My Quarantine Diary - Days 4 to 8

 

Day 4

Not much new to say about today.  It’s my second workday and just continuing the routine; work upstairs, after work pass time reading, listening to music or watching Netflix in my room, with mealtimes being my only trips downstairs.  It does get me thinking about the people that complain they have to wear masks in the supermarket – oh boo hoo.  Any time I get fed up of wearing a mask (such as 11 hours on a plain which got pretty tiresome) I just think what it’s for, how many lives would have been lost if no one socially distanced and wore masks?  And then the doctors and nurses, working ridiculous shifts wearing full PPE (if they were lucky enough to get it) not just a loosely-fitting fabric mask for half an hour in Tesco.  So I don’t complain about wearing a mask on the few times a day that I see my parents.

 

Rant over.

 

The news continues to suggest uncertainty around when the schools will go back, if the track and trace system is sufficient.  I really hope they will be open when the girls arrive, it would be such a shame if they arrive and we’re in lockdown so all they do is swap a house in one country for a house in another! 

 

Also frustrated waiting for news on my wife’s visa (long story!)  Hopefully not long to go…

 

Day 5

The thing about being in quarantine is that each day tends to resemble the day before, except for the finer points of work.  Still following the same routine, mask and alcohol to go downstairs, stay long enough to eat and talk a bit, then back upstairs.  Yawn…

 

Then there’s the news.  The Scottish schools are expected to start back soon, they’re the priority over the catering industry, but in England, it seems the catering industry is the priority.   I guess it’s because the school start in September in England, so they want to get the economy moving.  Though with the news that Aberdeen is going into lockdown and cases are rising, who knows what’ll happen next week, let alone September!  Fingers crossed.

 

Finally, had a video call with the Brazil crowd; the girls are really excited to travel, bought some new headphones for the plane (honestly can’t remember whether they had headphones available on my flight – I used my own) and new comfortable shoes to travel. 

 

Time for bed now, good night!

 

Day 6

Thursday.  Wake, shower, breakfast, work.  Lunch, work, dinner, tv, reading, bed.  Each step divided by hand sanitisation and wiping down surfaces.  Nearly halfway there!

 

Day 7

Halfway through the quarantine!  Only 7 more days and then I’ll be free!  Presuming COVID cases don’t increase, starting a new lock down, of course…  Fingers crossed!

 

Today I did my paperwork for (re)starting with the UK branch of my company.  After years of Brazilian bureaucracy, it was so much easier!  Instead of CPF, RNE, work booklet etc, I just need my national insurance number.  To sign up for the company health plan, I just need to put my name, date of birth etc on the form, sign and return it.  And I could digitally sign it!  No more going to the office to fill out a dozen forms by hand, each one with my name, my wife’s name, dependents, address, parents all the numbers in existence then signing them so they have it in original ink!  Andy holidays when I want (within the limits, of course) but crucially flexible!  No more blocks of 20, 25 or 10 days, no more collective holiday, just a simple, common sense solution where I’m trusted to make the right decisions for myself!  On Monday, I wrote about feeling institutionalised; now, on Friday, I feel free!

 

Day 8

It’s  Saturday, and I’m now past the halfway point, 6 days to go!  The only problem is that being the weekend, I don’t have work to occupy me, so I worked out a strategy.  Start off lying on my bed listening to a podcast, switch to my office for a bit of sketching, a bit of tv then back to my bedroom to read for a bit.  Swapping room from time to time and a cuppa to keep me going!  And a bit of time looking at cars.  When my quarantine ends and I go to find a house, I’ll need transport so it’s back to the car hunt.  That will use up some time!

My Quarantine Diary - Day 1

It's been a while, so here's a quick update:

We decided to leave Brazil and in the middle of planning and trying to sell our apartment, we were found a match for adoption and have adopted two beautiful girls.  So now we're an Anglo-Brazilian family, but still moving to the UK.  Then along comes the corona virus to make things complicated.  We decided that I would  go first, as arrivals need to quarantine for 14 days, then I can find a house and get everything ready.  So here's my quarantine diary.

Day 0

The day has finally come, after 9 years living abroad, I’m coming back to the UK!  True to form, the year 2020 has taken our carefully laid plans, suspiciously coughed all over them and caused a massive rethink.  Well, not to be beaten, the day has finally arrived, if 3 months too late and I’m in Scotland, isolating in my old bedroom!

 

The flight was ok, but a bit of a surreal affair.  All the airport has social distancing reminders everywhere, and marks on the floor to remind people to stay 2m apart (or 1.5m in Europe), but people don’t seem to pay attention to it.  Boarding the plane still appears like boarding at any other time, with people so eager to get on board that they don’t think how close they are standing.  Interestingly, the Amsterdam to Aberdeen flight was worse for this, no regard for social distancing at all!  For the Sao Paulo to Amsterdam flight, people appeared to be (for the most part) following the separation marks and disembarking row at a time as requested. 

 

The airports were also very strange.  Joinville is tiny, so not much to say about it, but Guarulhos – Sao Paulo’s international airport – was a ghost town!  I’ve seen it so quiet when catching one of the last flights at night, but my flight was at 15:05 on a Friday – it should have been heaving!  Then I boarded and saw a half-empty plane.  I was lucky enough to have a premium economy seat (a big ‘wow’ dripping with sarcasm) and there was hardly anyone in that section; I had the 4 middle seats to myself with an unobstructed view to the window, no one in front to put their seat back and no one behind for me to worry about putting my seat back and limiting their leg space.  Best of all, no queue for the toilets!  The service was a bit limited, but they did their best in the circumstances, straight after dinner, they dropped off a ‘goody bag’ with some chocolate, an apple, a cake, a can of coke and a bottle of water to make up for reduced service during the flight.  It’s not like normal KLM service, but with all the e-mails they sent about reduced service, it was more than I expected!

