Coronavirus Stories - Reaching Out From Isolation

  Edited BY G P Kennedy   Gul - and her man - Istanbul, Turkey FINAL WEEKS OF SUMMER  Life continues as usual here. August is over, we have come almost to the end of summer, and we all have the same sadness. I wish we could freeze this moment and go to a year later. An uncertain autumn and winter are so scary.    The daily number of new cases in the country is reported as over 1500 every day but we assume it’s x 10. Insufficient testing in this busy summer months increased the cases and asymptomatic carriers are still spreading the virus. We hear news that there are not enough beds in the hospitals at the moment. Also idiot people hide that they are sick; there was not enough work to isolate people before its spread by the authorities. They’ve failed (again). Sadly, five doctors died this week; hundreds of healthcare workers have been infected with the virus. Last strawberries of the summer SCHOOL OR NOT  School year began with distance education but this i...

  Edited BY G P Kennedy Tassy - Karachi, Pakistan   Hello everyone. As excited as I was last week with my short escape to Dubai, this week I’m as despondent. The journey back from Dubai was uneventful in the sense that I knew what to expect with flight protocol and travel. A very excited and happy Mario, my Shih Tzu who we had left behind, greeted me.    The feeling of elation from the week’s trip was very much there for my first day back. The weather was not too hot and it was cloudy so that felt pleasant. This changed from the next day. The wind picked up and my bamboo fence fell over. Along with the fence I lost my beautiful vegetable bearing creepers and my bright bougainvillea that was uprooted.   The wind takes down part of the garden What followed in the next five days was the worst thunderstorm the country has seen in a 100 years!  Karachi in the best of times cannot handle rain. As mentioned a couple of months ago when we had heavy rainfall, our dr...

 Edited BY G P Kennedy   Sally and the baby - London, UK  This time next year, at the moment I can’t even see past this time next week.  I have my first job since February but it is in Manchester, which means that myself, my boyfriend and the baby have to stay in my parents house in Liverpool so I can make a 30 mile drive to work each day instead of a 230 mile one if we stayed London.  This is causing me a lot of anxiety as I want to keep my family and myself safe but also I would like some ‘normality’ back in our lives.     I have spoken to colleagues who have already had a few days at work and they say that TV studios have all safety measures in places so as long as I wear a mask and sanitize and observe social distance rules then it shouldn’t be anymore stressful than a supermarket shop… But then I worry about going home to my parents especially since my dad’s heart attack.   Will we be celebrating Christmas with our family?  Anyway h...

 Edited BY G P Kennedy Ellie - Milan, Italy    This time next year... Can I just dream a little? I am not going to be planning anything realistic here but will give myself the license to go wild. No matter what, if this year has had any kind of lesson for us it’s that we can't really plan. I am also superstitions in this respect so don't want to invite bad luck with any firm intentions.    So next time this year, I am planning to survive. I know I said no realistic plans, so I guess this makes it unrealistic? It may be. I'll throw it out there as an option.    This photo is of the staircase leading to our city library. So next year at this time I am hoping to have read at least one book that will not have been picked because they are useful for anything - no work, project or creative purpose.  Next year this time, I hope to have achieved a really big goal that has been dealt with by small baby steps.    Maybe I'll host an artist residenc...

 Edited BY G P Kennedy Simon - Perth, Western Australia   Hello all hope you are traveling well.    Well, here we are, the end of August 2021. This time last year we all felt like it was the end of the world.  Luckily a reliable vaccine was found in early January and distributed around the world to everyone in record time thanks to a combined effort from every country around the world. After a few months most places returned to a new normal and everyone started to rebuild the damage COVID-19 had wrought across the globe.    Amazingly the worldwide distribution of a free vaccine for all was just the beginning of a major shift in the way countries dealt with each other.    Profits, share dividends and the exploitation of billions of people soon took a backseat to fair wages, free childcare and a raft of legislation to protect the environment. It was as if the whole world had woken up and realized how close it was to disaster. For once everyone ...

  Edited BY G P Kennedy   Graeme - D-FW, Texas August 2021…it seems an impossibly long way off. As the country with the worst record for dealing with Coronavirus the United States seems to be atypically supplicant before the challenge of beating this thing.    We also have the small matter of a Presidential election happening on November 3, 2020. This election will be hugely consequential in myriad ways and for countless reasons.   On the Coronavirus front it will likely decide whether we, as a nation, simply sit down, deny, and hope/wait for a vaccine that may or may not be coming in 2021. Indeed, from my wide reading on the issue it’s not even a lock that a vaccine will be found to be effective for enough people nor for long enough to justify going into production.     In terms of the bigger picture the coming presidential election is hugely important. I could bang on about polls, demographic trends, gerrymandering, the Supreme Court and a bunch...

 Edited BY G P Kennedy Today we pitch a curveball, or bowl a google - depending on your preferred bat and ball sport. We look at what the future might hold for us all as we look back on Tassy's trip last week to Dubai. Tassy - Karachi, Pakistan Travel in the time of COVID-19  I feel guilty saying this, but the week that just went by was simply fabulous. I made it to my old hometown, to the city where I grew up and have been visiting every year for all my life. Dubai.  I consider myself quite a seasoned traveler and have been traveling to at least 3 or 4 places a year. This was the longest I hadn’t been on a plane. 10 months.    I was looking to get out of my self imposed quarantined life in Karachi, and have a mini escape. My husband had some work in Dubai and I thought that would be the best opportunity to simply have a break. The journey itself was arduous. The airline had the requirement of each passenger to have a COVID test done by a designated laboratory b...

Edited BY G P Kennedy                         Ian and Minako  This is our 4 th summer living together in Japan and we have learned to get used to the fact the August is really a do-nothing month for us, even more so this year with the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. As we have mentioned several times, temperatures are rising each year; it's too muggy and dangerously hot to spend much time outdoors. Activities are limited to some small festivals (cancelled this year) and traveling is expensive and (normally) crowded at this time. This scenario is not unique to Tokyo of course; the whole planet is suffering from humanity’s destructive miss-management.  So we stay in our air-conditioned apartment and only venture out in the cooler early mornings or evenings and the occasional train ride to temperature-controlled shopping or cultural areas. Once you know your way around Tokyo you can go long distances through it’s subter...

Edited BY G P Kennedy  For this week most of our storytellers will be casting their minds forward to late-August 2021. The idea is to give us all a little relief and release from the relentlessness of the Coronavirus Pandemic. In so doing we will venture into the minds of our storytellers as they share their hopes, dreams and aspirations. Perhaps you will be inspired to look beyond the confines of the pandemic... Gul - Istanbul, Turkey  This time next year, I’ll be working on a summer art project plus I’ll be putting the finishing touches to my autumn program Food at Cunda Island . I wish it were true! My freelance projects were cancelled one by one by last year due to economic recession. As if this was not enough, COVID-19 came over. So this - my early retirement status - was not my choice.  So, ins tead of working, I’ll be on holiday in this coast again and that time I’ll be with my friend from the UK. Forgive me if I appear as a travel agency or a travel blogger. I tol...