Yet another story of how unrestricted F&O trading ruined a trader’s finances

National Bureau of Economic Research

The value of the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants and local communities is recognised with this decision, says Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environment minister and COP16 president

An edge-of-the-seat drive through treacherous mountain roads

A pastime and a passion in logging the daily events

How can a film that has a character declare that secularism is an illness be taken seriously, asks Deepa Gahlot.

Like man buns on scooters and ukulele busking, Covid-19 has now spread to the north from London – inspiring a coronavirus soapcom from our self-isolating comedy-writer

Up here in the north-west, we’re used to living in the slipstream of London’s sleek urban shenanigans. Whatever the cultural breakthrough – man buns on scooters, cashless ukulele busking, emotional support bees – it takes a while to reach the Lancaster and Morecambe Non-Metropolitan Area. If it ever does.

A Street Stranger Watch leads to a death and the appearance at midnight of the street’s original Victorian inhabitants

Healthcare for the unemployed set to become key election issue

Dr John Wright is intrigued by some singers who became ill long before the UK's first known Covid-19 case.

In this instalment of our series, Dear Diary: In a Time of COVID-19, Karen Pollock tells us about learning the ukulele and how it’s helping her stay connected with her father.

Wise words

Taking a deeper dive into how CRM is changing, and how customer engagement or experience, and AI-powered automation, are two sides of the same coin

Taking a deeper dive into how CRM is changing, and how customer engagement or experience, and AI-powered automation, are two sides of the same coin

People can contribute to projects that aim to leave a map of the national mood and allow future historians a glimpse of 24 hours in a pandemic

• Coronavirus – latest updates
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“I have underlying health conditions, including asthma,” writes a frightened 40-year-old woman , shortly before Sunday’s news of whether the lockdown will be eased. “I’m terrified to leave the house, even for exercise, but I’m not sick enough to be ‘extremely vulnerable’. Covid-19 could quite probably kill me.”

The anonymous contributor is part of a project called Covid-19 and Me, run jointly by the Young Foundation and the Open University, two of a number of organisations which are asking thousands of men and women of all ages, ethnicities, incomes, beliefs and backgrounds across Britain to keep diaries, complete questionnaires and be interviewed by their peers. They want to know what it is like, at an everyday level, to live through a global pandemic, to create an ongoing “weather map of public feeling”.

Fiddler on the roof

A child fiddles with a phone while his guardian takes a nap on the roof of a shanty in Dharavi on Saturday. Pic/Suresh Karkera

Lockdown deliveries

Ever since the lockdown was imposed in the city in March, many households have missed cooking fresh stock of fish. Almost two months into practicing self-isolation, some still miss the whiff of fish lingering in their kitchens. But, Ganesh Nakhawa, who also goes by the name The Last Fisherman of Bombay, is delivering happiness to your doorstep.

Nakhawa, chairman of the National Purse Siene Fishermen Welfare Association, is making it a point to deliver prawns and other fish to hardworking policemen. He drives around in his car late evenings to get this job done. A picture uploaded on his social media shows him handing over a bag of freshly cleaned prawns to a local cop, who looks evidently happy. The caption reads: "From one essential worker to another."

Why Test specialist Cheteshwar Pujara is unique

Cricket runs in the blood for only one cricketer in the current India Test team— Cheteshwar Pujara—whose father Arvind  was a first-class player. Arvind opened the innings for Saurashtra in the 1970s, well before his star batsman son was born in 1988.

But 50 seasons ago in 1969-70, there were several father-son examples in Indian cricket. Take for example, the fifth Test between India and Australia at Chennai where the India XI included skipper Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, whose father Iftikhar captained India in 1946.

Arvind pujara

Also present was Ashok Mankad, the son of legendary all-rounder Vinoo and Lala Amarnath's son Mohinder. There were more such examples in domestic cricket in that season. All-rounder Syed Gulrez Ali, the son of Syed Mushtaq Ali, was a key performer for Madhya Pradesh while Anshuman Gaekwad was taking his early steps on the first-class scene for Baroda six seasons after dad Dattajirao ended his domestic cricket career. Interestingly, Mumbai giants like Ajit Wadekar, Dilip Sardesai and Farokh Engineer played against Gaekwad senior and junior. Ranjit, the son of ex-India skipper Vijay Hazare, first played Ranji Trophy cricket in the 1966-67 season, but had to make a comeback after five years.

The 1970s were great for 'relative' cricket. You had the Mankads—Ashok, Atul and Rahul, Amarnaths— Mohinder, Surinder and Rajinder, all playing a high level of cricket while their dads watched on. Vinoo passed away in 1978 while Lala, who bid goodbye in 2000, used to be on tour with his sons due to his commentary commitments. As for Anshuman's father, he is still going strong at 91, having seen his grandson Shatrunjay make his first-class debut in 2003, an honour Mushtaq Ali lived to experience as well with Syed Abbas Ali.

Just give him a call for a job

Dilip Merala

In a world that's soon going to be flooded with resumes, how do you stand out? Dilip Merala, a 34-year-old student at The University of Texas, Dallas, has found the perfect tune to break the clutter. In a one-minute, 12-second video titled "Résumé Song —For Recruiters Looking to Hire Product Managers and Data Analysts" which is posted on his YouTube channel, Merala strums the guitar and tells recruiters over a song that "he's their guy".

