Global Village - Storytelling Brings us Together

 Edited BY G P Kennedy Ellie - Milan, Italy  Hello again from Italy! Are you in a mid-winter slump? Or, rather, a pandemic burnout?   Here in North Lombardy, we have gone through it all.   The punishing lockdown; the exhilaration of Christmas free-for-all; the suffering of the consequences in terms of increase in COVID cases.   And now, as we were banished in a red zone post-Christmas, it turns out our regional government submitted the wrong set of data to the national COVID crisis team.    So we were assigned to a full lockdown without a good reason. Needless to say, everyone is angry at the mistake and nobody is admitting to it.  However, we are so tired of the seesaw in daily life while there is no real demand for political accountability.   Even though the changes mean significant economic damage, people feel disconnected and dispirited.   Certain industries feel politically abandoned, like museums and c...

 Edited BY G P Kennedy Ian & Minako – Tokyo  Hello from a wet Tokyo, after a long period of dry, sunny weather it's raining all this weekend and there may even be some snow.   Can’t remember the last time we needed to carry an umbrella, love the winters here!  The state of emergency will continue into February at least.   There doesn't appear to be much difference in day-to-day life but the number of new cases is dropping gradually.   It's still far from being a lockdown situation, people are in schools, restaurants, shops, galleries open. The commuter trains have about 10% fewer passengers but still crowded.   There should really be more people working from home but it's up to the companies to organize it and many seem reluctant to do anything.  There has been a sharp rise in the number of ambulances turned away from hospitals because of lack of beds or staff or they’re not equipped to deal with COVID cases. Ambulance staf...

 Edited BY G P Kennedy Simon - Perth, WA Hi everyone  So, it appears that I am the only one of us that is living a relatively normal life so I’ll try and describe what that’s like.  Firstly, we have had no cases of community spread of COVID here in WA. We are still living with a variety of restrictions but they are nothing compared with what most people are dealing with.  I am back at work after a Christmas break. N next week the kids start a new year of school. Tomorrow my wife goes back to work. By this time next week, it will back to normal for us as a family.  Each day during the week will be getting ready for work, getting the kids ready, and dropping them off. I am a surveyor and have worked from home for about 8 years so I’ll be out and about on various jobs.   If I have to go to our office in the city that is still a normal thing to do so I’ll just go in, sanitize my hands when I get there and try not to get too close to anyone.  When we p...

 Edited BY G P Kennedy Gul - Aegean Coast, Turkey  Another week has passed but I have no good news to report. It’s been an extremely cold, very slow week. I just counted the days.   Not only the weather was cold outside, but also we couldn’t warm the house either. The wind was howling outside and every time the wind blew you could feel it. A slow warm-up is ahead this week, one positive note.   As this is our first winter living on the coast and I think we’ve learned a few things since last weekend. Expect the unexpected and preparation is the key.   The days are getting shorter, the sun is less warm... I really can’t stand winter. I am definitely a summer person. When I remember the long winter in England, I say I’m glad I’m not there anymore.  MASS VACCINATION  More than 1 million people had received their first doses of COVID vaccination in Turkey. Health care workers were the first then nationwide vaccination began for the residents ...

Edited BY G P Kennedy  Olivia - Liverpool, UK When Dolly Parton wrote 9 to 5 back in 1980, she never could have imagined what work would look like in the age of Covid-19. Now, the typical workday for many of us involves living in loungewear and squinting into a laptop on the inside of our colleagues’ homes. I’ve been thinking a lot about work this week, as I’ve been busy attending lots of interviews. The way that the companies approached them has varied massively; from being asked to send pre-recorded video clips of myself over WhatsApp, to a barely audible in-person interview wearing facemasks. Business is not as usual in the UK, as the pandemic continues to ravage the economy, and employers cut thousands of jobs. After a record of 370,000 redundancies from August to October 2020, some newspapers are now warning that unemployment could rise to 3.5 million by the middle of 2021. The two groups hit hardest by furloughing and job losses have been 18-24s and over-65s.  For ...

 Edited BY G P Kennedy Tassy - Karachi, Pakistan We started the week by traveling a couple of hours outside Karachi to Hawke’s Bay armed with sandwiches, snacks, and drinks and spent a marvelous day at the beach.  Karachi is a coastal and port city of Pakistan and situated at the top of the Arabian Sea. The weather in Karachi is the best at this time of the year so this is the time to do outdoor activities.  It was 20c with a lot of sunshine and being a weekday there was hardly anyone there. Every time I go to the beaches of Karachi I wonder why we don’t go often enough. It was so peaceful and picturesque.   The roads to get to Hawke’s Bay however are dismal with potholes and heavy traffic of container and regular trucks, rickshaws, and motorcycles. Although the beaches are only 20 kilometers outside Karachi it can take up to two hours at times to get there.   We stayed till after sunset and by the time we got home late at night I felt refreshed almo...

Edited BY G P Kennedy Simon - Perth, WA Hi everyone, I hope you are safe and well; here is a quick update from Perth, Western Australia. At this time it seems we are carrying on from last year. We have no cases here in WA and are basically under no restrictions apart from a limit to large sporting venues (half capacity) and the normal distancing requirements. We have had a few cases over East and in Queensland in the last few months. Most of these have been from people returning from abroad. These have been dealt with very quickly and state borders have been slammed shut, contact tracing has been carried out and other requirements have been brought in as needed. These include mandatory wearing of masks and closing of non-essential businesses. In every case, these measures seem to have worked and the number of cases has risen and then dropped off to zero. We are lucky that we have never had big case numbers and that we have developed a system that seems to be able to contain an o...