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Posts Tagged ‘covid-19’

Travel Shenanigans

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on October 25, 2023| Leave a Comment »

My friend Glenda Larke calls the chaos that surrounds her family when she travels being Noramlyed. Well we were Noramlyed on our trip.

We started out with a low stress start, getting to Canberra way earlier than we needed to to catch our Virgin run codeshare flight to Melbourne to catch our Singapore Airlines flight to Singapore and then Bali. We were so organised. I had purchased an airside hotel in Singapore so we could nap before taking our connection to Bali.

Alas, that flight from Canberra to Melbourne was over two hours late. Some weather we were told shut Gold Coast Airport. We sat on the tarmac for a bit too, wondering what was going to happen because we were pretty certain we’d miss our connection. We asked and was told that others were in the same boat and that they would call.

It wasn’t until we landed in Melbourne that we got answers. We arrived 6.05pm and our flight was due to leave 6.25pm. No time for us to get there or our bags. Virgin proudly informed us they had rebooked us on a direct Virgin Flight to Bali. We quizzed them on would we get fed? Of course. What about our flight from Bali to Singapore? Is that okay? Yes, it’s fine.

We had to buy snacks on the flight and it costs us around $70. The snacks were the same as when you fly domestic. We were so pissed off. Well I was.

We go to Bali and relax, get Bali belly, go to an amazing wedding and hang with family.

Then it becomes time to fly to Singapore. Again we get there early. The zip on my luggage is breaking so I have to buy an emergency suitcase. We queue to check in but there’s a problem. Of course there’s a problem. The ticketing guy gets called over and says our tickets were cancelled and the flight is full and we would need to contact our agent. Nothing they can do. I don’t take this well, but they insist nothing they can do. We explain what happened with their code share and rebooking but alas we are left to figure it out.

I get in touch with the agent. He says, your tickets are fine, your flight is confirmed. He’s not hearing me that they won’t let us on. I pass the phone to the ticketing guy. They chat. He hands my phone back and says the agent is going to issue new tickets. Then they ask us to sit well away from them in some pubic seating. I ring my agent back. He gives me the same ticket numbers. He says they are open in the Singapore Airline system from his end. We just sit there and slowly deflate. Eventually the ticketing guy says he will lets us on the flight. We have to sign a form acknolwedging we might not get fed. A lady who is helping said our tickets are fine but our reservations were cancelled because we were a no show. Singapore Airlines said it was automatic when we didn’t show that all our flights were cancelled. Interesting because when I logged on our flights were there so how I could have avoided this is beyond me. They advise us to check with Singapore Airlines at the airport.

We land. We were fed yummy food. We were happy. We checked with the transfer desk who said our flight home looked fine but maybe we should check again before we left. We enjoy our time in Singapore still suffering some Bali Belly and me an occasional cough still.

I bitch about Virgin Airlines on Twitter and happen to mention Singapore Airlines too. Someone supposedly from Singapore Airlines contacts me and asks for information. I say don’t worry. Singapore Airlines are fine. They write back saying “we need to find out what happened” and they friend me. I tell them our story. They ask for a phone number. They contact me on What’s app, ask for my receipts etc saying they want to help. Then I get the phone call and it starts again. My logic circuits are not functioning well. I’m wondering what they want to refund me and isn’t Singapore Airlines nice. We get to the part where he wants me to change the dollars to Kenya dollars and put a code in the field. Don’t worry he says. It says you are paying us but that’s not the case. My partner is listening in and saying “WTF” and I say. Nah not doing this. I’m calling Singapore Airlines in the morning. The scammer dude is like arguing but I just hang up, block and report. On Twitter meanwhile they have messaged me to say. Cooperate with our assistant. I tell them what I think. Then I search Twitter and find the real Singapore Airlines with a warning about scammers pretending to be them. I was so angry at them and at me. I block and report them on X/Twitter.

The morning we are due to fly out, I get the urge to check us in to our Singapore Airlines flight. I put the information in and it says no flights. I think the scammers might have tried to get a refund but that wasn’t the case. Noramlyed yet again. I ring Singapore Airlines and begged them to help us. It took an hour and half. They rung me back a couple of times, which I really appreciated. They wanted to know how we got to Singapore. I explained that Singapore Airlines flew us there. She found that hard to believe and I had to explain the whole scenario again, complete with all the boarding passes we had etc. We could not get on our planned flight and had to stay an extra night in Singapore. We were able to get the same slot on the next day.

