The week of Monday 16 to Sunday 22 March 2020 was a week where we all had to start adjusting to a new reality. Yes, there’d been signs that serious changes would be needed. But this week I started to process it more viscerally. Depression resulted, as I’m sure it did for many Australians.
Obviously I’m talking about the novel coronavirus COVID-19.
Podcasts
- “The 9pm His Plague Diary 1â€, being The 9pm Edict episode 97. It’s also on Spreaker and SoundCloud, as well as Apple Podcasts, Castbox, Deezer, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, and Spotify.
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Media Appearances
- On Tuesday, I spoke about coronavirus work-from-home NBN overload and cybersecurity stuff on ABC Canberra, and this time there’s a recording.
- My photo of skywriting over Sydney reading “WASH HANDS”, which I’d licensed to the UK Press Association (PA), has been used to illustrate stories about the UK perhaps allowing skywriting to return. Apparently it’s been banned there since 1960. That link is to the Nottingham Post, the first Google Search result, but it also ran in the Derby Telegraph, CornwallLive, KentLive, Metro, ITV, Huddersfield Examiner, Daily Post, Cambridge News, Stoke Sentinel, and many more.
- My photo of an empty paper goods aisle at a supermarket was used in a Russian news story, Ð’Ñе из-за коронавируÑа: драка женщин за туалетную бумагу в магазине попала на видео, at Sputnik-Ossetia.
Update 23 March 2020: I’m adding this podcast appearance even though the episode was posted after we’d started a new week. The segment was recorded on Friday, and things are moving so fast these days it’ll be out of date if I leave it until Sunday.
- I provided a 3-minute rant for on “Oh We Are A Society (featuring Erin Riley)â€, this week’s episode of Well May We Say, the Australian politics podcast from Jeremy Sear-Pirko. If you like, you can skip ahead to that segment.
Articles, Corporate Largesse
None.
The Week Ahead
This will be the second week in which coronavirus precautions directly affect me. At this stage it looks like I’ll spend the entire week at Bunjaree Cottages at Wentworth Falls, without any trips down to Sydney. But apart from that…
On Monday I’m being interviewed for an ABC Radio series, which I’ll tell you about when it’s due to broadcast.
On Wednesday I’ll try to do some shopping.
I should be writing a couple of things for ZDNet too, although the Australian Parliament has cancelled committee hearings so a few planned stories have been spiked.
I think we’ll all be making it up as we go along.
Further Ahead
It remains to be seen how many of these events will still be happening, but here’s the current list.
- Turning up the heat: Australia’s climate challenge, Lowy Institute, Sydney, 3 April 2020 (TBC).
- Australian Cyber Conference, Canberra, 6–7 May 2020 (TBC).
- CHANGED DATE: AusCERT 2020 Cyber Security Conference, Gold Coast, 15–18 September 2020 (TBC).
- Australian Cyber Conference, Melbourne, 27-29 October 2020 (TBC).
Please let me know if there’s anything I should add. Send airline tickets if it’s outside the Sydney region, yeah? If we still have airlines.
[Photo: Sydney CBD from Haymarket, photographed on 16 March 2020. That was Monday, my last day in Sydney for… how long? Who can say? The city was already getting quieter, and tougher isolation and other social restrictions were yet to come.]