How are you staying sane(ish) during the current pandemic?

Started by SueC, March 24, 2020, 11:48:24

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SueC

SueC is time travelling

SueC

This is especially for @dsanchez!  A friend and I went into town for a coffee after a morning hiking the coast last week, and she photographed bits of Stirling Terrace, including its bicycle theme:







Decorative bicycles like this have been popping up all over the town and its suburbs in the last ten years - always painted colourful, and quite a few just on verges or chained to the backs of benches!  :)  They are very pretty, and it's a good way to do something useful with the appalling number of bicycles people send to the rubbish dump (sometimes just because of flat tyres :1f62e:).  Some of the better bicycles are done up for charity give-aways; others become decorative.  Our town has a thriving bicycle culture - serious road bike people and mountain bikers, young BMX enthusiasts, recreational cyclists, bicycles with big baskets on the front for shopping, and bicycle commuters - increasingly on e-bikes (because of our steep hills and people not wanting to have to shower when they get to work).  Lots of recreational bike paths and also dedicated cycle lanes on some of our busy roads.   :cool

This is the pedestrian footbridge from Stirling Terrace to the Entertainment Centre and general harbourfront:



The cosy coffee shop we went to:



Some of the outdoor seating for this coffee shop:



And a general streetscape, with the Old Post Office.  The green car has our dog in the back of it and you can just see its nose if you zoom in.  Woof!   :1f637:



...but this is a better shot of her - like all farm dogs, she's obsessed with being in a car!  :lol:

SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

Looks like many people are turning towards the guitar to stay sane(ish)!!

QuoteA half-year into a pandemic that has threatened to sink entire industries, people are turning to the guitar as a quarantine companion and psychological salve, spurring a surge in sales for some of the most storied companies (Fender, Gibson, Martin, Taylor) that has shocked even industry veterans.

Guitars are hardly the only consumer item to experience a quarantine bounce, of course. Sales have spiked for many items since lockdowns began — bicycles, baking yeast, board games, yoga mats, beans and even Everclear, the 190-proof spirit.

But a guitar is not a bag of lentils. A new guitar usually requires an investment of several hundred dollars, if not several thousand, and new players and virtuosos alike often live with their trusty ax for years, bonding with it as a statement of personal taste and style.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/style/guitar-sales-fender-gibson.html
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

I was thinking that you could drive the whole neighbourhood insane, while increasing your own sanity with music therapy, if you decided to take up drums.  Not African bongos, I mean the full kit.  :angel

You know what they say too - if there's people you don't like, give their children something that makes noise.  Endlessly bleeping electronic toys, a toy police car with a real siren, a noisy record, maybe even a musical instrument.  Drums are especially effective; untutored violin practice can be excruciating.  Or perhaps a tuba?  :evil:

On the serious side, I heard an interview yesterday with a music education specialist who was extolling the general benefits to cognitive and emotional development both, of taking up a musical instrument in childhood.  She actually mentioned putting "difficult" kids with learning and behavioural issues on drums, because it requires their full concentration and application and also is something they will generally want to continue trying with - and was recounting how this had downstream effects on improving their reading, and persistence with difficult tasks in general, while also boosting their confidence and giving them something unusual that tended to interest their peers and earn them respect.  :cool

So maybe we should all be donating drum kits to the children of horrible, difficult adults.  It will help their children in many ways, while punishing the adults bwahahahaha.  What karma!  :evil:
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54202221
Quote"Launching a live music venue in the midst of a global pandemic is not something I'd advise," Pennington says with a wry laugh.

He got the keys to the building in January, before Covid was really on the radar, initially planning to open in April with a capacity of 350. When the government gave the go-ahead for indoor venues to reopen in England with social distancing in August, Pennington didn't want to wait much longer.

As well as hosting gigs, Future Yard will offer training for 16- to 24-year-olds in the live music industry, and rehearsal and recording spaces for new local artists.

"It's just really important that we could get open," Pennington said on Thursday. "That comes with great pressures financially and also operationally, but it's something we feel like we've got to do.

"If we'd just sat here and mothballed and waited to the point where it made absolute financial sense, potentially it could have been years before we opened.

"Our primary motivation is to really think how we can use a venue like Future Yard to be a positive influence for the local community. We're here to use music as a powerful lever for social change. This is a moment when we're needed more than ever, so we just had to find a way of getting open."

One venue that has already opened recently is the NE Volume Bar in Stockton-on-Tees, Teesside, where 32 people can sit at 11 socially-distanced tables. The full capacity should be 110. So far, they have hosted a mixture of singer-songwriters and bands playing stripped-back acoustic sets.

