Australia Final Thoughts
Going Viral
This whole COVID-19 coronavirus business is sure throwing a surreal monkey wrench into daily life—and for Shobhit and me, it really started in Sydney. We both caught colds there, and I have a feeling I know where. We both went to local bathhouses the night before Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, each of us to a different one as Sydney has several. Either we both caught something separately or, more probably, one of us caught a cold and then gave it to the other once back in our hotel room. In any case, we both had tickles in our throats before we even left Sydney, and we both continue to have persistent coughs even now, although Shobhit's seems to be worse. His throat is worse, too; he was gargling salted hot water before we left for work this morning.
The recent explosion of COVID-19 infections occurred while we were away, though. There were confirmed cases in Australia while we were there, but far fewer than in the U.S., and it was while we were away that Seattle became ground zero for the vast majority of deaths in the country—the vast majority of those being from a single nursing home in Kirkland. We learned most of this news while watching Australian TV channels, illustrating that, so far at least, it was a much bigger problem at home than where we were.
Neither Shobhit nor I have had fevers. The common cold isn't any less common now that COVID-19 is floating around, and my cycling through this cold has been pretty standard. It does make people slightly more suspicious or uncomfortable when around me coughing, of course. But, I have little reason to believe it's anything more than a regular cold. Shobhit and I were coughing a lot while we were staying with Uncle David and Mary Ann, but they did not seem overly concerned about it. Or if they were, they didn't indicate as much. They did sleep in a bed out in their large dining room add-on to the back of the house, though, and gave us their bedroom and their bed; Shobhit tried to insist we would be fine sleeping out in the add-on but they wouldn't hear of it. Maybe they'll want to wash the linens on their bed three times or something.
Shobhit has had a tendency to get insanely irrational at times, although unfortunately that is increasingly par for the course for him. The morning after my cold was clearly apparent while we were still in Sydney, he noticed I was eating cereal for breakfast and he said, "Really?", convinced the milk was going to make my throat worse. And then he started going on about how the Australian government might quarantine us or bar us from traveling if people heard me coughing. Of course, within a couple of days Shobhit was coughing just as much as I was—more, even—and once it was him displaying symptoms, he had none of these insanely paranoid comments to make anymore.
In fact, on our first flight out of Adelaide on Monday, which was from there to Sydney, the lady sitting in the aisle seat on the other side of him was openly perturbed by his coughing. She even asked him to cover his mouth while coughing, which he was doing with his elbow (but, honestly, he does not often do at all under normal circumstances; same with his typical sneezing fits of up to eight or nine sneezes in a row, which drives me fucking bonkers). She was smiling and polite, but it was clear Shobhit's cough was disturbing her, perhaps more than it really needed to be. As soon as we got to our gate in Sydney, the lady got up and moved as far away from Shobhit as she could get, before the plane was even quite unloading.
I was really afraid of flights fucking up my right ear, which my cold was affecting in kind of funky ways, plugging it here and there—that kind of shit happens and I always get flashbacks to my 2012 bout with labyrinthitis. I was on a plane once several years ago when I had a sudden earache with piercing pain, and I was really afraid of something like that happening again. Luckily, it didn't. I've really been mostly fine for several days now, albeit with this lingering cough, which seems to taper off significantly when I am outside in fresh air. Well, except for this morning at the bus stop when some asshole was smoking a cigarette near me, and even being outside did not make that any better.
I was on a bus yesterday headed downtown and there was even an overhead announcement from King County Transit advising riders about frequently washing hands. Just living in the world right now feels a little like the dubious space between dystopia and post-apocalyptic things seen in movies. I got an email from Laney this morning with the subject line "Doctor's orders," and informing me we will have to cancel our Happy Hour scheduled for Monday night: Laney is over 60, has had a heart attack, and COVID-19 is affecting people over sixty and/or with compromised immune systems by far the most severely. I'm disappointed, but I get it. My only worry right now is how long all our social lives will be impacted. And to what extend our professional lives will be: Kevin, who has diabetes, is telecommuting for the foreseeable future, and Eric told me this morning I have the option to do the same if I would like. I only just found the email from Dana, our new VP of Human Resources, sent out last Thursday detailing this option being available on a week by week basis pending approval by a supervisor; high-risk individuals may already be asked to work from home anyway. I told Eric that for now, I will only work from home if asked to. I have never done so ever since we were all issued these mobile laptops docked at our desks, to make it easier to when necessary. I don't even know how hard it would be to take the proper power source so my battery doesn't run out.
Anyway, I was never much concerned about the coronavirus while in Australia, and knew that the greater concern was actually coming back home to Seattle. We did get asked more than once at airports whether we had recently visited other countries like China or Iran (nope). It occurred to me yesterday that, over the past two weeks alone, Shobhit and I flew in six separate planes: Seattle to San Francisco; San Francisco to Sydney; Melbourne to Adelaide; Adelaide to Sydney; Sydney back to San Francisco; and San Francisco back to Seattle. Dealing with customs both directions was actually easier than I expected, even with U.S security on the way back being predictably far more strict. I was rather struck by how comparatively lax airport security is in Australia: when Uncle David and Mary Ann picked us up at the Adelaide airport on Wednesday night, she had quite easily gone through security to meet us, while Uncle David was waiting down at baggage claim. We explained that in the States, no one gets past security at any airport unless they have their own plane ticket, with few exceptions such as when picking up an unaccompanied minor. It's been this way for nearly twenty years now, since 9/11.
