Heading back to Australia in times of Coronavirus

It has been SO hard being in Amsterdam away from my partner, friends, family and all the people I love during the pandemic and I need to fix that. So in some very bittersweet news I am returning to Australia.

As far as I know the only flights to Australia are repatriation flights from Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and London via Qantas. I missed the first round of flights, but another 6 opened up from London and after speaking to work I decided I wanted to be on one.

The TLDR

  1. 14 day quarantine on arrival into Australia
  2. Organised on a state by state basis, and rules constantly in flux
  3. Up to 2 “care packages” can be picked up from within the city by staff. Not all items are allowed.
  4. Non-perishable grocery deliveries allowed from Woolworths
  5. Laundry quota twice a week
  6. Once a week supervised outside exercise allowed
  7. Free internet access 🎉 as well as movies

I’ve scanned the documents outlining Victoria’s quarantine procedures as of May 23 into a Google Docs folder.


Getting to London

Getting to London was not difficult from Amsterdam because The Netherlands doesn’t have any measures preventing travel.

The UK seems to be accepting folks with the same visa restrictions as before, providing they have a valid onward journey. I couldn’t find this information anywhere online and only found out when I was unable to check-in online.

At the KLM check-in desk I was able to check-in by showing the details for my Australia flight, even though it was on a different day. Others were not so lucky. One man in the queue was advised to “book a train or a bus ticket” before he was allowed to check into the London flight.

On the London side I passed through the automated security check with no hassles at all, and didn’t speak to another human.

Uber in London doesn’t seem to have any real preventative measures in place, but the taxis in the cab rank had sealed partitions between the driver & passenger which made it an easy choice.


Checking into the repatriation flight

Before check-in, Qantas sent a COVID-19 health screen form which could be filled out online at the check-in desk.

In addition to the obvious “do you have COVID-19” question, they also asked:

  1. Are you diagnosed or suspected to have pneumonia or COVID-19 infection?
  2. Have you been in contact with someone that is a suspected (being tested) or confirmed a COVID-19 case in the last 14 days?
  3. Have you been on a cruise ship or in a shared accommodation setting such as a hostel in the last 14 days?
  4. Do you currently or have you recently felt unwell with any of the following symptoms:
  • Feverish, fatigued or aching
  • Cold or flu like symptoms such as runny nose, cough or sore throat
  • Shortness of breath

I’m not sure what answering yes to any of these would mean because again I couldn’t find info about it online.

A card reads: COVID-19 Health Screen Approved

Heathrow was a total clusterfuck. Security took about 30 minutes and it wasn’t possible to social distance because of the layout of the queues winding tightly back on each other. This didn’t stop them from putting up signs advising you to do so, and thankfully almost everyone was wearing masks.

Once cleared, there was a final health check to measure temperature, etc before we were given a little green pass and allowed to board.


Flying to Australia

A yellow bag with a biohazard label

Upon boarding the flight we were handed a yellow biohazard bag containing spare face masks, hand sanitizer, a pen, an immigration card & several spare bio bags.

Contact was kept to a minimum, and after meals any remaining garbage was only collected in the bio bags.

The flight was a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, which had three groups of three seats per row in economy. People were distanced at one person per three seats, and spaced so that nobody was sitting directly in front or behind anyone in the next row.

We were all required to wear masks, and they say the HEPA filters take out the majority of nasties so it’s about as safe as you can get locked up in an airplane for 22 hours. But of course, nothing’s a given.

I remember being relieved they did anything at all. There was no info on the Qantas website about it so I was preparing for the worst, but it was well implemented. I felt a lot more relaxed on the plane (aside from the woman sitting near me who kept taking her mask off and wearing it on her chin. Some people!)

I got to see both a sunset and a sunrise. Watching the sun come up through the tinted Dreamliner windows was beautiful: a giant purple-red orb rising through the clouds, looking like a fiery gas giant in alien solar system.

Sunset from a plane window


Melbourne via Perth

Since the flight to Australia is too long for conventional aircraft, there’s usually a stop-over somewhere in Asia or the Middle East. None of the countries that I know of are allowing transit at the moment. Instead the flight ran directly to Perth to refuel before continuing to Melbourne.