This stuff up, not of our making, made us lose the hotel in Singapore Airline of $360 and the extra night in Singapore at walk in rates at our hotel, another $391.74. And we had to pay for shitty snacks on Virgin for $70. No voucher or anything. Stinks right.

And then we got back and got Covid on our trip to Tasmania. The gods they say are smiling on us, or sniggering or rolling around on the floor laughing.

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Desperate for coffee…

Posted in A writer's life, Writing retreat, tagged , , on October 23, 2023| Leave a Comment »

September was flat out busy. I worked full time and at a higher level, which left me flopped on the couch or swilling wine in the bar with Matthew when he came to collect me. I have worked at that level for years but in a different organisation and a different job. So much reporting and so many meetings! And I still had work to do relating to my normal job. However, it was of short duration and I got paid extra.

In my last week, I got sick. Not covid sick which would have been awful as we were flying to Bali for my son’s wedding. I had laryngitis and couldn’t talk for two days and lots of horrible congestion too. I was a bit sick of people telling me I was on mute. I was covid negative and could get to Bali and the wedding and all the things. I was still coughing and blowing my nose though. My son and my daughter in law caught Covid before the wedding but they were well enough to get to Bali and do the thing.

The wedding was amazing but I’ll save that for another post. Only to say that I sat at the bridal table with my ex husband and my partner and it was fine!

We loved the resort we stayed at in Bali but we didn’t love the Bali belly. We had the Bali belly when we went to Singapore. My son was sick when he came back so we had the lovely Dev take us out two days, and my daughter in law on another day and then finally my son met us after he’d been dosed with antibiotics etc. We also had lots of travel woes. That’s another post too.

Then we came home to set off on our journey to Tasmania where we were due to go on a writing retreat in Port Huon, Terror Australis, with such luminaries as Ann Cleeves, Gary Disher and Vanda Symon.

I had a doctor’s appointment with my doctor where we discussed the Bali belly and the cough (now nearly a month old). He sent me for a PCR and whooping cough test. It came back negative. We visited Sharyn and Chris all good. We visited Keri, all good. A slight bit of coughing.

We visited Trudi on Monday..a lot of coughing and I felt pretty bad that night. We caught the boat to Devonport in the north of Tasmania. I had a telehealth appointment with my doctor who prescribed anibiotics for the cough. We visited another friend and then we felt under the weather. I can’t say we felt very unwell as that has all kinds of connotations. We were tired, had a mild sore throat. We moved onto Hobart and then Matthew did a RATS test. He was positive. I was pissed off. I was still sick from the illness in September. I ordered some more RATS tests to be delivered and was positive as well. OMG! We had visited people. Trudi ended up positive at the same time we did. Eep! She’d been travelling too but it could have been us.

I had made the assumption that I wasn’t contagious as my PCR had been negative on Sunday but by Wednesday night I had full blown symptoms (in hindsight). Also we had been feeling the cold but we figured we’d just got back from the tropics and we were tired because we had been travelling and not always sleeping well. There you go. It was covid.

We were in a hotel in Hobart and we didn’t know what to do. I contacted someone who was organising the retreat. For a while there we were contemplating ten days in a hotel and kissing goodbye $7000 we had spent on the retreat. However, we were lucky enough to be able to head to our retreat accommodation after all. We would be in a self contained unit. Meals could be delivered. They could try to let us attend masterclasses virtually for a few days until we were better. We were so grateful and it really made a potential disaster better.

We’ve been here now since Saturday afternoon. The first masterclass with Ann Cleeves was yesterday. We were phoned in and it wasn’t a great connection etc, but we heard some of it and what we heard was. great. Inspiring even.

I’ve been writing in our room, looking at the view. I’ve been for walks, masked so all good. We are really looking forward to joining in later in the week too.

This afternoon we have a masterclass with Vanda Symon, NZ crime writer and she’s sent us slides and stuff in preparation. Again so grateful.

