Stumbled onto Greek Quarantine: Blog in the time of Corona

We live in strange times. Very strange. This is probably the first time that I have had to leave the UK to return to Greece where things are done in a strict and timely manner. It is the first time in years that my phone rang rather than vibrated for a message; it was the government telling us that we are all doomed, more or less. I am tempted to think that Voldemort is behind it all. But I believe that we as Muggles will prevail! What we lack in toilet paper, we make up in in memes.

Due to the current pandemic, whoever travels back from the UK needs to self-quarantine for 14 days. Three friends and I decided to group self-quarantine in a summerhouse altogether just to make sure we don’t die of ennui before coronavirus. There are many benefits in isolating in a group of four; first of all, there are more board games you can play. Our inspiration comes from early university years, ranging from the coolest card game you could play at the time, Tichu, to the nerdiest game, Munchkins. And we’ve topped up the games with a bit of alcohol to keep us going. The only downside to this addition is that we have proven unable to master new games, such as Exploding Kittens. I tried explaining the rules to my fellow playmates but they proved too drunk to follow.

Secondly, we can form two to four battlefields towards the end of the quarantine and then not talk again for a while. Ideally, this won’t be the case and this cohabitation will go ahead nice and smoothly. But if the road gets rocky, I think we will go through enough rotations, alliances, betrayals and quiet sulking to make Game of Thrones appear dull and one dimensional. This will be live entertainment in an unprecedented way. Problem is, I am not currently very wise in these practices and possibly at a disadvantage. And have now publicly shared that for my friends and future opponents to read. Darn it! But as the rest of my life is put on hold, perhaps this is a good opportunity for a new skill set right out of Days of our Lives. I will then be ready to enter a reality show and flourish.

Thirdly, we have four different moms, who are in an unspoken contest with each other about who can cook more food. We were ready to spend our days with canned beans and hard candy, and instead we found ourselves with meat pies and chocolate cakes. And about 15 phone calls per day to virtually check our temperature, but it is a small price to pay for the aforementioned delicacies. Greek moms are not content with just matching the caloric input of another mom; taste, effort and technique are paramount. Then of course, there is fruits and vegetables, which we are most grateful for considering pharmacies have run out of our usual supply of manufactured vitamins. It is, however, much more difficult to peal a kiwi than drop a Vitamin C tablet in a glass of water, but such small challenges are what fill up our day. That and trying to get the aforementioned moms to stay the fuck away so we do not partake in possible contamination.

Lastly, what has been beneficial for the time being is the societal pressure imposed by fellow humans. This societal pressure is what has delayed our becoming cavemen (cavewomen in our case). We have had almost daily showers. I have washed my hair once. One of us even shaved her legs. Deep down I know that were I all alone, it would be very hard to get me back to normality after two weeks of living like a 10-year-old boy without adult supervision. I can’t help but imagine biting into a block of cheese like a bulldog and then just drinking wine from the bottle to wash it down. That’s what 10-year-olds do, right?

Well, it has been a few days, a few Skype meetings, a bit of work, a bit of exercise, a lot of cooking, a lot of extracurricular reading, a lot of worrying, a lot of memes, a few of them unrelated to the pandemic, so it is much too soon to fully account our experiences as young adults in exile. Let’s all hope that this gets resolved as soon as possible and we get our lives back, however changed, and remain fortunate enough to have simply spent a few weeks complaining about not having to wear a bra and sleeping more than we have ever done before. Eye creams never worked as well as coronavirus.

Stumbled onto a pandemic as a hypochondriac: Blog in the Time of Corona

This is a great time to be a hypochondriac. There is a lot of understanding. Nobody looks at you weird when you wash your hands singing the chorus from Africa by Toto. Nobody thinks you are extreme when you go on a full expedition just to make sure you are not drinking from someone else’s glass. Nobody comments on your insanely dry hands. Taking off your phone case and disinfecting your phone? You, socially appropriate bastard. Of course, there is the constant fear that you have or will get coronavirus and pass it on like the Olympic flame. That one is a bummer.

