2020 year
WOW 2020 what a year so far!!
Explosion in Beirut port kills more than 150 people and leaves many more injured.
Plane crash in India kills 18 people and leaves many more injured.
Australia had massive bushfires. Prince Harry left the royal family.
The U.K. had months of bad storms reaching up to 90 mph winds causing damage and flooding to properties and streets
THEN....
A worldwide pandemic happened supposedly started from bats in China
The world goes into Lockdown to prevent the spread of Coronavirus. Borders were closed. People thousands are dying. All travel is suspended
We saw a huge super moon and nature took a turn as animals were spotted in towns. We had lots of foxes.
The gyms are closed. All school sport and sport tours were cancelled...
The economy crashed even though petrol was the cheapest in a long time ! But we could not travel
Zoom meetings became a new NORMAL... having hockey coaching, ballet lessons and even simulating squash games and other sport over your screen ...
Some of us even had virtual birthday parties over zoom. And if your birthday was during level 5... creative gifting because just ESSENTIALS were allowed to be sold.
Still don't know the reason behind some of the rules and initial regulations of only being allowed to exercise between 06h00-09h00? as if the virus was sleeping during those 3 hours.
And why prohibit the sales of flipflops
The 2020 Olympic games = cancelled.
Corona jokes started flying around to make us laugh at some of the absurdities...
Weddings were cancelled.
And funerals limited to 50 people.
No travel locally or internationally... except for business and repatriation during level 3. Our skies were empty.
George Floyd got murdered and all over the world there’s protests, riots and looting going on for the campaign Black Lives Matter
In South Africa farm murders are an almost daily occurrence and everyone turns a blind eye.
No Sport on TV or on the fields/courts. Whole rugby super series were not played and not even Wimbledon.
You actually couldn’t write 2O2O and we are only half way through it ... it feels like everyday is a new event...
What is actually going on?
School and exams were cancelled, then put back, then altered and then all were confused. Go to school, close school.. Repeat.
People miss hugging family and friends and sadly we start to get used to it in some weird way.
People get creative with masks printing on them and sewing funkey materials into masks.
Never have people been so conscious about washing hands while singing happy birthday (20 seconds).
We all learn how to bake bread and our culinary skills go up a notch because we have time.
We hate to go shopping because shops only allow a certain number of shoppers in at any given time, then it takes hours more to sanitize yourself and your groceries when you get back home.
You have to send your car in for a service, not because it reached its service interval in kilometers, but because it has been a year since you last serviced it, being now mostly parked at home since you work from home
You carry paper towels to the ATM so you don’t touch the keypads with your fingers, then you come back home and sanitize the bank notes
We build puzzles play board games and card games and have great family time
Then during level 3 liquor sales were opened only Mondays to Thursdays 08h00 to 17h00 then abruptly prohibited again.
Lockdown since March 18 2020 the longest worldwide and still going)...
During Level 3 you can go to the mall visit with friends and family in a restaurant , with total strangers next to you all with their masks off (because, well, they're eating), travel in a taxi with 100% capacity with windows open 5 cm to supposedly allow the virus to fly out at speed, but you can't visit your family at home
We get used to having an unknown form of antiseptic sprayed on our hands when we enter a mall... enter a shop and leave that shop again... while people with visors and masks😷measure our temperatures while we stand on marked 1,5 meters apart lines.
Working remotely (where possible) became a new normal You don’t have to buy work clothing anymore because you work in your pjs most of the time.
You prefer spending 18 hours driving non-stop rather than flying for 2 hours because you are terrified of sitting next to some stranger on the plane and catching the virus.
Washing the soles of your shoes and your face mask on your return after your daily run has become the norm.
Sadly no one is allowed to visit Grandma and Grandpa
By the third week of January 2020, the news of infections and deaths were starting to be reported by the media around the world but with little to no impact on what was happening in the travel industry. People were still traveling, brushing the news off as a one-time thing.
By February 2020, the coronavirus now had a name, COVID-19, a name that will continue to haunt me even today. During the second week of February, Europe reported its first death in France and a week later, Italy started to see a major surge in cases as officials locked down some towns in the northern part of the country.
By the second week of March 2020, the US started to block visitors from Europe and declared a national emergency while in Europe, France imposed a nationwide lockdown and the EU barred most travelers from outside the bloc from coming in. Canada called all her citizens back home. Boarders closed and it only got worst.
To be continued…