I do really hope Uncle David and Mary Ann don't get sick, though, especially considering the concerns about how vulnerable to this virus older people are. I'd hate to feel like we were in any way responsible for either of them getting deathly ill. I am still convinced, though, that what Shobhit and I have is just a regular case of a cold.
As for the rest of our trip? Well, as I often do after a huge trip for which I don't want to have to write about everything a second time, I spent pretty much all late afternoon and evening yesterday duplicating the five email photo digests (or "travelogues," as Mary Ann much more sensibly called them) that I had sent out over the course of our travels, backdating them as posts to this very journal. Here is the rundown:
Sydney, Part One [covering Monday, February 24 through Friday, February 28; the trip over just skipped over Tuesday the 25th completely so this covers the first four days of the trip]
Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras 2020 [covering both the most fun and amazing Pride event I have ever attended, as well as the day after, our final day in Sydney: Saturday, February 29 and Sunday, March 1]
Melbourne [Monday, March 2—that first day mostly consisting of our train and bus rides from Sydney to Melbourne—through Wednesday, March 4]
Kangaroo Island [Thursday and Friday, March 5-6]
Adelaide [mostly Saturday through Monday, March 7-9]
Now, just a few thoughts about each place.
Sydney: All else being equal, this is probably the one Australian place we would both be eager to visit again. The city is a lot of fun, the nude beaches fun and pretty accessible by transit—at least two of them were, anyway, and the first one was in a very pretty sort of secret cove (pictured at top in this post). There is plenty more to do there that we didn't get to, and we were there five nights.
Melbourne: I would actually love to visit here again, but wouldn't be devastated if we didn't. Still, we only really had time to do the most touristy things imaginable, as our one full day there was dominated by visits to the likes to Eureka Tower Skydeck and the Melbourne Star observation wheel. A guy we spoke to at a cheese shop who was a local insisted that Melbourne is better than Sydney, which neither Shobhit nor I could really see—"Melbourne just has so much more soul," he said; I can't really say that Sydney has no "soul," though. Uncle David told us later that Melbourne and Sydney have been rival cities since time began, and Melbourne apparently has a bit of a chip on its shoulder about existing in Sydney's shadow. At 5.2 and 4.8 million people respectively, though, they are nearly the same size. Still, it was not until our third day in Melbourne that we really began to understand how reliable its own transit system really is, and there would probably be a lot more to explore there given more time. Nevertheless, after Shobhit was already talking about taking a second trip to Australia before we left home, on our way back he was talking about visiting Brisbane next time rather than Melbourne. I'd probably be okay with that.
Kangaroo Island: The most disappointing part of the whole trip was having all of Flinders Chase National Park, devastated by this year's bush fires, completely closed from access. I would otherwise say "once was enough" for this island, but I hate that I've been there but never got to see Remarkable Rocks, let alone any of the national park, which covers about a third of the island—and would otherwise have featured far more observable wildlife. So, I have to go back. Also, with Shobhit talking about returning "in two or three years," I'm thinking we should split the difference and return in two and a half years, and go back at the beginning of summer rather than the end, so it's closer to the beginning of the annual bush fire season rather than the end, and hopefully then far less of the earth will have been scorched. I'm thinking, say, November 2022.
Adelaide: I'm also thinking Uncle David and Mary Ann have maybe one more major visit in them, during which Shobhit and I could come over and they could still do a lot of stuff with us, before they start to get too old. Even that ocean safari we did on Kangaroo Island seemed a little borderline for them; Mary Ann got a bruise on her leg trying to climb back into the boat, and when we were first getting out and into the water, Uncle David slipped and fell. He didn't hurt himself, but he could have, and I fear he may be trying to do too much just to make us happy. He just turned 73 last week and Mary Ann will be 73 in a couple of months. By 2022, they'll both be 75. Once they're both pushing 80, there won't be as much ability or mobility on either of their parts. So, if we are going to visit Australia again, I want to do it sooner than later when they can still get around relatively easily, and that of course means I absolutely want to visit Adelaide again. Neither Shobhit nor I would have much interest in Adelaide otherwise, but with them there, I do have a lot of interest—and there were some areas I wanted to see but we just didn't have time, because Uncle David packed our days with so much activity. (On Saturday alone, we went to the Adelaide Oval, to the Adelaide Botanic Garden, and Adelaide Fringe, which yielded so many photos that I gave them each separate photo albums.) The weather actually was nice enough for a beach visit, but there wasn’t the time; there also wasn't the time for the waterfalls in the Adelaide Hills that I had interest in but we went to Warrawong Wildlife Sactuary instead, due to the four passes Mary Ann's sister Ros had. So, there's plenty for us to go back to in Adelaide without having to repeat too much.
In short, I had a fantastic time, am already looking forward to going back, but am also happy to be home again—the cats this morning as we got ready for work were clearly working through abandonment issues. (Gary from the East Building looked after them while we were gone, but getting a brief visit twice a day is obviously not the same, and the cats were otherwise all alone for two whole weeks. I actually feel a little bad.) In the meantime though, I really need to get back to work; I spent too much time at work on this post already. I've also chatted a lot with several people about my trip, and wrote stuff responding to questions about it in emails, and have set out the 30 Australian candy bars I bought at Woolworth's in Adelaide in the office kitchen, which were an immediate hit. That seems to have been a particularly great idea: a fun and inexpensive way to share something from my trip with everyone at work.
[posted 12:38 pm]