A screenshot of Merala singing the Resume song

Merala, who is from Mumbai, is currently in Richardson, Texas. On why he made the video, he says, "There is nothing original about an International Master's student nervously looking for a job on the verge of graduation. So, one day when I was home thinking about approaching recruiters, some words came to mind and I put them together in a song. When I recorded it, I thought 'Hey, that's not bad! Let me share it and see what happens'."

No trash talk for this CEO

While most us of are locked up indoors, Anil Chowta, founder and CEO of Ecosac Utility Bags has been driving across the city in his car to personally deliver the eco-friendly garbage bags called kachra sack.

"As most of the delivery staff don't have their own vehicles, they would've been more vulnerable to the exposure of the virus, posing a risk to their own and customer health. I deemed it safer to fulfill the deliveries myself as I have the resources and access to all necessary precautionary measures," said Chowta, who has covered areas ranging from Cuffe Parade to Kandivli.

Reuben's roast about rappers

Comedian Reuben Kaduskar is serving his audience on YouTube fresh roasts every couple of weeks. Kaduskar's new series titled Rage Against features him ranting about things that annoy him and his audience. The first installment saw him take down diss tracks (a song where the primary purpose is to insult someone else) by desi hip hop artistes trying to verbally attack each other. "I have grown up witnessing some legendary beefs between rappers such as Tupac and Biggie, Nas and Jay-Z.

So, as a fan of hip hop, I was disappointed to see the quality of some of the Indian diss tracks. I decided to make a video about it because I want Indian hip hop to grow and evolve," he explained. The funnyman speaks about the toxic masculinity in these songs, their dismal lyrical quality, the use of playground insults, rappers bragging about their own success etc. He aims to help people take their minds off the Coronavirus crisis by creating content that is distinct. The next one in the series is going to be about TikTok videos. "I think it will be interesting to explore how they are entertaining and annoying at the same time."

Catch up on all the latest Mumbai news, crime news, current affairs, and a complete guide from food to things to do and events across Mumbai. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates.

Mid-Day is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@middayinfomedialtd) and stay updated with the latest news

The worst may now be over, but as one frontline doctor reveals in her latest diary, traumatised medics now have time to reflect on the life-and-death decisions taken in the heat of battle… 

The past week has got me wondering. Do we date men in order to have a plus one?

I decided not to invite David to my friend's wedding, partly because he was away at a party in France but also because I couldn't afford to have yet another expensive mini-break ruined

It wasn't my best couple of days. Having had my face-lift outed over pre-wedding drinks at the Saunton Sands Wellness Spa, I got back to my little hotel on Friday night to find...

The worst may now be over, but as one frontline doctor reveals in her latest diary, traumatised medics now have time to reflect on the life-and-death decisions taken in the heat of battle… 

Archives, Room Use Only - HE8240.S76 P4813 1994

During coronavirus, many are looking to Anne Frank's diary to learn from her messages of resilience and hope.

･ PT. MITSUBISHI HEAVY INDUSTRIES INDONESIA will strengthen functions of previous Jakarta liaison office ･ Enhanced status will boost MHI's presence in Indonesia

Wash Hair when Needed. This is something I often fail at. You have to and must wash your hair as soon as you find your scalp getting greasy, products being too heavy for your hair or even when it is too exposed to environmental factors like sun and pollution. I do not do it and I do find my hair falling a lot more consequently. Where as, if I am regularly washing it, the hair fall is considerably less and even non-existent. Also, use shampoo and conditioner mentioned for your hair type. Improper usage also leads to greasy scalp and stringy looking hair.

The post My Hair Diary – May 2019 appeared first on Perfect Skin Care for you.

The head of a Houston-based company that was the subsidiary of a Chinese company that developed stolen trade secrets was sentenced to 16 months in prison and ordered to forfeit more than $330,000 by U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper of the District of Columbia.

Thirty years into his distinguished career as one of the world's great guitar players, Joe Bonamassa is still finding new ways to showcase his skills, explore new sounds and stretch his artistic horizons.…

Disclosed are: a diaryliodonium salt mixture which is a precursor of a BF4 salt or the like of a diaryliodonium compound, can be produced in the form of crystals at ambient temperature, can be purified in a simple manner, can be produced with high efficiency, and can be induced into a BF4 salt or the like salt that has excellent solubility in a monomer or the like; and a process for producing the diaryliodonium salt mixture. Also disclosed is a production process which can achieve good yield and can produce reduced amounts of byproducts, and is therefore applicable to the industrial mass production of a diaryliodonium compound. The diaryliodonium salt mixture is characterized by containing at least two specific diaryliodonium salts.

The invention provides a process for preparing diaryl carbonates from dialkyl carbonates and aromatic hydroxyl compounds using at least two reaction columns, a process section for recovering the dialkyl carbonate used in the reaction and for removing the alcohol of reaction, one or more process steps for removing the by-products obtained in the process which have a boiling point between that of the dialkyl carbonate and that of the alkyl aryl carbonate formed during the preparation of the diaryl carbonate, and a process step for further purification of the diaryl carbonate obtained from the reaction columns.

The present invention provides a diaryl sulfone compound represented by Formula (1) below: wherein R1 to R4 and R1' to R4' are the same or different; each represents hydrogen, C1-4 alkyl, or halogen; and R5 is (thio)glycidyl, acryloyl, or the like; and a method for producing the same. According to the present invention, a novel compound useful as a monomer for producing synthetic resin having a high refractive index and excellent transparency for optical materials can be efficiently produced with a simple production process, using an inexpensive material as a starting material.