The stop in Perth was brief. We didn’t leave our seats, we just sat waiting for the crew to change over and the refuel to finish. I lost track of the time because I was sleepy, but Flightradar24 says it took about an hour and a half.

The final leg of the trip to Melbourne was fairly uneventful.


The Crown. Or in Spanish, La Corona

What happens when you land in Australia?

The very first thing is another temperature check & health screen. This wasn’t the quickest procedure, so we queued in the aerobridge while this was taking place.

Once cleared we were given a detention notice from the Victorian government, letting us know that we would be quarantined for 14 days which we were required to sign.

A state of emergency exists in Victoria under section 198 of the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 (Vic), because of the serious risk to public health posed by COVID-19.

You must proceed immediately to the vehicle that has been provided to take you to the hotel. Once you arrive at the hotel you must proceed immediately to the room you have been allocated. You must not leave the room in any circumstances

Finally, we were given the information about the hotel we would be staying in. In my case, the Crown Metropol in the center of Melbourne which was cordoned off especially for this.

After that we were herded onto the tarmac and boarded buses directly to our hotel. There was no social distancing on the bus, but we were required to wear our masks through the whole process.


The quarantine

The hotel is a quarantine zone so nobody other than staff and occupants are allowed in.

When the bus arrived we were shepherded off one at a time and given our room number, a care package of various snacks, toiletries & necessities, and many pages of documentation about how things work.

This was the first time I learned anything solid about ANYTHING to do with the quarantine. Before now I’d only heard rumours.

As I understand it’s a rapidly evolving situation, and it’s managed on a state-by-state basis which is possibly why the Federal government has no information for travellers.

I’ve scanned the documents outlining Victoria’s quarantine procedures as of May 23 into a Google Docs folder, which has a lot more info on how everything works.


My experience

Through this time I’ve been an anxious mess but now that I’m in the hotel I’m finally starting to relax.

The hotel room is bigger than my apartment in Amsterdam by a large margin so even though I’m locked in I’m feeling much less cooped up.

The meals so far have been pretty good, all things considered. There’s far too much food provided at any given mealtime, but that leaves plenty of other items for snacks in between.

The hotel, security, and health staff have been absolutely amazing and I’m so grateful to be able to come home. The amount of love and support and human connection I’ve had from everyone while in isolation this past week is truly overwhelming, and I’m beginning to feel that just maybe things are going to be okay <3

Booked the flights. I leave next week. It’s a secret, because work wants to deal with it in increments, but I figure nobody follows me here.

Or at least, if they do, let’s pretend they didn’t read this.

Anyway, I’m heading back home for the foreseeable future. Work has agreed to let me continue on for the time being, but it’s an awkward position and I’m not sure how long it’s going to last. I was initially hopeful it would work on an ongoing basis, but subsequent conversations make me question that. So we’ll see.

I fly to London on Thursday, then stay the night with Tom and Shashi, then fly to Melbourne via Perth on Friday.

Once I’m in Melbourne there’s a two week quarantine in a corona hotel where hopefully I’ll be able to work as normal and will not come down with the coronavirus. After that I’ll fly to Brisbane (tbd) and probably rent a place for myself.

I’m going to ship my bike and a box of personal belongings back separately. I might send them to Ryan, not sure yet. I requested three separate quotes but nobody has gotten back to me yet so I’ll have to chase them up.

I gave notice on my apartment, cancelled a bunch of services, will return my rental bike tomorrow, and I dunno. It feels like I have very few loose ends over here.

The main problem arrives when I deregister with the Dutch government. That means I lose my bank account, lose my Dutch tax number and lose my paycheck. So work has offered to register me at the office for up to three months, after which at this stage of negotiations I’m going to be out of a job. So that’s fun.

I will send another email tomorrow, probably, and be frank and upfront. Because I would like to keep working for them, but we need to be realistic about what that means.

Shawn is safe in Malta, but

O no

My milk didn’t arrive. It was rejected by DHL and is sitting somewhere in a warehouse and now I’m out.

So I’m gonna head out for a quick walk to the supermarket. Might pick up a tin of Milo. Might not. We’ll see.

