Random Posts (An alternate to side discussions)

[Intaris]

Switzerland has just decided to close all bars, restaurants, cinemas, theaters, everything which isn't logistically relevant. All gas stations, supermarkets and so on remain open as do the hospitals and pharmacies (obviously).

2300 confirmed cases now.

[wiebe@CARYA]

---

@LV_Pro wrote:

My sister is sweating trying to get money from the airline, she bought tickets worth $2300 for her, my dad and brother. She says she bought travel insurance, but apparently pandemics may not be covered!

---

$2300 is painful. We didn't cancel our ECLA tickets (~140EUX3). Rescheduling is almost as expensive as the tickets. Cancelling won't do us any good. We might get lucky. If they close Hungary or the Netherlands, we can't fly and the tickets are refunded (I think). Not sure what will happen if you cancel or reschedule and they close trafic.

The only reason to cancel I can think of is that it's maybe better for the environment. Perhaps they merge planes if most are empty?

[altenbach]

Takeout only at restaurants here since midnight, but personally we started earlier (had a nice pizza pi takeout on pi day, followed by a cherry pi. :D). All bars closed.

Of course we planned a very nice restaurant for my BD this week. Not going to happen, I guess. 😞

Had Emirates tickets and hotel to spend a week in Dubai early April for a wedding. All postponed now, but they are waiving rebooking fees, etc.

[Ben]

Well the governor shut down all non-essential buisiness, are shutdown.

Somebody has to say it so I will.

TEOTWAKI (The End Of The World As we know It ) has happened.

My better-half sent me off to the grocery store (groceries are essential) to fetch more emergency cash (just in case) paper towels, and bread.

They did have toilet paper (maybe 4-5 packages) but I passed on that since we are OK in that area and there is no need to hoard.

But the rest of the shelves were running pretty bare.

Now the talk is that we will be urged to self-quarantine for 2 weeks but there is also talk of 4, 6, or 8 weeks. If my supply outlet for gravel is closed down, my digging project may have to go on hold for a month or so.

I was figuring on going to the Hobbit Hole project to keep myself productive but if the powers that be determine I am am not allowed to leave my house... I may not be allowed to cross the street from my place to the woods to dump the concrete and dirt that needs to be removed for the sub-task of doing the shelves under the steps.

Like I said TEOTWAKI.

Ben

[RobertoBozzolo]

As I said, what you see now is already effective in Italy from a week or so. The most shocking thing is the silence: as a city person, I am accustomed to a certain level of background noise even at night; now at noon the city is more calm than at 3am in the holidays!

Keeping human relations is easy with phone and social media, but Italians are creative 😉 and there were general arrangements for "meetings": everyone get out in the balcony and sing, play, or clap for medical staff (they're doing their best and even more, and we must be grateful to them). A way of making clear we are not alone: in adjacent flats there's some people confined as we are and we all hope the situation will stabilize and then get better and better, who knows when!

[Jacobson-ni]

---

@Ben wrote:

But the rest of the shelves were running pretty bare.

---

I typically don't buy more than I need to eat for the next few days but I figured I should buy some non-perishables today and that was a pretty big fail. I was thinking that it would have made a good cooking show to try and make some gourmet meal based on the leftovers of like tortillas, a 106oz can of corn, lasagna noodles, and potted meat.

The silver lining was that the liquor store next door was well stocked and had a sale running for 15% off all Irish whiskeys so I have that taken care of.

[altenbach]

---

@Ben wrote:

But the rest of the shelves were running pretty bare.

---

Costco is about a mile from us and this morning the lines were around the parking lot. Forget it! We turned around.

My theory was that the hoarders will run both out of money and pantry space and we should be back to normal in a few days.

Coming back from some errands in the evening, we decided to see how the lines are, and since there were open parking spots and no real lines we went to get some of our regular stuff.

Costco was well stocked, except for rice and pasta. they even had toilet paper for a short time*! I guess our timing was just right. 😄

* They must just have unloaded a shipment and made a special TP line along the length of the store aisle, one pack per member. Wife went in line while I did the rest of the shopping. 10 minutes later they were out again.... It's not a real shortage, more a (data-) flow problem from the warehouses to the stores.

[wiebe@CARYA]

A guy on TV mentioned people need a lot of TP, because his family used 1 roll per person per day. At that rate, you're going to need a lot. I think we're at .5-1.5 roll for 5 people per day... I wander if there are statistics...

On the up side, this crisis might be good for the environment.

Pretty sure our nitrogen crisis (too much NH3 and NOx) has vanished almost completely. Yesterday was the first day the of our new speed limit (going from 120\130 Km\h to 100 Km\h everywhere), to reduce nitrogen emission. With almost no traffic, we should be OK for a while.

[RobertoBozzolo]

Normally we are here at 1 roll for 3 persons per day.

But I suppose now the figure will rise up since we are all at home now: we are consuming home stock instead of work/school one 😉

Guess that's why shops run out stock

We are effectively observing a reduction in air pollution: there aren't reduced speed limits here but as only a fraction of cars is running nitrogen and particulate are lowering down.

[Intaris]

---

@Jacobson-ni wrote:

---

The silver lining was that the liquor store next door was well stocked and had a sale running for 15% off all Irish whiskeys so I have that taken care of.

---

Nice. But, on Paddy's day I must enquire: Which one did you go for?

Didn't Trump want to put huge import duty on all Whisk(e)y from Europe? Has that already happened?