A method for making diazo-compounds, diazonium salts thereof and other protected forms of these compounds. Diazo-compounds are prepared by reaction of a tertiary phosphine reagent carrying a reactive carbonyl group with an azide. The reaction can also generate an acyl triazene which can be converted thermally or by addition of base to form the diazo-compound or the acyl triazene can be isolated. The method is particularly useful for conversion of azides carrying one or more electron withdrawing groups to diazo-compounds. The method can be carried out in aqueous medium under mild conditions and is particularly useful for conversion of azido sugars to diazo-compounds and diazonium salts thereof under physiological conditions. Tertiary phosphine reagents, particularly those that are water-soluble, and precursors for preparation of the reagents are provided.

Job fair - Tuesday 19th September 10am - 3pm, O2 Guildhall Southampton

Everyone has a ball, for The Rum Diary is one of the truly great psychedelic movies of the modern era, a tribute to all involved.

The familiar and nostalgic, philosophical and witty candour are all alive in this documentation of Gold Coast beaches

I can’t stop laughing at this.

On May 4th and 5th, mom and I planted a bunch of stuff in a square-foot-gardening box, and I'm going to start keeping a plant diary here. I'll put them under boredom cut tags. :-)

( Like this )

Oops, yes, this blog has been almost entirely scheduled posts in Irish or about the Hugo finalists for the last month. So what's going on with me?

Household
( Read more... )

Exercise and masks
( Read more... )

Essential shopping
( Read more... )

Less essential shopping
( Read more... )

Remote events
( Read more... )

So that's me for the last month. How about you?

I'm counting 16 March as day 0, being when the government actually started getting serious about reducing the rate of infection spreading.

Will cut all these entries and tag Covid, so feel free to block or ignore or filter if that's best for you.

Day -2 (Saturday): After much dithering decided I did want to enjoy my last planned excursion before cancelling everything. Travelled to London with ghoti_mhic_uait, attended a Pop-up Painting event in a fairly crowded room under a pub, and then went out for dinner in a half-empty, very nice South Bank restaurant. I suspect if that was a mistake I'll never know. Mainly I feel glad that I got three really nice dates with my three partners in the last semi-normal week. One of them involved staying in being coupley, but two of them involved trips to London probably later than was wise.

Anyway the pop-up painting was cool. They set you up with a canvas, brushes, acrylic paints, and an apron, and there's a reference image to copy. In our case it was loosely based on this Banksy, but an interpretation of it, not exactly that picture. The first hour or so, they let the participants just play around with paints, doing whatever we liked to fill in the background. I pretty much just copied the reference image's sunset sky, because I wanted to get comfortable with using the paints, mixing colours and creating textures, more than I wanted to try to exercise creativity. Then there was a break with wine, then in the last 40 minutes the facilitators talked through copying the silhouette of the girl, in a fair amount of detail, like, make a C shape here, this line should be at a 45 degree angle, etc. You were still allowed to paint something else if you wanted to, but again, I found following directions quite helpful. The audience were relatively diverse; mostly young-ish but seemed to be a good cross-section of the London public.

At the moment ghoti_mhic_uait can eat basically only protein and needs a lot of meat anyway, and I'm vegetarian and tend to get most of my calories from carbs. Ghoti miraculously managed to find a place that could feed both of us, this rather lovely Eastern European place. I had creamed mushrooms with some latke-ish things, and a sort of lentil pie with cucumber salad and a lot of capers, and Ghoti had some really impressive-looking pickled herring, and some roast duck with apples and red cabbage. It was very exciting, and goodness knows if we'd ever get a table for a normal weekend. They're also very into their vodka and cocktails, which we didn't sample but I might be interested to try a more alcohol-focused event another time.

London was quiet but not completely a ghost town. Almost everybody who booked showed up for the painting, but it was the last one the organization ran, they're cancelling going forward.

Day -1 (Sunday): The synagogue ran Sunday school as normal, on the grounds that schools are still open. But two of the teachers (who are related to each other) didn't show, so I had to take two classes. And in fact, of my expected 10 children across two classes, only three showed up, and we had only 14 of our roster of 50 overall. So most likely we're not going to bother running the last two classes before Pesach, but it's not definitely cancelled yet. In the afternoon OSOs and their children came over for roleplaying, which again had been planned for a while and didn't seem dangerous enough to cancel.

Day zero (Monday): We had known since Friday that we'd been given a week to close the whole campus where I work (bar "essential" staff, mostly those working directly on Covid responses in the lab), and send everybody to work from home for an indefinite period, probably minimum several months. My team had a meeting about how we would handle the transition, and agreed that there was really no reason for most of us to return to the site after yesterday. My lovely line manager has been handling all the disaster response for the last several weeks, basically cancelling everything we do because nearly everything we do is... run international conferences. She was somewhat hysterical by yesterday, but just about holding things together. She very kindly offered to give me a lift home so I could take my computer equipment. We're allowed to take our ergonomic chairs and even our desks, or there's budget to set up home offices, though I was fine with just my laptop and a decent sized screen. Shit is serious.

We detoured via a lost property office to retrieve my wallet which had fallen out of my bag on the coach to work; the coach company tracked me down via a dental appointment card which led to the local council who called me before I cancelled the cards and before I got trapped on the other side of a quarantine barrier from my account access tokens. On the journey she put the radio on and we heard the government announcement.

