Corona Diary

29/04/2020 Wednesday, Rainy It continues to rain but we manage to play a bit of ping pong at the dry intervals. Boris and Ms Symonds' son is born today. Wish them unalloyed joy!

28/04/2020 Tuesday, Rainy It rained all day. Actually it has been like this for almost 40 days. Sean and I had played ping pong outside everyday until today. Still feel tired, not fully recovered from the cold. For the 2nd day we have GotoWebinar meeting. It seems that the chairman is not in full control. It'd be better if he could pencil down all the speakers he named and then called out one by one. Otherwise it gave a feeling of chaos. What's the role of a chairman? Probably not the one to make proposals, but to forge convergence, to find concensus, to encourage compromise. To identify the position of each company, find who are the proponents and who are the opponents. Let them to clarify, to argue, to compromise themselves. One thing I suddenly realise is that M is probably the undercover sent by D. D needs someone inside RF and M was in his team.

27/04/2020 Monday, Cloudy Have been stay home for more than 40 days. How did I catch colde? Where is the virus from? Is it always there in the air around the house? If true, would the coronavirus be like the cold virus? Sticks around and if your're tired or weak somehow, it'll infect you.

26/04/2020 Sunday, Sunny Have to say Sean is very competitive and hates to lose. Since he always complains about luck, maybe it's time to create a special rule in ping pong, i.e. redo any point if the ball touches the net. Call it Sean's rule.

25/04/2020 Saturday, Sunny The cold is not easy to get rid of. Woke up at 2:30 again and felt toothache. Have to take two pills of Lemsip and fall asleep until 7. Time to collect the grocery order at Tesco. There're two bays for cars to wait. And the staff take the baskets out and put behind the car boot. Load them myself and drive away. The cash points are near the entrance. Already there're people queuing. I guess the number of customers inside are limited.

24/04/2020 Friday, Sunny Feel much better today. It should be just a normal cold, not covid-19. An agent called me today, asking about my career plan for the future. Hmm, havn't thought about it very much. But good to talk about it with someone. It seems that the employers are most interested in finding technical experts who have unique skills that are not available in the domestic market. Not sure what I want initially, I say my strength might be the breadth of knowledge and experience, from video encoding/decoding to wireless communications, from C/assembly programming to Matlab, Python development, from software engineering to international standardization negotiations. Later I realize the first priority is to choose the right THING to do, like a mission. After that, find the right people to accompanish the THING. Another hidden idea is to become a professor in a university, teaching undergraduates. And guide a few postgraduates to do research. Teaching, writing and pu...

23/04/2020 Thursday, Sunny Wake up at about 2:30 am. One nostril is blocked and this side of face feels swollen. Both arms feel cold and the muscles feel sore. Typical cold symptons, hopefully just normal cold. Take two pills of Lemsip and finally fall asleep again after 2 hours. Not too bad, I can still work. After lunch, have a long nap. Sean always want to play ping pong. Can't believe I can still play with him.

22/04/2020 Wednesday, Sunny Played two really intensive matches of ping pong with Sean. Both of us smash with forehands or backhands. Both have very tight scores and Sean won in the end. Well done. Finally setup my Trading212 account and bought some oil shares. The prices are almost halved and hopefully recover in the long run.

21/04/2020 Tuesday, Sunny A historic day. The future oil price turns negative! The price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the benchmark for US oil, fell into negative territory for the first time in history on Monday, dropping to minus $37 a barrel. But that only related to the May contract, which was about to expire. Traders holding the contract were unable to find buyers, because no one with the ability to take delivery wanted it. "Nobody wants to take delivery of oil next month because there's nowhere to store it, so the price dropped below zero," explained Rachel Winter, associate investment director at Killik & Co. "This is an unprecedented demand drop. Nobody in their lifetime has seen anything like this," said James McNally of Third Bridge Group. "Coronavirus is rewriting the rules of the global economy in front of our very eyes," said Adam Vettese, analyst at eToro.

20/04/2020 Monday, Sunny Back to work. A hectic day for standards meeting.

19/04/2020 Sunday, Sunny Matt Damon is spending lockdown in Ireland, where he's there for the film The Last Duel. And he says the following in a video for public health. "You can actually sit on a couch or in a chair like I am doing and watch TV. And save a life at the same time. You can work from home, you can use social media to communicate, you can save a few more. Now is the time to spend all the time you want staring at your phone and tablet. And if anybody gives you a hard time about it, tell them not to bother you because you are saving lives. Just make sure you tell them that from six feet away. Other generations have been asked to do extraordinary things. We're being asked to just stay at home. We got this. Please let's respect and protect our elders."

18/04/2020 Saturday Out of milk. The TESCO delivery didn't bring any milk last night. So decide to go to the post office nearby. Only four persons at a time is allowed in the shop. Sounds good. Luckily they just have a batch of milk arrived. Everyone except me wears gloves. No one except me wears a mask. It's good to walk outside. The trees are greener with more leaves on and flowers are in blossom. From Quora: What does having the coronavirus feel like? Sam Buck , current coronavirus patient Updated Fri 22-year-old male college student here tested positive for COVID-19 The first thing I have to say is that I am not a doctor . All of these are my perspectives . My family and I tested positive for COVID-19 about 2 weeks from today (Tuesday, April 14th). It started out with my father, and slowly everyone in our 5-person family, my fiance, and her roommate contracted the virus. To start it off, I imagine we all had the coronavirus and di...

17/04/2020 Friday Online meeting for the whole morning, going through major topics. Revise again in the afternoon.

16/04/2020 Thursday Several TPs are flagged. Busy preparing the revisions.

15/04/2020 Wednesday, Sunny interval Sean's shcool is going to start online lessons tomorrow. I prepare the MacBook Air for him - set up his account and get Google Classroom going. He also needs Zoom for his piano lessons. We play Scrabble again tonight. Usually Sean is annoying by urging others to complete their steps. This time I try a new method by flattering him and keep him patient. It works!

14/04/2020 Tuesday, Sunny interval It's really amazing! Captain Tom Moore has raised more than 2 million pounds just today for NHS, and the total is 3.7m! And I'm one of the 185086.