Mark Carroll's Journal

I survived my first week at work. I went on-site in Edinburgh for the first three days, initially picking up my shiny new MacBook M4 Pro running Sequoia. The office turns out to be a pleasant dog-friendly space with the amenities one might hope for. Being a hybrid worker, I book desk space when I need it from the hot-desking pool. The desks are motorized adjustable desks that can become standing desks. There are very many onboarding things to do over the coming weeks, a lot to do and learn, and plenty of friendly, helpful people to meet. Despite the open-plan layout, it's not too hard to focus, not very distracting.

As usual, there's some wrestling with the Mac but, in all fairness, plenty of things did just work quite well. The most obvious wrestling was the usual: Mac users love to see things in blurry-text. Okay, all the problems I ran into this week arise because I have the temerity to plug the Mac into non-Apple hardware. For instance, the external monitors on the desks have low pixel density and recent versions of the OS have removed useful options for fixing that. I was able to solve the blur by installing iTerm2 and unchecking Anti-Aliased. Other pending issues include it applying the wrong keymap for my external keyboard and imposing some godawful acceleration on my scroll-wheel but they're in progress, I want to get some actual work done too.

Nice though the office environment is, being in transit for at least three hours per day makes me appreciate fully remote work: Wednesday felt as if it should already be Friday. I am currently taking the more expensive option: subway over to Queen Street, and the frequent faster trains aren't as crowded as I'd heard, quite tolerable. (Work has provided my laptop a privacy screen to limit viewing angle.) My current route to the office includes climbing the 124 News Steps which means I get the hardest part of my workday out of the way at the start. The bus would be cheapest except I'd probably want extra bus to and from the stations: at each end, the bus station is further than the railway. A compromise might be the limited rail ticket: I'd end up working long days but could probably just walk at both ends around the intercity portion. Belatedly, I also wonder if I should be masking for the railway journey: perhaps it's outstandingly the riskiest among my habits.

Last weekend, the recent rain had passed. On Saturday, we had a cool, sunny day which was perfect for a couple of walks. In the morning, we strolled a little in Glasgow Green then headed over to Barras Market. After lunch at home, we walked in the other direction, and I picked up more books at the Mitchell Library. For some parts of our walk, there was a strong wind. I wondered why the sun and wind felt so familiar, and I realized that it was from having lived in Cornwall, it reminded me of visiting the coast.

The next day, I visited my kids in Dundee, and rode on a Ferris wheel for the first time in ages. I expect that I must have before but I don't recall when. It was great to get to talk with them and hear how they are doing.

Monday saw me flown to London for meeting my new colleagues in person for the first time. I took the bus to the airport and, after arrival at Stansted, took the train to Liverpool Street from where I could walk. The weather was nice, I joined one remote meeting from a bench in a small, pleasant park before meeting people for lunch then going on to do some work with them before heading back home.

Tuesday we had the property maintenance engineers visiting to check into the recent water ingress into our building. It turned out that the gutters hadn't been properly maintained, they had blocked and the rain overflowed into the wall cavity. We will do what we can to make sure that doesn't happen again. In the evening, my throat didn't feel right.

Yesterday, I felt as if I had a head cold. However, I had wanted to make at least some progress with my work, and I finally managed to make a proper start on my current project, with obvious points for continuing.

Today, I felt unusually dreadful, and took my first sick day for many years. I don't even remember when I was last off work sick but it was at least three jobs ago. Testing tonight, an expired COVID test showed my first positive result. That's entirely my own fault for finally letting my guard down and not being careful enough in travelling to London. It's an education that I ought not have needed but perhaps I can at least learn to try to avoid subsequent reinfection.

For worthwhile, frequent exercise I need some simple, single activity that is vigorous, low-impact, all-round, and includes resistance. Years ago, when I had the disposable income for private gym membership, I used to swim laps. When I could no longer afford the membership, I bought a cross-trainer. Then, I moved to Eastern Tennessee and my employer's gym included cross-trainers. I was getting back into a good habit there when they dropped the on-site mask mandate.

Although a look at people's present conduct would make one think that the pandemic had never happened, I read the current evidence as indicating that SARS-CoV-2 is still very much present, repeated infection is not unusual, and each bout of COVID-19 brings long-term health risks. Exertion increases infectiousness, just as with singing, etc. The NHS is hardly generous with frequent vaccination boosters and I do not have an easy alternative source.

I am unfit at the moment. With the move to Scotland, time in Southeast Asia, and now trying to buy our own home (hence property viewings, etc.), exercise has been a second thought. However, life may be stabilizing soon, so I should plan a return to exercising. I strained my back a few weeks ago, it still doesn't feel back to normal, and this never happened when the workouts involving all my limbs strengthened my core too.

We will probably be moving to a small city-centre flat. A cross-trainer is not going to fit into it comfortably. Pool and gym access may be affordable there but they may be full of people strongly exhaling plague around me, an especial concern if I am to visit frequently. Perhaps I need to find some other means of at-home exercise that seems both palatable and sufficient.

Yesterday morning, I took a walk into the city centre that went surprisingly well. The weather was ideal for the expedition, sunny and mild. I went for a long-postponed dental check-up; despite avoiding such since the pandemic, it transpired that I need no work done at all. My new dentist is thorough and explains as they go.