I am technically in the high risk category as I have chronic asthma. I don't think my asthma is particularly "severe" but it probably would be if I got pneumonia. I haven't really fully processed thinking of myself as one of the "vulnerable" people rather than one of the healthy people who need to act to protect others. Since I'm working from home anyway, I don't have a whole lot of reason to need to go out for the next several weeks. But realistically it's gonna be months, isn't it? I had a bit of a feeling of being sent home to die when we were packing up the office. I have about the degree of death-fear that I get when my period is late; it's not that likely that I actually have Covid-19, it's not that likely that if I do get it I will get complications, and even if I do get complications I might still survive it. I'm a little scared of social collapse, but only a little, I can't really picture, like, mass starvation or something.

Day 1 (Tuesday): I worked from home. I talked to jack a lot (he's very tolerant of my extrovert need to talk things through when it's emotionally scary). We took a car trip to his (deserted) office to pick up computer equipment for him to also work from home for the duration, and didn't interact with any other humans.

I am still undecided about whether I really will isolate myself completely, though the guidelines include me in the category of people who should. I will quit teaching Sunday school and attending services, which is likely to be academic anyway as I'm fairly certain the synagogue will close within the next few days. For now I intend to keep seeing my OSOs; they are ten minutes walk away and our lives are so intermingled that we probably all have the same infection status.

Personal status: feels like the beginning of a mild cold.
Social circle tally: one case, two acquaintances with suspicious symptoms. Nobody I've been in physical contact with within a month though.

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Day 3 (Wednesday): successful social distancing, yay. I worked from home, I came into contact with no humans except jack.

Work tried to establish ways to keep in touch, socially as well as for specific work concerns. We have just moved to a new system, Cisco Webex, for conference calls, and it's really not holding up to the volume of everybody suddenly moving to WFH. So we had a slightly hilarious team coffee chat, when half the participants had no audio and we ended up playing charades.

Mood-wise, I felt slightly manic all day. Every time I had to communicate with someone at work I used way too many words, and I got plenty done but everything felt like it was in a massive rush and slightly out of control.

I also successfully persuaded my mother, and my Stoke community, not to hold big Passover seders with crowds of vulnerable people travelling from all over to gather in a small room and share meals. It is going to be really awful to miss a big seder with my family of origin for the first time in my 41 years of life. But better than infecting my over-70 parents or my paralysed brother. And the Stoke community are breaking a streak of even more decades, and they grumped that I (along with the Chief Rabbi of their movement, the United Synagogue) am overreacting, but they're not risking the health of their various elderly and frail members, so that's good.

Today I mostly worked from home, but I had to go out for, of all things, dental surgery. I'd assumed it just wouldn't happen in the middle of a pandemic, but a tooth extraction is sufficiently urgent that it went ahead. The poor receptionist was absolutely frantically sanitizing every surface continuously.

I had never had a tooth taken out before today. Really rubbish first, I must say! The dentist was super lovely, kind without being patronizing, but I found myself very close to panic. The actual operation lasted only a couple of minutes and the local anaesthetic was the (not very bad) worst part of it, but anyway. I decided to walk home in order to calm myself down, though jack did offer me a lift. Then I met up with ghoti_mhic_uait and we went for another walk together, which did a lot for my general mood and happiness.

Town was quieter than usual, but not completely dead; there were enough walkers, cyclists and joggers out and about that it wasn't entirely easy to maintain the prescribed 2 metre separation from everybody. Also businesses, including pubs and other social gathering spots, are still open (because the government are trying to make individual businesses rather than insurers or the state assume the risk of telling individuals not to go to bars, but not telling bars to actually close), and were quiet but had some customers.

Personal status: If I had the beginning of a mild cold before, I now feel I have the end of a mild cold. Sore throat which I can't tell if it's an infection or a reaction to having my mouth poked about.
Social circle tally: One case, four with suspicious symptoms. All online acquaintances so far.

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Well, as they say, that escalated quickly.

Day 5 (Friday): Stayed home all day with jack. We ordered takeaway for our date night while we still can. The delivery guy wore a proper facemask.

Day 6 (Saturday): Woke up feeling kind of grim. Decided, on consultation with my partners, that I was fairly sure it was just a cold, so we agreed I would go ahead with my planned evening with cjwatson and the children.

In the morning I virtually 'attended' a livestreamed service, which is a really really new thing for my community who normally ban telecoms and electronics on the Sabbath. It was weird, but I felt good for praying with the community even if I wasn't actually interacting with them directly. In the afternoon I did a virtual play readthrough over Zoom, organized by the lovely wildeabandon. It was really really fun, and I got to see the faces of friends I haven't seen for ages, as well as a couple of internet acquaintances I had no mental image of previously. The play was Loves labours lost and I played a couple of small but fun roles, Lady Katharine, a slightly bitchy court woman, and Sir Nathaniel, a pompous curate.

And then I walked to my partners' house, and it was sunny and seemed basically normal. Plus I was feeling completely better by mid afternoon. I took a winding route to stay most of 2m away from any other pedestrians. We played Labyrinth and watched TV and I stayed the night.

In the morning (Sunday) there was more TV and another game, Robot turtles, a sort of cut-down, child-friendly version of Robo Rally, which the children have got much better at since we last played. And we walked part way together to metamour's house where there was mother's day planned, which I didn't join in with, I went home to jack. We went out to the local shop, I walked with him to enjoy the spring weather and he did the actual shopping, as I'm in theory more vulnerable than him.

Sunday evening I did my chevruta (traditional paired Jewish text study), which has always been online because my partner is in New York, and we had a long and pleasant video call with some old friends of jack's I don't see often enough.

