Quarantine Diaries, Day 28
(Posted 13 Apr 2020, 20:25)
19:00 On the way back from my evening walk, I saw a group of teenagers trimming each others’ hair with an electric clipper in our courtyard. Personal hygiene concerns aside, there was something atavistic about it, like social grooming rites of apes. When I told this to the wife she merely asked why I hadn’t queued up.
18:00 My iPhone has been my primary camera for several years now. Today I felt like shooting with my DSLR again and with the 24mm lens at that, which I probably hadn’t used in two years. Some pictures from the neighborhood that once housed warehouses and shipyards but is pretty residential now - though parts of it look every bit like they do in their 19th century daguerreotypes:
A large boat
A large boat
Looking back towards Westerdok
And by now there should be no doubts about what season it is here:
Spring!
Some bridges here are so narrow that I waited at one end to let someone pass because it certainly won’t be possible to stay 1.5 meters apart if we were to pass by each other on the bridge:
Driehaaringenbrug - Three herrings bridge (with only enough space for about two of them)
10:00 I was already a month overdue for a haircut when the lockdown in Amsterdam began. A week into it the wife started to threaten to cut my hair at home. I’ve resisted her advances and even teased her with Regina Spektor’s song about Samson and Delilah:
A month in and I am beginning to relent. Based on the recommendation from a friend, the wife looked for a suitable hair clipper online but all of them were out of stock. If you’d said to me that a pandemic would cause a hair clipper shortage, I would’ve laughed at you.
Hair clippers are sold out online
I doubt they will be available for another month1. Till then, I’ll continue to fantasize about the pony tail I’d be emerging out of this lockdown with.
One of the realisations from having started working recently at a logistics company has been that about 45% of the world’s air cargo travels in the belly of passenger planes. Most passenger routes from Asia (where most of the world’s manufacturing capacity is concentrated) are seeing little traffic. At the same time, a lot of dedicated air cargo capacity is being diverted towards moving more important goods, such as personal protective equipment for healthcare workers. As a result, the days of ordering something and having it magically show up at your doorstep within a week aren’t going to return anytime soon.↩︎
Quarantine Diaries, Day 27
(Posted 12 Apr 2020, 23:39)
12:15 I didn’t check today, but two weeks ago, our local Saturday market was still operating. While the majority of stalls there sell food, you can find stalls selling pretty much anything from flowers, to clothes, to incense, to mobile phone covers and used books. Most of those stalls weren’t there any longer. The ones left had ample space between them.
Saturday market in the time of a pandemic
The stall from where we buy our supply of nuts had used cardboard boxes to create partitions for people to stand in - usually we’d be all huddled together vying for an attendant’s attention while dipping into free samples placed on the counter. Now the attendants stood behind a thick screen of transparent plastic that had slits for you to pay and collect your purchases through. It’s a popular stall and people lined on either side of it. With the mandated 1.5m distance, it didn’t take many people for the queues to stretch far. While the arrangement was vastly space-inefficient, it wasn’t any less time-efficient than normal days. And alas, no free samples.
Saturday market in the time of a pandemic
10:00 We seem to have a love-hate relationship with flights these days. This repatriation flight from Malaysia to the Netherlands is getting flak for running too full. Others are using rather creative means to recreate the feel of being on a plane.
09:00 Since all deaths in the Netherlands have to be registered with the local municipalities, over time it’s becoming possible to get a sense of the real toll of Coronavirus. The current estimate is that it might be as high as two times the count officially attributed to Coronavirus. Comparisons to hongerwinter are being made already.
Quarantine Diaries, Day 26
(Posted 12 Apr 2020, 23:02)
21:00 We finished watching the 4 episode mini-series Unorthodox on Netflix. It offered us an intimate look into the life of the Satmar Hassidic community in New York City. It’s brilliantly made and features several excellent performances. Though watching this in the time of a pandemic was a little anxiety inducing.
