[kj] how is everyone?

Jari Pakarinen jari.t.pakarinen at gmail.com
Thu Apr 9 03:49:07 EDT 2020


One strange thing that has happened is that we now have serious shortage of
farm workers since all the foreign workers have left or are not able to
come into the country. There is something like 16000 open vacancies
currently. Especially berry pickers are nowhere to be found.

to 9. huhtik. 2020 klo 10.43 Jari Pakarinen (jari.t.pakarinen at gmail.com)
kirjoitti:

> Hi,
>
> Hattula, Finland, 120km north of Helsinki. Whole country: 2500 confirmed
> cases, 239 in hospital care, 82 intensive care, 40 dead. at least 380 000
> are facing unemployment (population 5,5 million). 5000 people have been
> tracked and put into quarantine due to exposure. Now, we do not anymore
> know where all the cases came from, so it is in the wild and not restricted
> to people returning from Italy for example.
>
> Helsinki area has been quarantined, so no movement to/from unless you have
> a good reason to do so (like my friend who works here at the hospital and
> lives in Helsinki). There are cops and military at the "border". People
> have been fined for violating this order. But of course when the quarantine
> of Helsinki was announced, lots of people moved to their cabins away from
> Helsinki and keep working from there remotely.
>
> People are told to stay at home and most are following it quite well.
> Schools, universities, restaurants, bars and pubs have been closed. Schools
> and unis continue remotely. My daughter is following the school schedule as
> before, but mainly through computer via Google classroom and Google meet.
> Wife is a lecturer at a uni in Helsinki. She had to come up with a plan to
> move all teaching to remote in 2 days. They're using Teams and Zoom mostly.
>
> I've been working remotely since 2003 so it was not a big change for me.
> At my employer more that 2000 people are working remotely now.
>
> It is a bit scary, although the situation is quite good as of now. The
> financial effect is also worrying, looks like we are heading into a major
> recession with all the closures and people staying at home. I personally do
> not know anyone who has it, and none of my friends do not know either.
>
> Wishing everyone good luck.
>
> Jari
>
>
>
> ke 8. huhtik. 2020 klo 2.03 T.B. (planetary at socal.rr.com) kirjoitti:
>
>> Checking in from Huntington Beach, California about 30 minutes south of
>> LA.
>>
>> There's still a small number of people out and about on a daily basis.
>> Thankfully due to a combination of unseasonably rainy weeks and people
>> slowly getting the message, there's fewer and fewer people congregating at
>> parks and beaches on rare really nice, sunny days.  The notoriously packed
>> SoCal freeways are always Christmas Day light, everywhere is full speed, no
>> traffic jams.  There's a few mom n' pop stores scattered around still open
>> that shouldn't be, like a corner video rental store run by this Asian
>> family. A few small diners, etc only offering take-out, but far from
>> consistently or efficiently done and there's zero law enforcement.
>>
>> Grocery stores and big box stores like Costco imo, are the biggest issue
>> as far as (lack of) germ spread containment. There's always huge early
>> morning, poorly managed lineups, very little order as far as number of
>> people allowed in the store.  Paper products and cleaning supplies remains
>> the biggest scarcity.
>>
>> About two days a week since we here in California went on so-called
>> lockdown 3 weeks ago, I drive my wife to her mall (just to get out of the
>> house) which is on the other side of LA and completely closed down (she's
>> the assistant GM) to check on things, make sure the skeleton security and
>> maintenance crew is doing their job and also to bring her office PC
>> hardware back home to set up her home office.  The first thing that's
>> striking walking through a huge mall like this is that it's exactly like
>> the 1979 "Dawn Of The Dead" zombie flick minus the zombies. Eerily quiet,
>> very clean and sterile in appearance. A lot of stores for whatever reasons
>> have left lights on despite everything being shuttered.
>>
>> Everyone knows there's going to be a gargantuan economic impact even if
>> businesses went back to work tomorrow, much less late May as being
>> discussed. She's already fielding a lot of store owners asking for rent
>> relief of some kind. A lot of the small shops live month to month, one bad
>> month sinks them. The thing is, some people don't get that a mall itself
>> needs cash flow to pay lenders and financiers as well as all sorts of
>> local, state and fed taxes and fees. In this case the mall or
>> multi-business property get the revenue from their 100s of tenants from
>> Macys to the little Asian nail shop, most of which goes right back into
>> daily, weekly/monthly operating expenses, etc.  The cash coming in and back
>> out per month is well over a million dollars and there's maybe a couple
>> months' worth of cushion.   April 1st was the quarterly due date for
>> business taxes.
>>
>> Being stuck at home hasn't been too tough for my wife and son.  I do find
>> that days and weekends are beginning to blur into anonymous "Sundays" where
>> we sleep in, stay up very late watching movies, etc and nap a lot in the
>> middle of the day.  I listen a lot to music only on headphones right now,
>> I'm usually used to listening on the big stereo system full blast for a
>> couple hours during the day when everyone else is out but that ain't
>> happening now.  The anxiety of knowing especially my wife is in the high
>> risk category (she has chronic asthma and is in her late 50's) plus the
>> fear of losing her job at any time is stressful.  On the other hand, my
>> wife already has me coloring her hair and doing her nails while making sure
>> her little home office is running smoothly.  By the time this is over, I'm
>> gonna be a combination beautician and IT guy.
>>
>> A lot of people that are working from home who'll return to their offices
>> in a month or two are gonna be about 15+ lbs heavier from eating too much
>> canned crap, take out/delivery, shaggy haired from no one cutting hair, and
>> used to having a beer while still in their bathrobe at their (home office)
>> desk mid-day.  This will probably be my first years since I started seeing
>> live music all the way back in 1977 that I won't catch a single live show
>> for a whole calendar year.
>>
>> To switch gears, just over a week ago, my older cousin who has asthma was
>> showing very mild symptoms, went to the hospital, was tested and informally
>> diagnosed (because it takes days to get test results here in California),
>> sent home to self-quarantine and several days afterwards, developed the
>> typical serious pneumonia issues requiring hospitalization.
>>
>> While in the hospital, her initial test result finally came back
>> positive. She was close to being put on a ventilator, she was on max oxygen
>> spiking a high fever for 48 hours and was put on Hydroxychloroquine + Z
>> pack regime as a last measure before being intubated and within hours
>> showed dramatic improvement.  This past weekend, 5 days after she was
>> admitted, she went home and is expected to make a full recovery.
>>
>> 2020 is going to be known as The Year The Earth Stood Still.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Gathering mailing list
>> Gathering at misera.net
>> https://pairlist4.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/gathering
>>
>
>
> --
> Jari
>


-- 
Jari
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist4.pair.net/pipermail/gathering/attachments/20200409/0f6a9874/attachment.html>


More information about the Gathering mailing list