Today, day 8, well, jack and I stayed home, mostly working. And anxiously watching the news of how most of the country treated the weekend as a bonus bank holiday and flocked to tourist spots and crowded into parks and gardens. It was kind of obvious the restrictions would have to get stricter, if that was how people were interpreting more gentle restrictions.

Then they cancelled the daily "briefing" (I haven't really been listening to them as it's mostly just our incompetent prime minister waffling with no substance) for a COBRA meeting. I carried out my intended plan of collecting Judith from OSOs' for a Hebrew lesson, and am I ever glad I did. Because as of an hour ago, and starting from tonight, we're no longer allowed out at all except for "essential" purposes. And we're explicitly no longer allowed to meet friends and family. So I don't know how long it will be before I get to hug my partners again.

In a way, lockdown isn't very different from how we were already behaving, with one vulnerable person in each of our three houses (me and metamour have asthma, girlfriend is pregnant). We were already going out only once a day for exercise, we were already only visiting shops to buy, like, food. But what it has taken away from us is that we can no longer bounce between the three houses, treating the polycule as a closed pod. I think our behaviour for the past week has been safe. If I walk a kilometre to my partners' house, that's no different from walking a kilometre in a random direction to get exercise. But the problem is everybody thinks they're an exception, (and multi-household poly relationships are never thought of in official rulings), so now it's forbidden.

The announcement says three weeks, but I think what's actually going to happen is that people will again not take the restrictions seriously and it will have to be extended.

Personal status: I thought I was doing ok, and the tighter restrictions are almost certainly necessary and not really a surprise. But it hurts.
Social circle tally: three cases, including one person I see face to face (though not for at least a month). 8 mostly online acquaintances with suspicious symptoms.

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Adapting to the new normal.

Day 9 (Tuesday): Worked from home. Did my daily exercise by walking past the house where OSOs are quarantined so we could wave to each other from a distance. We actually ended up having a conversation, them on their doorstep, me several metres away. Which is perhaps stretching the no gathering thing a little but I think the risk is low and the psychological benefit is enormous. I have vastly more cope knowing I can still see and talk to my partners.

Day 10: (Wednesday): Worked from home. Failed to secure online delivery for now. Called my parents who reported that they were doing fine and that my doctor cousin had completely randomly, for no reason at all, told them they need to isolate from my brother within the household. I said that sounded over the top. But then I spoke to my brother and it turned out parents left out an extremely salient fact, namely that they had been in recent contact with someone symptomatic. Called my parents again, and talked them through sensible in-house isolation precautions. Part of the reason my brother is quarantining with them is because they have a big house with multiple kitchens and bathrooms, so hopefully this is doable. But I've been kind of tearing my hear out over all this.

Day 11: (Thursday): Another exercise walk and distanced chat with OSOs. Again, felt much better for that. I noticed that the local corner shop is observing proper social distancing, with only a few people allowed in the shop at a time, and everybody else queuing outside actually at 2m separation.

Took part in a rehearsal for running Saturday's service purely over Zoom. (Unlike last week, nobody is going to the synagogue building at all, so we will need to coordinate between people in different locations.) There are lots of probably more exciting options for livestreamed shabbat services, but if you would like to virtually join ours on Saturday (and hear / see me fake-read the Torah), PM me for the Zoom link. I'm not putting it on the public internet because scumbags have been hacking Zoom-based services in order to harass Jews :-(

Day 12 (today): Pleasantly boring day. jack did some shopping in a locally owned shop, which was quieter than Tesco.

Personal status: In spite of being worried about my family of origin, I am getting used to this situation and basically feel ok. Also I still / again have mild cold symptoms. Tracking makes me paranoid, but also makes me realize just how unreasonably susceptible I am to mild respiratory stuff. I've pretty much constantly had a mild cough, with occasional chest soreness or shortness of breath ever since I started paying attention. I'm pretty sure it's chronic asthma with rhinitis and unreasonable sensitivity to normal endemic viruses, rather than acute Covid, but 'pretty sure' isn't ideal with the stakes this high.

Social circle tally: five cases. Twelve people with suspicious symptoms. Now including some people I see in person, but none recently.

Does anyone have any recommendations for decent online bridge setups? Free as in beer would be good, free as in speech is always a bonus. We can probably download software if needed, but ideally we want to work across multiple different tech eg phones, tablets, laptops with various OSes, so probably web-based is easiest. Also it needs to be at least vaguely usable by people who are not completely computer savvy, though not completely clueless either.

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Small milestones.

A couple of significant milestones just now: it's been a full week since I went within 2m of anyone other than jack. He's not been as fully isolated as I have, since he has no underlying conditions and has been doing our household shopping. Of course making an effort to avoid getting too close to people, but still.

And I've passed the magic 14 days since I last took public transport and intentionally went to venue with a crowd of people. I don't yet feel confident I definitely haven't caught the virus, particularly since I've spent most of the intervening time with very mild almost-certainly-a-cold-but-who-knows symptoms. But the feeling of impending doom is somewhat lessened, knowing that I've been in a two person almost closed pod for most of the significant infectious period.

Anyway, Day 12, Friday, was almost a normal day. I often work from home Fridays in normal life anyway, and I was very absorbed in putting the finishing touches to my online course. And then after 5 I had date night with jack, like we always do, and we cooked together and played a successful episode of Gloomhaven.

