is why we got on board with this whole shutdown thing (I won’t call it a lockdown because it’s not), and which is why there ended up being good consensus among our elected representatives to enable these strong coronavirus countermeasures to be brought in.

The cross-party response committee is a good idea too, because we absolutely need to keep our government and our police accountable and under scrutiny right now. To this end we also need the media to do their jobs properly. It’s going to be an interesting 28 27 days.

Things we could do:

School work
Work work
Ted ED riddles
Practise Rubiks cubing
Practise HEC-HMS
Practise new jiu jitsu moves
CBT exercises
Swing a kettlebell
Feed the birds
Watch psychology lectures on YouTube
Read about project management
Read books
Watch movies
Phone a workmate
Phone a friend
Listen to albums
Listen to podcasts
Play Oddworld Abe’s Oddysee
Play Scrabble
Walk at the park
Jog at the park
Sprint at the park
Sit zazen
Cook new recipes
Paint some of the house
Ride the bikes
Clean the bikes
Clean the car
Lie on the couch
Write

Strange days have found us. NZ now has 205 cases of Covid-19 and the curve is getting steeper as these curves tend to do. I’ve brought my office home and I’ll be doing well to get two weeks of paid work in the next four weeks or however long this shutdown lasts. I’ve had to cut some expenses.

The response here to this crisis is unprecedented. This evening a state of emergency was blared through my phone and our alert level goes to 4 at midnight. A skeptic might say the response is over the top and too late but the science experts say this virus is bad and this is the best response now. Either way the choice has been made to go hard against this thing, so that’s what we should do. We need to save lives and keep the health and economic impacts on people’s wellbeing as brief as possible. We need to flatten the curve and learn lessons for next time.

I have a friend who is a hobby glider pilot and he likens the government’s call to shut NZ down to making the call whether to land your glider on a random airstrip or in a paddock because of a sudden lack of lift: you don’t want to make that call, but if you do you better make it early and then commit. Because if you don’t, things can get very bad very quick.

My isolation “bubble” includes my teenager who has to balance school work with having just got a car and wanting to see his mates and wanting to have a bit of a break from his old dad who keeps telling him that peanut butter sandwiches aren’t acceptable for every meal no matter how delicious they are. We have some plans in place though and we’ll be right. But I have a feeling these days are going to keep on being strange.

At the supermarket just now: people wearing full face mask respirators and gloves, and no flour or porridge. One guy was very upset about the no porridge.

The apocalypse is cancelled.

“I often post bad content, such as this editorial, which frustrates its fans and discourages them from sharing the www.kickscondor.com link. In fact, the whole point of today’s message is that you should not be sharing or talking about this hypertext blog with your friends.” Okay, shut up about me now

In other health news my glycated haemoglobin levels are back under prediabetic levels and staying that way. Steak for breakfast is helping.

Went to the doctors and they’ve spaced out the waiting room seats and removed all the magazines and kids’ toys. Let’s keep it like that for ever.

“Just gonna throw this out there: democracy as we know it, not just in the US, but everywhere, is not working. People are idiots.” Democracy isn’t perfect but it’s the best system we have. Like everything though it is prone to human foibles. Including, yes, idiocy. @danielpunkass

Now reading American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. 📚

Another morning tea birthday cake successfully dodged. 🍰

With the amount of money my dentist has been trying to get me to spend I can see why the FedSmoker took to DIY tooth removal.

No regrets that I did Korean karate but tbh if I had those years over again I would do Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

I read 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson and he certainly has some thought-provoking insights into what it is to be human. 📚

Today I learned that only about 40% of people get asparagus wees. (Including me.) #til

“Covid-19 is the latest phenomenon to fulfil a weird and growing appetite for doom among the populations of developed countries. We are living in the healthiest, most peaceful time in history, yet we cannot seem to accept it.”