Pedestrian Adventures

The second weekend of shelter in place.  Re-reading Part 1 inspires surprising nostalgia; the world has changed a lot over the course of the past week. A substantial portion of the global population is now under lock down.  The UK's shelter-in-place order is of a similar flavour to the Bay Area.  The elderly, or at least my mother, seem to have escaped the specific notice to shelter more in-place than the rest of the populous, but another relative with underlying health conditions received a letter from the UK government recommending to essentially stay in her bedroom for three months. The US now has the most known coronavirus cases of any country - 100k and counting.  News stories of overwhelmed hospitals and putting guidelines in place to ration healthcare to the critically ill.  Partners banned from delivery rooms in some hospitals, although fortunately not yet in the hospital where a good friend will give birth to her pandemic baby this weekend. In mo...

Today's blog post marks the beginning of a new, exciting, pandemic-themed Pedestrian Adventures series.  As you might be aware, the COVID-19 pandemic is currently ravaging the planet, and the Bay Area is a veritable hotspot of viral activity. What a time to blog. Rewind a few months.  At the beginning of January upon returning to the US from Christmas at home in the UK, renewed China visa freshly in hand, I was excited to plan a visit the brand new factory my company was ramping in Shanghai.  Work was very occupying, scrabbling to get programs on a smooth footing ahead of the annual Chinese New Year holiday which shuts down most companies in China and beyond for a couple of weeks in January.   There had been rumblings for a few weeks about a strange new virus in Wuhan, which seemed like a sad local problem at the time.  The Chinese factories did not reopen for several weeks after CNY this time around, as the government rushed to contain the outbreak....