Day 13, Saturday, I did online synagogue service again. This time I had a small role in the service, reading something from Leviticus in place of a full Torah reading. And this time it was entirely on Zoom, with nobody physically in the synagogue. It went pretty well and it was nice to see people's faces all over the screen. And another lovely readthrough with wildeabandon and co, the radio play of Gaiman's Stardust, where I had the delightful role of the chief evil witch Morwanneg, and was congratulated on my evilness. And a Zoom party in the evening hosted by ptc24. Finally a phonecall with cjwatson before we both retired. So yeah, basically a very full day of virtual socializing!

Day 14, Sunday, wasn't much quieter. I virtually attended OSOs' church service, since they'd showed up to mine and it seems nice to support each other. It's much more isolated than ours: they literally just have a camera feed of their priest in an empty church, with no interaction with the rest of the congregation. I could hear the Communion wafer snap, which is a weird experience; I've been told it's basically like matzah but I didn't know that it sounds like matzah.

We just about had time for lunch between church and setting up for an online game of bridge, with my brother and parents in one location, and me and Jack in one location, and OSOs and metamour in a third location. Thank you to silveradept for recommending us a nice simple card playing site, Trickster Cards. It's not completely perfect but it's a lot less fiddly than some of the more serious sites we found. We had hoped to use Jitsi for video chat but couldn't get it to work on everybody's assorted devices, so we fell back to Zoom and just put up with redialling every 40 minutes. And I had to leave the gaming table fairly promptly for my online chevruta.

Today, day 15 since the somewhat arbitrary date I started counting, I attended communal weekday prayers, which I basically haven't done since I lived in Sweden in the mid 2000s. Broadcast Zoom service from the movement rabbinic seminary, which was delightful. Not only could I see people's faces on screen, I could see the smattering of fellow Reform Jews who, like me, lay tefillin every day. It's always been a bit lonely knowing that the very great majority of people who lay tefillin don't approve of women, and anyway with normal life commuting I can't usually get to communal prayers on weekdays.

I did some work, though mostly got very distracted by the dashboard of my new course, showing lots of people signing up from just about every corner of the globe. Look, it's an actual real thing out in the world, with 1500 people actually learning from materials I put together! And this evening I have my online Hebrew class as usual, and jack is doing some online roleplaying.

No new symptoms showing up among my immediate social circle in the last few days. However I'm starting to hear of deaths of people I'm connected to at second degree. Two people from partners' church. One of our movement rabbis. The father and grandfather of one of the cleaners at work. I am sad about these people I don't know (I think I might have met R' Kraft once or twice, may his memory be a blessing), but also afraid. Afraid that somehow, I'll run out of sadness and not be able to respond appropriately when someone I know is bereaved. Or that I won't, and I'll just drown in endless grief. Like a lot of these things there's no point buying trouble by worrying about it.

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As of some time last night, I have novel respiratory symptoms. I'm basically fine but it feels safest to act as if I am infected.

My lungs hurt, and it's not the tightness I associate with mild asthma symptoms, or the tired muscle ache / burn I associate with a bad cough (whether asthma or viral). Not badly, but pretty much continuously. I'm coughing a bit but not severely, and I don't feel feverish. I have a slight headache and sore throat, but that could be just about anything including stress. I am somewhat distracted but I've been able to get on with useful work today.

I'm probably being over-cautious, but I feel like the balance of probabilities points towards suspected case. So this morning jack and I activated our self-isolation plan. We've divided up the house so that I "live" upstairs and he stays downstairs apart from using the bathroom. We have separate towels and we're cleaning metal bathroom surfaces constantly. jack has taken on food prep for both of us and he's leaving me plates of food and cups of tea and retreating to the bottom of the stairs.

And we're preparing to avoid leaving the house at all until it's more likely that we're not infectious than that we still are. We have plenty of supplies, and we managed to get an online supermarket delivery order in by virtue of going on the website just after midnight last night, which was fortuitous timing. It's going to suck, more so if my symptoms progress beyond the almost ignorable level, but since we can do this I think it's the right thing.

The most likely (and in some ways comforting) narrative I can come up with is that I picked this up when I had to attend a dental appointment two weeks ago. I had very mild symptoms (including a tell-tale sore throat) within a few days of that surgery, which in retrospect I can imagine might have been the first phase. And now, 12 days after the first symptoms, I have potential lower respiratory tract symptoms, so hopefully this is the second phase. That's comforting because it suggests my source of infection is a necessary medical appointment rather than either something frivolous I did, or just being unlucky even though I've stayed at home except for exercise for ten days now, and jack has been doing minimal necessary shopping with careful social distancing. And if I picked it up at the dentist it's unlikely I infected the dentist or any of his staff or patients. Also, if my guess is right I'm probably approaching the end of the infectious phase.

We are really not sure how long we should maintain full isolation at home. UK guidelines say 7 days from start of symptoms (me, today), or 14 days from contact with a symptomatic person (Jack). But I suspect this is not entirely adequate especially as it's much less restrictive than the WHO advice. If my symptoms don't get any worse than this and jack doesn't get sick at all, which is definitely the brnach of the timeline I'm hoping for, I won't know whether I've actually had Covid. Currently we're thinking that if nothing changes we'll start interacting with eachother again after 7 days, but not go outside until we're more confident the incubation period has passed; I think the safest is 14 days from the end of symptoms but we might not be able to sustain that.

Send hugs and support to jack, please? He's doing amazingly in a somewhat scary situation.

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I'm doing basically fine but continuing to be careful.

I still have the same single worrying symptom I had on Thursday, sore lungs. I don't otherwise feel ill, feverish, tired or anything else, so I'm really second guessing myself over whether isolation was the right choice.