Life during this pandemic has been very creative. I have developed a nice little regime to get through. For example, as a hypochondriac I am of course doing a number of remedies; my gargles, my warm teas, shooting hot water up my nose and constant complaining to anyone with a phone or my housemate. I have also had to schedule my use of items that I do not want near my bed. That will be (1) my phone, currently placed onto my eyeshadow palette that is no longer of any use, (2) my laptop which contains all of the stuff I should stop reading to control my paranoia and (3) my socks. Now, this is where I have gotten very creative. The dilemma here is that I do not want to go barefoot to wash my hands before going to bed, but do not want my socks in bed because they have done the bed-bathroom route. Also, I do not want to touch said socks with my now clean hands. So, I have mastered the art of taking socks off with my own feet. And I mean all socks; long, short, elastic. This is not so hard, I hear you say. How about putting on socks with your feet because you want to get a glass of water but do not want to wash your hands? Well, you are looking at the master of that too. This pandemic goes on for much longer, I’ll be playing piano with my feet.

This has also been a great time for refreshing my maths. For example, I check my temperature based on the Fibonacci sequence. First, I waited for two hours, then three, then five and then a full eight-hour wait between my normal temperature readings. Take that, Tool. Secondly, I have had a chance to calculate how much faster than the duration of a second I count in my head, and successfully adjusted my counting for washing my hands (and holding my breath to check my lungs are working). I am counting .05% faster. Not bad. Surely, there are numerous graphs explaining exponential growth and the ‘flattening the curve’ argument, but I thought this was the best use of maths for me.

Lastly, as a hypochondriac I have gotten a great amount of physical rest. Considering I have more or less abandoned society. My tiny apartment has few places for me to travel and a very, very comfortable couch. My physical labour is however long a shower takes. I have been in a semi-sitted position for so long my back hurts. And sometimes my upper back hurts and I think the virus has come for my lungs. But then I just shuffle around a bit and all is well. Mentally, I am exhausted. Mentally, I am living through five different dystopian scenarios. Some of them not so bad; I have given myself superpowers for those. Superpower for scenario one: shape shifting. Superpower: for scenario two: calm and rationality.

Will I need therapy after this? Most likely. This post is thankfully an exaggeration of my time through the pandemic. I could not possibly spend my whole day worried; I have series to watch. But as I guess we are all a little bit more paranoid that we were a month ago, I just found it therapeutic to poke some fun at my hideous, dry skin and my unnecessary precautions. Why I felt the need for anyone else to read this is a mystery. Hopefully, this is a less stressful read about the pandemic than any of the emails we have all gotten today. I mean, since when is Krispy Kreme out to scare me?

From what I’ve gathered we should all wash our hands and stay home as much as possible, so let’s all start a blog and complain about the lack of pasta from afar. And moisturize.

Stumbled onto a bunch of series finales over the years

Let me explain what this is with a bunch of commas. This is me, having just finished Breaking Bad, wanting to discuss it like crazy, yet being aware that as the show has been off the air for a while, therefore deciding to bring in a couple of more dramatic series finales to get more clicks. And specifically, Game of Thrones to get even more clicks. I will keep this annoyingly spoiler free, in an attempt to lure even more readers to this clickbait of a post.

I am a comedy fan myself. I appreciate the shorter runtimes of episodes and the lack of commitment. I am left with a more positive outlook on life when Ross and Rachel break up, but the rest of the Friends are eating hair removal wax in Monica’s room. I mean, wax, those goofs. I feel that plot holes matter less as long as the punchline is right and therefore I get less frustrated by impossible mechanical skills, essentially channelling Transformers logic in an otherwise non-robotic series. But there are some drama series that you cannot escape; the hype and pop culture references are just too important. Bitch. For me, those would be Mad Men, Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. All of them praised for their character development, their antiheroes, and the realistic ethical roller coaster that their characters go through. Some of them even managed to keep that going until the very end.