 

I was surprised that there was no health screening on arrival in Amsterdam – I was expecting at least a temperature check, but there was nothing but a constant reminder to wear a mask, wash your hands and keep your distance.  Thus began my 10-hour layover…

 

If you have 10 hours to kill in Amsterdam, I can heartily recommend catching a train into the city centre and passing the time there.  If you’re not in the middle of a pandemic and travelling from the country with the second worst number of COVID 19 cases and deaths (2.7M cumulative cases, 94,000 deaths) it’s not the best idea, so I tried to make myself comfortable.  Big mistake.  Schiphol – Amsterdam Airport – is one of the better airports I’ve been to and they have a good provision of comfortable seating, including some pleasantly reclined seats.  After an 11-hour flight with limited sleep, it wasn’t long before I found myself dozing, not something I would recommend when you’re on your own with no one else to look after your belongings!  So I got a coffee and spend the rest of my time between sitting, walking, eating, drinking, sitting, walking and sitting a bit more. I love travel, but airports are always a low point.

 

Day 1

Finally, the home straight, the short hop to Aberdeen.  After all that time, I inevitably slept most of the way there.  I put my jacket on to get off the plane, it’s summer, but I can suffer a bit of warmth to make it easier to carry my cases.  Who am I kidding, warmth?  IT was colder than when I left Brazil, a chilly day in winter and this is Scottish summer!  Home sweet home!

 

Again there was no real health screening beyond a couple of hand sanitisers on the walls and reminders to keep your distance.  On arrival in the UK, it’s obligatory to enter your flight details into an online form along with the details of where you will spend your 14 days of quarantine (unless travelling from an exempt country) so I showed my printout and that was that!

 

Although I spent almost all my time since the start of the pandemic in isolation (except for the occasional necessary forays) and despite wearing masks and my hands consuming more alcohol in a day than I drink in a year, I can’t guarantee that I didn’t pick up COVID on my travels, so I assume I am contaminated and am taking every precaution possible.  It has slightly dampened my homecoming, but the last thing I want is to pass this nasty virus on to my parents, so it’s masks and distancing until I know I am not contaminated.  So I sat in the back seat of the car, like a taxi passenger, for the trip to Forres.  I then sat at the other end of the room, wearing a mask to talk to my parents, wiping down everything I touch.  Most of my time will be spent in my old bedroom, or the other bedroom which has been deputised as my home office.  No hugs or anything, no going out and definitely no going to see my Nan.  Two weeks to go…

Winter in Brazil

Chilly start to the day in Pato Branco

Ask most people around the world what they think of the Brazilian climate and they will tell you that it’s warm, hot, tropical or any other similar adjective.  Mention winter and they’ll say it can’t be that bad.  Well…

Brazil is a large country from Northern parts above the equator and the South extending below the tropic of Capricorn.  So yes, Brazil is definitely a tropical country and there are parts of the country where a slight dip in temperature is barely noticed, parts where there is no real change and parts where the seasons are defined as rainy and dry. 

One of the many winter memes from Paraná

This is my first experience of a Brazilian winter, or a Paraná winter to be specific, and so far, it doesn’t feel very tropical!  While I had been told about how cold it can get and seen countless memes showing blue, frozen people wrapped in blankets with icicles hanging from their face, nothing quite prepares you for the experience.

After the heat of summer, I was expecting a gradual cool-down to a couple of months of winter, followed by a warm-up back towards summer.  What actually happened was the start of a gradual cool-down, then a heat wave in April and then a sudden plummet into winter at the end of the month.  If came as a bit of a shock, one night, struggling to sleep in oppressive heat and humidity, next night, extra blankets and huddling close for warmth.  The weather stayed mild for some time – a bit chilly at night, warmish during the day – not too bad…

The mercury dips and these photos appear.  Not
so bad?  It is when it's colder inside the house!

Then came June.  During the night, the mercury dips perilously close to 0°C, raising above 10°C during the day.  This doesn’t sound too bad, and I used to laugh at the complaints I heard, but then you come back to the fact that Brazil is a tropical country.  For most of the year, the weather is either warm, hot or very hot, and the houses have been built to accommodate this and allow the heat to escape.  This means that when the temperature drops outside, indoor temperatures are following close behind.  Central heating on a timer set to start half an hour before breakfast time is a distant (blissful) memory, getting undressed for a shower is torturous and the thought of leaving the hot water and returning to the chilly air fills you with dread.  While we have heaters, they are mostly fan heaters sending directional blasts of warm air, with the unfortunate side effect that areas not covered appear to suffer a breeze of even colder air, sending people into hiding beneath layers of blankets, wearing thick jumpers, jackets and hats. 

This all makes me yearn for Britain and the promise of a nice warm house – until I think about summer and how the efficiently insulated houses turn on their inhabitants, transforming into hot, sticky saunas and then I think of how much more tolerable hot summer days can be here, relaxing at the beach, going to the river, barbecues, caipirinhas and beer…

But June isn’t over, July is coming and I can’t find my gloves…