The last few days have been mostly pleasant though stressful for jack who's handling everything on his own and worrying about me getting seriously ill or possibly infecting him.

Friday was 19 days since the government started taking action. I worked in my new upstairs den (previously jack's den.) We had a weird date where jack brought me up a tray with the Shabbat ritual things, I made kiddush sitting at the top of the stairs and he sat at the bottom, and we ate dinner in parallel but at a distance. And then we played Potion explosion over Steam, which worked pretty well.

The weekend was ridiculously lovely, and we were both good and only sunbathed and exercised in our own garden. Saturday, day 20, I went to virtual shul, which on only the second iteration starts to feel almost normal. Bigger than usual congregation, including some of the people who are usually strict about not using electronic technology on Shabbat. And in the afternoon I attended the second half of wildeabandon's Stardust readthrough which was generally satisfying and companionable. And I had a long phonecall with ghoti_mhic_uait.

Sunday, day 21, had slightly fewer online social commitments. We had a lot of time in the sunshine in the garden, remaining carefully distanced. cjwatson came by to wave to me from the street while I looked out of an upstairs window like some ridiculous fairy tale princess. We video chatted to jack's university friends; it's been a long time since the original trio got together since one of them lives in Croatia and has two small children. And I did my online chevruta just like the previous week, slightly sheepishly admitting I was Skyping from bed because I was isolating for basically no reason. And I had a long conversation with cjwatson in the evening.

Since today is day 22, and two weeks of lockdown, it's now been a whole two weeks since I last interacted directly with anyone other than jack. jack has also not left the house or allowed delivery people to come close to him since I got the weird symptoms on Thursday, so five days so far.

I now know eight people who have pretty clearly been through a bout of coronavirus, and 21 who like me are being careful because they have suspicious symptoms.

Thanks to everyone who made nice comments on my last post, I really appreciate all of you.

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Still basically fine, but this one is a bit whiny.

I'm losing track of everything I'm trying to count. This is:

Less frequent posts since time hardly exists any more.

5 weeks of pandemic life (yesterday).
4 weeks of lockdown and since I last interacted with anyone except jack.
19 days since I thought I maybe had symptoms.
13 days since I ended internal isolation with jack. He hasn't had any symptoms at all.
5 days since I last had symptoms I was significantly worried about.
3 days since I returned to occasionally leaving the house for exercise.
Also, day 12 of the Omer.

So, healthwise: I had about 5 days, 2nd April to 7th April, when my lungs hurt. Just continuously, not affected by taking deep breaths or posture or anything much else. I didn't have any other symptoms whatsoever. After that I had like a week of thinking I was better, except that the soreness returned intermittently. So I really wasn't sure when I could start counting to the end of isolation; the UK guidelines say 7 days from symptoms appearing, but everywhere else counts from the end of symptoms, and the symptoms were so minor and tailed off so gradually that I don't know where I'd place the 'end'.

On 16th April I had a weird episode of dizziness, much worse than I'd ever experienced before. I pretty much had to lie down for a couple of hours. I had no other symptoms, no tiredness, no fever, just plain vertigo. I looked it up on the internet as you do, and articles from before Covid-19 suggested that sometimes people get post-viral labyrinthitis, whereas more up-to-date information suggested dizziness might be a Covid-19 symptom. I don't know. If my lung soreness was in fact Covid-19 then I got the dizziness two weeks after symptoms appeared, which seems implausibly long.

We decided we could start going out from Sunday 19th. We're still staying away from shops and avoiding other people. It's a bit arbitrary but it is over two weeks since I first worried, and 5 days since I had even the vaguest trace of symptoms (except the dizziness which might or might not be relevant).

So, the rest of the bank holiday weekend when I was sad that I didn't get to do Easter family time with OSOs. I did in fact enjoy some restful time with jack. We played Gloomhaven and unwound a bit from work and Pesach. And we managed to get in some remote Stellaris with cjwatson; it pretty much Just Worked even though we last played most of a year ago and had a really old version of the game. We used Discord for voice chat and it was pleasant and companionable.

Two and a half days back at work, then I had to take an afternoon off to be dizzy, but I was fine by Friday. The lovely Reform Movement started up broadcasting again after a break for the festival, and I attended a couple of seminars (but haven't yet got back into the habit of attending communal morning prayer).

This recent weekend I had deliberately not made too many social plans. I had a nice date with jack on Friday evening. OSOs virtually joined me for the Saturday morning service, and I listened in to their church service on Sunday. The latter feels much less like being together because it's just a broadcast, whereas our service has a Zoom congregation and is a bit more interactive, but I still wanted to support my partners. We also managed a couple of nearly spontaneous games of online bridge using the Trickster Cards site, a matter of just sending a text saying, do you feel like playing and pretty much starting a game with minimal faff. The first was with my mother and brother who are quarantined together, and the second was with OSOs. And I've had a couple of phonecall dates with each of my non-domestic partners.

Going out for the first time after self-isolation was weird. We decided that we could justify going for a short drive to reach a place more pleasant and less crowded than Cambridge city. We went to Waterbeach in order to look at the river, but decided against walking along it because the path is too narrow. It was the most amazingly gorgeous day, just perfect spring weather. And during the three weeks I stayed at home the world has become gloriously green. There were a few people about enjoying the weather but it was far from crowded. We walked in a little nature reserve and it was really lovely.