The food is great…we just don’t have coffee! Matthew masked up and got some for the next town so all good. I’m no longer desperate for coffee and a call out saw my tea bag coffer refilled.

Yesterday my physical energy was good, but I had the imposter syndrome in my ear. I was having a crisis of what I should do, whether it would be any good and so on. Despite this I did write around 2,500 words of two projects. I had planned an SF crime story but I baulked on that. Today, I’ve done a little but the energy is lower.

Tasmania is beautiful by the way.

This is the view from the hotel entrance.

The picture above is from across the road at the marina. Below is the view from our room where we write.

This is a shot from the walkway I strode upon this morning. Lots of birds and marshes and rushes etc.

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Mid Pandemic Musing

Posted in A writer's life, Pandemic, tagged , , , on September 24, 2020| Leave a Comment »

You can read too much news. I confess I’m a news addict but I don’t watch it on the square screen thank god. If you have a progressive outlook on the world and what we can become as humans then the world right now is depressing, sometimes overwhelming. It seems there is a fight over ideas, about what the basic rights of humans are and you get the picture. Throw Covid 19 in and that’s some foul smelling liquid right there.

We lost Ruth Bader Ginsburg this week and as happens when someone famous dies and you get to read a bit about their life. RBG’s life was amazing. There was someone who had the brains, the will and seized every opportunity. I am awed at what she achieved, starting out in a male dominated world.

Along a similar theme, I’m ready The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal and I’m being blown away by how many contemporary notes it is hitting. It reminds me of Hidden Figures a lot, except Hidden Figures was set in the real world. The Calculating Stars is an alternate past in the same era. It picks up a lot of the themes from Hidden Figures, although the protagonist is white Jewish but she mingles in the world of black America in the rocket flying world and women ‘computers’. It goes deep into the established misogyny of the period, as well as the tech, the social mores and fashion and also discusses anxiety and how it is viewed by others. It also discusses climate on this planet. I haven’t finished it yet. I’m listening to it on Audible and the author reads the story herself and I find it enchanting. No wonder it won awards!

Both of these…the passing of RBG and The Calculating Stars remind me of the remaining misogyny alive today and the fight for women to be considered human, to be equal to have a say about our bodies and our reproductive rights is still ongoing. We can’t be complacent and let laws change and go back to the way they were.

There are positives arising from being socially isolated. Not many I agree, but one that gave me pause was the stop with the travel, the spending, the doing. I don’t have a high income but all of a sudden I had some money. First I spent it to help keep companies going. Books, toys etc. But it also made me realise how focused on consuming we are. That’s the basis of our economy. Spend, spend, buy, buy, produce, produce. The pandemic gave that a big shock. I knew this before, of course, but I couldn’t think of an alternative way as it seemed to me that we were so caught up in this capitalist/consumerist merry go around that we couldn’t get off. And now we were shoved off. I think we should hesitate before getting back on. In some ways we won’t have a choice. If like me you travel overseas on discounted fares…well I’m not sure there will be cheap trips for many years. I even wonder if I’ll be able to travel again. My son is flying out with his daughter back to overseas employment. His flights were $5000 each for economy seats. That’s a flight that might have been say $1200 return previously. I’ll try to be optimistic but I’m also being a realist.

Another aspect of being forced to stay home was the focus on the home and on family. Not only was there iso baking but iso gardening. But beware of watching too many Do It Yourself Videos. To some extent a focus on what was important. In Canberra, and in this house, we had a death, a passing of a loved one, bushfire smoke that made me think the apocalypse was here and we were forced to stay inside, then a ravaging hailstorm that wreaked havoc, actual fire threat and then Covid-19. This has happened elsewhere too. Parts of the USA are experiencing the fires, on top of the Covid-19. It is a trial.

It is hard to focus on the future, on dreams. For me though I’m focussing as much as I can on things I can control. My weight, my health, my family and so on. I had a bit of glitch last week as my GP didn’t want to refer me to the specialist about my knees but she did refer me for an xray. Today she referred me to the specialist as my xray showed issues that weren’t there before. I am happy with that but for a few days I thought she had taken control away from me and I reacted to that. I pay for private health cover these days so I have control over when things happen. So I’ll move forward on that at my own pace.