"It's still a good atmosphere," says co-owner Adam Allcock. "People aren't standing up and going wild. Our customer base is quite nice. They're there for the music, so they want to listen to the music anyway. It's all been going fine. No-one's had to be told to settle down or stay in their seat or anything like that."

Mark Davyd, chief executive of the Music Venues Trust, says 84 of the organisation's 900 members have staged some live music so far since lockdown, but just 13 are doing so regularly.
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

What people do to this world drives me insane.  But when people actually tell it how it is, it has a restorative effect on my sanity.  The Tasmanian Doggie has done it again!  No joke, this is exactly what's going on in Australia.  It's not even exaggerated.  Other than the potato bit, that's an exaggeration on a physical level (but not on an intellectual level)...



from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/21/senator-ian-the-climate-denialist-potato-on-the-governments-plans-for-gas
SueC is time travelling

SueC

SueC is time travelling

SueC

Reader comment from the Guardian gave me a laugh:

QuoteAnd on the third day He arose!
It is a miracle, He has now come into His divine Qlory ...
I enjoy watching new religions form, they are so entertaining.

from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/06/donald-trump-coronavirus-balcony-drugs#comment-144311732
SueC is time travelling

SueC

SueC is time travelling

SueC

We all know @dsanchez augments his sanity by riding his bicycle around (you can see films of that in this thread).

And now we just want to show him how we do that in Australia!  :lol:

Bicycle ride with friend and dog - friend documenting the ride.  The dog can't be trusted on the main road, so becomes a sort of sledding dog:



Not a bank robber - just a friend highly allergic to ryegrass pollen making her way along a road in a ryegrass field...



...it also stops sunburn, as we were out in the middle of the day.

Dog power - Jess adds a good 10km/h to my speed:



The spectators:



Going off-road (and there, the dog can run loose).  If you're wondering, Eileen is on a mountain bike, and yes I'm on a road bike but it has touring tyres, so I can mostly ride on unsealed tracks as long as they are firm and a bit damp, which was the case that day.  We really wanted to go up the big hill because we weren't hiking that day, and were eating rather well...



This is a bluegum plantation, whose aim in life is mostly to become useless newsprint (and of course, it's taxpayer subsidised to the big end of town):



This is the road flattening out a bit near the hilltop:



Going down was more fun than going up, though not quite as useful.  :lol:
SueC is time travelling

dsanchez

Quote from: SueC on October 24, 2020, 17:45:46
Quote from: SueC on November 15, 2020, 08:10:04We all know @dsanchez augments his sanity by riding his bicycle around (you can see films of that in this thread).

lovely, thanks for sharing. which city/town are you exactly living in? once covid-19 is eradicated (hopefully!) I want to travel a LOT!
2023.11.22 Lima
2023.11.27 Montevideo

SueC

We're 25 minutes from Albany on the beautiful South Coast of Western Australia.  Albany is a regional centre, but not a huge town - a nice size - and we're "out in the sticks" in the hinterland behind that - on a road that's a no-through road and ends in a wilderness that stretches all the way across the coast.

We hope to see you when international travel becomes possible again - we always have a spare room and like showing people around.  Right now, Australia is in a super position (24 new cases today nationwide) with very little community transmission after Melbourne's successful lockdown (in WA we've not had any documented community transmission for many months and what we had was from a cruise ship and was picked up early; border closures and quarantine happened really early here, and the cases trickling through now are returned travellers in quarantine) - I imagine our international borders will therefore be quite hard until this plague is controlled.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-17/coronavirus-cases-data-reveals-how-covid-19-spreads-in-australia/12060704?nw=0

How's it going for you guys in Bratislava?  You were doing well last time I heard, but second waves happen so quickly, as we saw in Melbourne...

PS:  That was the new handlebar tape I put on for which you sent me that video last year!  :)
SueC is time travelling

dsanchez

Quote from: SueC on November 16, 2020, 13:52:16We hope to see you when international travel becomes possible again - we always have a spare room and like showing people around

Thanks! and likewise when you come to Bratislava :)
2023.11.22 Lima
2023.11.27 Montevideo

SueC

Thank you!  :)  If we find a TARDIS then that becomes doable.  Otherwise, one of the problems with being on-the-land hippies with animals and vegetables is the near-impossibility of travelling for extended periods... the one down side.  So I enjoy vicarious travel now, and hosting people.  We do still get away for day trips and sometimes even weekends!

Here's some new cartoon sanity to sum up 2020:



from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/16/christmas-is-only-39-sleeps-away-could-2021-be-worse-than-2020-surely-not
SueC is time travelling

SueC

Hiking excursions - sanity food...

Fernhook Falls:













Mt Frankland:













SueC is time travelling