But I found it emotionally hard. I was anxious about getting too close to people, I was anxious about getting in trouble for having fun and not moving fast enough. And I was really struggling with feeling sad about this perfect spring that we're mostly going to miss, and not knowing how many more seasons will just flow past while we're all stuck indoors, and the people who won't make it through quarantine to enjoy the outdoors again.

Today was a bit better, I returned to my pre-symptoms habit of walking across very quiet north Cambridge suburbs to OSOs' house. And we chatted with them on their doorstep and me more than 2m away in the street, and that made me feel better. I was a lot less angsty about going out of the house the second time than the first.

Last few days I've had fairly obvious hayfever but otherwise feel fine. There are 7 people known to me personally who have had pretty clear cases of Covid-19, and 26 including me who have had suspicious symptoms.

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Keeping on keeping on.

7 weeks and change of pandemic life. That's a lot of weeks.
43 days lockdown, and no significant interactions except with my husband. Though 26 days since I gave up internal isolation and I have been interacting normally with him within the house for those 3 1/2 weeks.
18 days since I decided that any novel symptoms I had were mostly gone. I've had very occasional returns of the lung soreness, but very briefly and mildly to the point I'm not sure I'm not just deluding myself. During these 18 days I've been going out occasionally for exercise and fresh air, and jack has visited actual shops a couple of times to pick up things we needed faster than internet delivery could manage.
And day 27 of the Omer. I'm still not expecting plague lifting by day 33, though I know some countries are starting to relax some restrictions.

New lockdown activities: sfred and djm4's extremely moving partnership ceremony over Zoom on 25 April. It was exceptionally well coordinated, with a congregation of around 200 people. And even though the couple had initially told us the socializing part would be postponed until after the Reconnection, actually after the ceremony we just unmuted everybody and there was this amazing buzz of congratulations and people being pleased to see each other and little kids shrieking, just like at a real wedding.

Collaborative crossword solving with seekingferret. That was really fun, despite silght technical issues with Discord. I am not at all experienced with American-style crosswords (and sometimes was thrown by specifically American clues), but I contributed only a little less than my fair share.

Teaching three different Hebrew school classes over Zoom. The new ones, for my actual local cheder where I am formally employed as a teacher, are going less well than the established one with two boys from Stoke plus my partners' daughter. Some of the children are struggling because they've suddenly switched from "screens are evil and rot your brains" to "your entire education is now on screens (so good luck working out how to operate a smart phone!)". Others are just too young for online teaching to work well; my youngest class is Yr 4 which means some of them are not quite 9 and still need direct personal interaction from a trusted adult to hold their attention. I feel even more sorry than previously for people who are trying to teach infant school or even kindergarten online. And the most tech savvy kid is also the worst behaved; right now the set-up is such that I don't have moderator privs and it took her about 10 minutes to work out that she could grab the screen from me, and scribble rude drawings over my worksheets, and there's not a whole lot I can do about it technically.

Talking of people for whom tech is a barrier, I've also been involved in the community welfare programme, trying to help someone who really has no idea how to access the internet short of buying a computer and full broadband subscription. Not someone particularly ancient either, and never thought they would be the kind of person who receives welfare. But at least open to the idea that pandemic life will be better with an internet connection.

Zoom crafting, hosted by pseudomonas. He has a very good theory that it's nice to gently hang out with people, but while doing something rather than having the whole social event focused on chat. Definitely less exhausting than purely conversational Zoom parties, but still feeds my extrovert energies. I have added a few rows to my rather long-abandoned Möbius scarf project.

IRC. Slack is ok, Discord is ok, even Twitter is bearable if you curate your feed carefully. But it turns out that working with a flow of text based conversation in a window is just really soothing to my emotional state. I don't have to reply to or even read everything, but just knowing my people are there, and if I do want to join in the conversation, I can do so on a full-sized keyboard, is just brilliant.

Our veg box person, Cambridge Fruit Co. has now teamed up with a cake shop (and a butcher's, if you like that kind of thing), so we now get a random selection of cake with our random selection of fruit and veg. This week: avocados, a swede and a mango. Also new to our online shopping rotation: v expensive bread flour from former hipster café Stir. It's leading to perceptibly better breadmaker bread, and cheap bread flour isn't very available anyway, so for the moment it's worth the extra money.

Today I feel kind of physically miserable. I think it's mostly menstruation-related and not outside the range of normal for me. But emotionally mostly ok, I'm doing better at finding a balance between getting enough connection, and getting drained by too many video calls, or worse, arguing with people who are Wrong on the Internet because I'm starved of social connection.

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Explores how the Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS) promotes the delivery of cost effective social services in Scotland that will support the achievement of positive outcomes for people accessing support. It identifies a number of principles that underpin the work of IRISS and suggests how these facilitate innovative evidence-informed practice. The approach to evidence-informed practice comprises four pillars of activity. The first pillar focuses on improving awareness and access to evidence and is exemplified by the Learning Exchange, the IRISS Insights series, and audio and video recording. The second pillar refers to strengthening the evidence base and is discussed in the context of work on self-directed support. Improving skills and confidence to use evidence forms the third pillar and is represented by work on data visualisation and peer support for self-evaluation. The final pillar is embedding evidence in organisations, through co-production, creating spaces to test and challenge evidence, and through the development of evidence-based products. Supporting people to share knowledge, learn from each other and to collectively produce new knowledge and solutions is an innovative approach but also one which should be cost-effective. Pre-print. Published in Evidence and Policy, 2014 (10)4 as Embedding research into practice through innovation and creativity: a case study from social services