On the way back, I stopped in to Jahi Laptops for a C5 power cable and it seems a good place, I shall go back should I need other such things, and I was wholly untroubled by lascivious demonesses.

An interesting outcome of my discussion with the dentist was the suggestion that, of the toothpastes for sensitive teeth, different ones help different people.

I experience ongoing dissonance. On the one hand, I read of abundant SARS-CoV-2 infection, reinfection, mutation, increasing clear incidence of long COVID, etc. On the other hand, nobody's wearing a mask and life continues as if it were the Before Times. It's unusual for me to have the sense of joining the Cassandras.

I have plenty of eggs and thought it time to use some. After all, if I skip this morning's granola, I can postpone opening the new milk for another day, so I instead planned omelette on toast. One thing that didn't initially occur to me was that I usually add a splash of milk when beating the eggs. Instead of that, I added a splash of salsa, which worked nicely. This knowledge isn't much helpful seeing as I am leaving the country soon but I have found myself rather liking the Kroger traditional salsa so I am happy to find excuses to use it. I also have some slices of pepper jack in the refrigerator so I placed one within the omelette when folding it over in serving.

With everything else going on in my life right now, recently I have saved myself some time by eating food that is less healthful but more convenient, though I still typically fast. I am pleasantly surprised to see my weight still drifting downward, mostly reversing my gains during past visits to Europe and Asia. I have been somewhat careful, e.g., I put said three-egg omelette atop one piece of toast rather than two, but I don't feel that I have earned my current luck in weighing 141lb this morning. We shall see if it holds. My exercise options were reduced when they stopped requiring masks in the gym at work.

I was back on a cross-trainer at work this morning, for the first time since returning from my vacation. I didn't achieve a lot, the couple of weeks off may have set me back another couple of weeks, but I will eventually get to half-hour workouts.

My fear of SARS-CoV-2 means that the dropping of the mask mandate at work makes me hesitant to use the gym. I do not think that I dare risk it during normal workdays. If I go in on weekend mornings, I typically have it to myself but that is extra drive time and I don't know if two consecutive days of cardio each week suffices for reaching reasonable fitness atop my simple strength training at home.

I have batter for crêpes mixed and sitting, awaiting the coming Lenten violation, I got around to Shrove Tuesday a little late but I am certainly not missing out on it. St Piran will have to wait, the Cornish pasty will be a few days hence and will contain pieces of steak. There is a special place in the beyond reserved for the degenerates who use ground beef instead.

My domestic disarray is partly due to other distractions. Among other things, I am still getting my 2021 taxes together, not a trivial task. On various fronts, I am also preparing for my return to the Philippines later this month, now they finally reopened tourism. This time, I am to be flown by All Nippon Airways via Tokyo-Narita, perhaps a contrast to my route from Scotland on Emirates via Dubai. Among other things, I plan to again visit Bonifacio Global City and swim off the coast of Oriental Mindoro.

NPR recently told a disappointing story about how a fourth mRNA vaccine shot brings quickly diminishing returns, a pundit suggesting that it is not plausible for us to receive shots with sufficient frequency and targeting to have much certainty in evading the SARS-CoV-2 du jour. Accepting that, perhaps one may as well enjoy throwing caution to the wind while the protection from one's booster is at its height, rather than making sacrifices that one would not consent to sustain over the long term.

However, the work on ferritin nanoparticle vaccines gives me hope for better protection against a wide range of variants, I am not ready to give up. Over the years, I have heard of many promising technologies that seemed to come to naught but perhaps I can hope for a return to the Before Times if I accept our new reality for but a year or two yet, I just wish I knew the odds. I am patient but not infinitely so, I should like to dine casually in a restaurant once again. It seems ever more difficult to see what is coming around the corner.

Last week, the New York Times published an essay by the London-based journalist Moya Lothian-McLean, Boris Johnson Is Revealing Who He Really Is, which draws attention to how the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the Nationality and Borders Bill, the Elections Bill, and the Judicial Review and Courts Bill include provisions harmful to various civil liberties; needless to say, they are not optimistic about the coming Online Safety Bill. It feels as if autocratization is increasingly widespread; one fears sleepwalking into its entrenchment.

I do not know how best to appear as an upset citizen to the powers that be. In our form of democracy, my usual default would be to write to my MP, but they would be against it all anyway, and I wonder how much an overseas voter weighs in comparison to a local constituent. Perhaps my voter status is irrelevant and, like anybody else, I am left with donating to openDemocracy or whomever. Years ago, I imagined that the Liberal Democrats were the defenders to support but, even back when people off-hand even remembered who leads the party, my civil liberties concerns tended not to be among their headline issues and it takes much effort for a party to get even their highest priorities addressed.

I have also wondered how to weigh in as a voice of sanity^* more locally. I doubt I am much credible for, say, a school board, given how I have no children of my own in local schools. Ordinarily, I might look at pollworking or suchlike but the pandemic does not encourage me, locally I rather doubt that I can engage in such without considerable risk of infection. To give some context, this morning's local social media included fear of being killed by receiving blood from vaccinated donors, I nobly refrained from mentioning Darwin Awards.

^*What I think, rather than what others think!