Mad Men follows Don Draper, the man all men wanted to be and all women wanted to be with, during the 1960’s, that is. The main character is portrayed by the handsomest handsome man, Jon Hamm. He has a complicated past, he is a little less sexist than most sexist men of that era, he is smart and a good friend, but also an alcoholic, dishonest womanizer. Breaking Bad follows Walter White, a sweet chemistry teacher turned drug dealer and murderer once diagnosed with lung cancer. As you do. Game of Thrones follows a bunch of people and, occasionally, White Walkers.

Game of Thrones was rightfully praised for dealing with so many (so, so many) three-dimensional characters, while taking into account political and social variables and still maintaining an action driven plot. It was this combination of magic and sociology (and nudity and violence) that drew in nerds and casual viewers alike. It was what made it special. I believe Game of Thrones was a huge feat for television, not so much for its budget, its set and definitively not its cast, but mostly because it was giving us 50 probable personalities to follow, love and hate, and showed ripples of consequences for their actions. In other words, Robb could not go back on his promise to marry a Frey and still ask for their help and loyalty. I see that clearly now, seven years after the episode aired. But it seems this balance was indeed too big a feat. Showrunners fucked up the series that I would otherwise hold at the same standard as Mad Men and Breaking Bad. It just ignored their characters, their journeys and the consequences of their actions, past and present. It traded in its essence for a scene where Daenerys emerges with dragon wings aligned so that she herself looked like a dragon. At least they got a good poster out of it.

I have had people say that five-to-six excellent seasons should not be overwritten by two-to-three bad ones. And I beg to differ. If a series is more than independent episodes, the ending is as important, if not more. The aftertaste is important. And more so because excellent endings have been achieved by its contemporaries. The ending of Mad Men was genius, fully encompassing Don Draper’s character. And while the ending makes so much sense, you are effectively side-tracked; you get momentarily fooled by the showrunners that they pulled a Daenerys Targaryen on Don Draper. Is this a spoiler? Is it a spoiler now that I wondered if it was a spoiler? I don’t know what it is, but it surely was a good ending. No one got a fairy tale, not everyone got justice. The world remained unfair and the risks remained risky. And Don Draper remained Don Draper but more knowledgeable and evolved. And hot. Very, very attractive.

If the Mad Men finale was amazing, the Breaking Bad finale was amazing-er. Everything led to this finale. Walter has an inner ethic from beginning to end, but of course this ethic gets adjusted, compromised and eventually distorted. Yet it’s there. Every moment of the show is reasonable yet shocking. You end up appreciating every little redeeming quality of an otherwise villain and then you get this self-hatred, both for rooting for this man and for watching episodes when you should be sleeping (or working). The series tests your patience; it really takes its time, it sets things up, it shows the struggle in an almost excruciating pace, and then it hits you with adrenaline rushes similar to Battle of the Bastards. It turns chasing a fly into a deep dive inside the psyche! It gives you characters that can hold critically acclaimed spin offs that you actually look forward to. Because who cares about House of the Dragon anymore? It ruined Bob Odenkirk for any other role because of how good he is as Saul. Honestly, he shows up in Little Women all patriotic and righteous; I almost burst out laughing. Most importantly, it keeps this quality to the very end. I don’t think the last episode or even season necessarily cost more than the rest; it didn’t need to. It just made sure to deal with the characters and give them all an appropriate ending. Or an El Camino movie.

Another friend mentioned that they look forward to the end of this in-your-face realism. I agreed until I watched Breaking Bad. I want my superheroes and my sci-fi; I can even semi-ironically watch Riverdale, but if Vince Gilligan can produce another series finale like this, it can start with a PE teacher for all I care. And just so I finish on another comparison with Game of Thrones, we might have seen Ned Stark get beheaded but at least his head was not then placed on a tortoise. You don’t need Westeros for inspired violence.