Creative wise I’ve stalled (again). I’m reading and stuff but I was disrupted last week (mostly due to the knee issues) and I haven’t put my feet on the ground yet. I’ve been socialising too, almost to pre pandemic levels. It’s weird. I’m going to visit a friend this afternoon for a cuppa and then in the morning I have pool exercise with another friend. Next week I am visiting Bourke with my son and a couple of my grandkids before he leaves.

What a year it has been. Nearly the end of September. Wow.

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Battening down the hatches

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »

World events are just moving so fast in this unprecedented times. Ten days ago I was teaching my classes face to face. This week gone it was online. It’s a time of adaption, perseverance and hope.

I try to have hope that things will get better as the pandemic passes but one thing for sure is that life is going to be different now and for the months to come. Who knows how the world will be when this is over?

I feel for those who are under lock down and have lost loved ones and jobs. I’m doing okay at the moment. I applaud the heroes and heroines of this crisis, the health workers-doctors, nurses, first responders. I have to drag myself away from the news as it is overwhelming.

I can’t concentrate, I can’t write and I can only stumble from moment to moment. But I am going to fix that as best I can. I’m going to focus and do something besides bake, eat, clean and watch Star Trek Next Generation! From tomorrow I’m going to have a schedule but I will give myself a break if I falter.

But for some cheer! Baking results. Hot cross buns and my regular seeded sourdough bread.

One hero in all this on the political side Andrew Cuomo, Governor on New York State and Jacinta Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, who both give clear, sound and emotionally sensitive advice to their people.

Here is my isolation buddy, Gin the cat, who is part Maine Coon.

To help out in the only way I can, I have updated my front page to promote the links to my free novella, Vorn and the First Comers. I have also sent a link to my short story collection, Beneath the Floating City, to my newsletter subscribers.

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Pandemic dreaming- looking on the bright side

Posted in Annoying advice, Pandemic, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 18, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Yes, I know. I should be all gloom and doom. Things are not as bad as they could be. I’m not going to say they are not as bad as they seem because that’s a different kettle of fish.

I’ve studied pandemic preparedness for my work as an auditor a while ago when bird flu was considered a threat. We got the Swine Flu instead. However, under those scenarios the ‘flu’ was going to be devastating and take a lot of people out thereby disrupting critical supplies such as food and rubbish removal and so on. However, this does not appear to be the case. This is not a widespread failure of everything we know. Food deliveries are still being made etc, food is still be produced and grown. This is not like Stephen King’s The Stand or the movie Contagion. Praise the universe for that small mercy.

The big impact here is on imported food and exported food and medicines. These disruptions to air travel etc have consequences there is no denying. However, I am convinced we will still have baked beans on the shelf. And as toilet paper is made in Australia no potential shortage. I’d like to see people not hoard that stuff. I have plenty of loo paper but I bought it one pack at a time and then found a great big packet from before Christmas in our laundry hidden under guff. As people aren’t going to be visiting in the time of social distancing and social isolation I think we are good–for a while.

We should be alert but not alarmed.

I will be delivering all my tutorials online from now and probably for the rest of the semester. I think this is doable but I’m sure going to miss my face to face classes. I have such a great group of students and I’ve been so impressed by them this year. I feel bad that their first year of university (most of them) is marred by this pandemic outbreak. In one course we have been discussing ‘adaptability’, which is not always easy.

I am also low level scared. It has been on my mind that I might die. But I’m not alarmed by that thought. I think this is because since Matthew’s dad died in December, life has been full of challenges. Bushfire smoke, bushfires and now the Covid-19 outbreak. These events have put a lot of pressure on me personally, although I did not lose my home, it did make me understand that I am not as resilient as I thought I was and that I’m mortal.

So where is the upside here? I think there’s a chance to slow down and connect with ourselves and those closest to us. There is a chance to catch up on books and movies. Social media, often called a bane, might be the only contact people have and for that I think we have to be grateful for technology. We live in a connected world–that helped the virus spread but it will also keep us together.

Today I am baking sourdough bread, an activity I find relaxing and centering. I’m also trying to work out how to put together a half lecture using different technology that is going to be delivered online. A bit of a learning curve.

Stay safe everyone.

 

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