‘It’s been a year’ — I think this is a phrase we’ve been hearing a bit in the last few weeks. Maybe even tired of hearing. Yes, it is about the COVID-19 pandemic we are in. And quite a few people are writing about them; tweets, news articles, facebook posts, and so on.
But, for the sake of record keeping, I’ll jot down few thing that comes to my mind, reflecting on my experience so far with this a year and bit of dealing with the pandemic.
How it started
Dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, at least for me, was rather gradual. It began with seeing the headlines about unknown acute pneumonia cases found in Wuhan, China. This was around January/February of 2020.
At that point, I was just back in the UK for the final year of my PhD (or rather, so I thought) scared/stressed about the deadline for my thesis (now this, hasn’t changed much). Because St Andrews has rather international population, I have started to improve personal hygiene situations, both at home and at my office, bracing for potential pandemic. I have bought two bottles of hand sanitisers for those two places, and started carrying a small one with me. Face masks are normal in Japan, so I already had some at home to begin with and started to wear them on the way in and out from the department.
A weekend after the SCONE event in Aberdeen on March 6th (this ended up the last time I left St Andrews at all, to this day) and STACS Hackerthon, I started my work from home & very precautionary self-isolation due to possible (indirect) contact with person with COVID-19-like symptoms. Luckily, no symptom appeared for myself nor my housemate — still quite an experience and the start of the pandemic.
In Scotland, the surge in cases and deaths happened quite rapidly soon after this to the rather grave extent around this time.
Time and space
Amongst other things, sense of time was something that got distorted quickly. To put it in actual words, it would be like… ‘time passing too fast, yet too slow simultaneously’.
Frankly, I have not felt like that before and it was — and still is — rather jarring.
I rarely worked from home; I avoided working from my bedroom as much as possible before the pandemic. This meant that I would spend 10-25 min each way at least to get to the office. But once that’s gone, I instead crawl out of bed reluctantly and forced myself to sit at the desk at wildly varying time of the day.
While it wasn’t the first time I struggled to get up and work, it was worse. This was not helped by the fact that I felt like I had less of an excuse to stop working. It also did not help that it was easier and more likely to procrastinate at home.
It wasn’t ‘hard’ to stay at home per-se. I was comfortable staying at home. I luckily had hobbies and entertainment that fit happily within my bedroom. I was fine — at least on the surface. I think, it was eating into my mental health state underneath that surface level state. I’m probably not the only one and certainly not implying I am the only one, but I gradually struggled to start my day. It was rather a familiar feeling when I was struggling (more than usual) with my PhD and neglected my mental state. I addressed with couple things; making sure to eat at regular timing, leave the house at least one a week, and to talk to people more periodically. While it didn’t immediately rectify the situation, it helped.
Another thing I did to address the new situation was to improve the physical space. I have introduced more storage supplies to help organising my room and clear some of the clutter I have accumulated. This lead to helping my mind from being cluttered, and feeling little happier waking up.
So what now?
So one year on, where am I?
In the context of PhD, I’ve pushed my deadline via official procedure twice. Some breakthrough thankfully, but still a lot to do. A lot to write and a lot to fix.
Mentally, I’m in a better place. I am lucky and have a group of people around me supporting me. I’m very thankful to have them. Making time for different hobbies I had stopped doing has helped too. All in all, the mentality here is ‘I am okay and that’s all I ask for, at least for now.’
I have definitely gained some cooking skills. I used to stay away from techniques that requires more prep, like steaming, and deep frying, which now I learnt and practiced. I think I learnt more recipes and techniques in the past year more than during the first three years of PhD.
My room became more tidy. I think it is partly purely due to the fact that I spend more time here and the fact that I also procrastinate by tidying at times, or rather, struggle to concentrate if I know I could just spend few minutes cleaning up.
Physically, I think my wrist is struggling. I’m trying to address this with better posture, and purely trying to spend less time at my desk. But as I alluded earlier, it is hard. Both my hobby and work requires heavy use of my computer. In addition, I should probably exercise more. I need to make more time for this.
All in all, a lot has happened, are still happening, but a lot hasn’t happened and will not happen for some time. This oxymoron or conflicting situation, is what I think is really fuelling this ‘time is passing so fast, yet so slowly’ feeling. Luckily, towards the end of last calendar year, we have started to see vaccines that show promising results. Now, we hope people stay sensible and cautious as the rollout happens [1]As far as I am aware, vaccine does not necessarily remove the ability to pass on the virus, but rather reduces the chance of contraction, and impact of it when contracting the virus.. Currently, Scotland, and the rest of the UK, are struggling to bring the cases down further. It has hovered at similar level for a month. Hovering between 500-650 cases in 7-day average for Scotland, 5800 in 7-day average for the UK as a whole. The number of daily vaccine administration have been up and down, but in Scotland, 50%+ of adults have been given their first dose, which is a milestone that gives me some hope. Meanwhile, in Japan, where my parents and relatives are, the roll out of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is starting to happen slowly, but definitely has a long-long way.
And what’s next?
Personally, I am somewhat of a pessimist. I feel that, in the coming months, we will still see a substantial number of cases despite vaccine roll out. I am not completely hopeful of the pandemic fully ending for another year, if not more. But I am hoping to be proven wrong. This is in the same way I hope that some extreme seemingly insane opinions we see/hear on/from various places are only from a very small portion of the population and the majority are bit more balanced/nuanced.
My PhD will continue, and will have to end at some point. So I will be doing my best to complete them. I hope to sort out what comes after this too. A lot is to be decided and depends on my PhD completion. It seems that there may well be some work that I could earn from after PhD for few months too, so that would be useful as I seek job opportunities.
My sincere condolences to anyone who has been severely affected or even lost someone in their life. I can only imagine the degree this has been impacting you. I hope you all are staying safe, doing okay, and are doing the best. And remember to talk to people, at least try talking to people; you may realise you just needed that one chat. I’m sure it goes without saying but I am indeed chatty so do get in touch.
| ↑1 | As far as I am aware, vaccine does not necessarily remove the ability to pass on the virus, but rather reduces the chance of contraction, and impact of it when contracting the virus. |
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