My anxiety levels ranged from low during:
- scenes of busy cafés
- the scene featuring a small classroom at a conservatorium where the students crowded together practiced 2nd movement of Dvořák’s E-major Serenade
to medium during:
- scenes of the wedding and festivals when multiple relatives come together in confined spaces
to high:
- when people kissed their fingers and touched the mezuzah before entering the house
18:00 Stepped out for a walk with the wife. I am realising that you can’t step out these days without overhearing the word ‘Corona’ at least once. A few days ago I had seen these posters from the municipality of Amsterdam imploring people to maintain 1.5m distance for the sake of their mother, father, aunt etc.
Distance saves lives
Posters on the left
- Do it for your aunt
- Keep your mother out of Intensive Care
Posters on the right
- 1.5 meter to save your father’s life
- Do it for yourself and your mother
Today these had been plastered over by posters advertising music festivals1 beginning in July. Given the current stage of the pandemic in the Netherlands and the crowding and relatively loose hygiene at these festivals, the prospects of them going ahead seem overly optimistic. Premature? Immature?
Music festivals
13:30 With schools now closed for close to 3 weeks, these days of homeschooling and a vacation but not quite a vacation must be stressful for children. The children on our floor got together yesterday to color and draw and left their handiwork stuck to the glass partition next to the elevator:
Children’s drawings
Children’s drawings
The lone, blue page on the right is a printout of instructions for using the elevator during a pandemic. It was stuck there by someone a week or so ago.
How to use an elevator during a pandemic
12:50 Seen at grocery stores: A roll of toilet/kitchen paper with a cleaning spray (labeled “this is not a hand sanitizer!”) for people who want to give their shopping basket handles a wipedown before picking them up. Landed a couple of bottles of a locally brewed beer that appears on the shelves around Easter.
Borouwerij ’TIJ Paasij
As of today, both https://www.18hrsfestival.nl and https://www.guiltypleasurefestival.nl claim to start on 11 Jul in Balkenhaven and Gaasperplas respectively.↩︎
Quarantine Diaries, Day 25
21:18 Tall buildings in Amsterdam are beginning to light up their windows in the shape of a heart. Quite possibly in support of healthcare workers fighting the pandemic on the frontlines. I first saw Overhoeks Tower do this a couple of weeks ago:
💖
The wife noticed a building outside our house do the same today:
💖
Quarantine Diaries, Day 24
Dutch swear words are all about diseases. I haven’t personally had abuses hurled at me recently, but if this podcast is anything to go by, Coronavirus might already have made it to the Dutch profanity lexicon…
20:30 This year is Beethoven’s 250th anniversary. Amsterdam’s western classical calendar had many performances of his works lined up this year. Most of them are cancelled now. I had tickets to performances of two of his late string quartets in January. I couldn’t attend them because of a work trip, but was hoping to attend other performances of his works in the coming days. That looks increasingly unlikely.
Starting this week, Concertgebouw will release a new solo performance every Wednesday. They are calling these “Empty Concertgebouw Sessions”. Whether they feature works of Beethoven or not, I’ll be tuning in!
Quarantine Diaries, Day 23
13:20 Our collective resolve to stay indoors is beginning to fray a little. Life is still very far from going back to normal but I certainly saw more people outside today than I did in the past few days. I half expected this on a perfect spring day like today. Sunny but neither too warm nor too cold. While the Government is dealing with the more blatant violations of the lockdown decree sternly, it isn’t policing everyone yet. If the infection counts start spiking after a week or two, I fear we might be in for France/Italy style draconian measures.
13:04 Noticed a poster at the grocery store announcing early opening hours (7:00 - 8:00 AM) for people over 70. It is now mandatory to carry a shopping basket from a stack at the store’s entrance inside. An employee in the vicinity of the stack watches discreetly and reminds you to pick one if you don’t. This is how they control the number of people allowed inside the store at a given time. No shopping baskets at the entrance, no more people allowed to enter.
Early shopping hours for ‘70 plussers’
12:00 The brighter side to all the air travel coming to a halt - ProRail, the organisation responsible for our railway network, was able to fast-track a maintenance project inside Schiphol tunnel1. A project that would’ve been spread over multiple days in 2020 (with one part stretching into 2021), was moved forward to start on Mar 31 and finish on Apr 6. Hope they got done!
Perennially busy under normal circumstances making it difficult to find time slots to replace rail tracks.↩︎