On line purchases

Shawn and I made pasta over video for our half year anniversary. I was extremely stressed and anxious about unrelated things, but there must be something cathartic about making a big old mess of flour everywhere because I was feeling pretty good by the time we finished.

No pics cos my raviolis were demented and I forgot to take a photo anyway. But I’ll definitely be doing it again now I know how easy* it is.

Finally pressed the button on a big Amazon order today. I’d been saving up to do it in one go and save on (free) delivery, but my toothpaste is almost empty so that pushed me over the edge. It’s arriving in three separate deliveries anyway, spread throughout the week.

I discovered almost by accident that I can order consumables as well as regular items, so along with a new tube of toothpaste I’ve bought ten litres of UHT milk. The thinking is that now I don’t have to lug the stuff back from the supermarket. I’m trying to keep shopping trips to a minimum, so this will leave more room for other items in my backpack.

This morning I woke up to a gloomy overcast, it seems the sunny weather has gone for the while. It’s nice because the cigarette smoker hasn’t been outside my window as much today.

I think I prefer the rainy days, they’re more cosy, although I realised today that compared to back home the petrichor has a very different, kinda damp smell. It’s not the same.

Why is there so much dust

Right as the old construction site finished, there is a new one starting up across the road (yeah, during the “lockdown”). Even though I have noise cancelling headphones I can still hear it. There is so much dirt in my apartment I am vacuuming thrice a week and my Macbook has dust streaks coming out of the air vents.

I’ve had a mild sinusitis ever since the work-from-home order. My nose is full of crap and my sinuses burn, and it doesn’t help that there’s a dickhead sits outside my window on his Macbook smoking all day. If I catch it in time I can close the windows and keep it out, but once it’s inside there’s nothing I can do. It gets too hot to keep the place closed up in any case.

I’m pretty angry with my living situation at the moment because it’s quite literally toxic and I feel dirty all the time and I am so damn tired, but courtesy of global events there’s nowhere to go. I guess I’ll complain about it on the Internet.

On onboarding and time management

We recently onboarded two new devs on the team (remotely!) and they’ve been fantastic. I was super pleased with how fast they picked up issues and started taking on tasks that would have otherwise bogged me down in minutiae. It was also a great feeling to see all our preparation pay off.

As a result of this in a place where I’m spending a lot more time doing philosophical work, either being asked how to solve a problem, or given a solution that causes more issues than it fixes. In these cases I can either propose a workable solution, or ignore the issues and do the bare minimum to get the change out the door. The third and more depressing state is when we literally can’t fix the problem because it is stuck in a tech debt dependency hell: something that is impossible to fix now without taking on the larger structural problems which we don’t have time to fix yet either. Business loves quick fixes, developers love abstracting problems away, but everybody hates being deadlocked by tech debt.

At the moment I’m struggling because I’m spending a lot of my time supporting the team and keeping a lid on our issues, while at the same time trying to manage a regular ticket workload. Obviously the latter is suffering, and I’m feeling anxious about that, even though I know these are unreasonable expectations to have for myself.

I suppose it takes some getting used to, and I’m sure as the new starters get up to speed it’ll be less of an issue. But it’s made me realise that my “architectural” role at a previous company really left me with some anxiety about the knowledge component in knowledge work, after 90% of our time was spent in planning and 0% of the work ever made it to production.

I should really write a post mortem on that.

On the way excitement fades

I remember the first time I blogged with WordPress. It seemed so magical, but at the same time it was this discrete entity under my control. I owned the server and the database and could do with it whatever I pleased with not a care in the world. Occasionally someone would read my posts and occasionally they were immature, and I still regret some of the things I said. But it was exciting having my own little space in the world to make words.


Contrast that with now and this blog is just another amorphous cloudy glorb with secret inner workings that I don’t care to understand let alone do anything with. The magic has been lost amongst the noise and ads and monthly subscription charges. And that’s part of how we’ve gone months between posts, dear diary.

I’m thinking now the world’s changed I should write more. The closest I’ve come to keeping a diary is my alt Twitter, locked away for nobody but myself. But that tends to capture the worst of me for no real reason other than the convenience of shouting into the void. I sometimes miss composing the odd paragraph or two for the screaming abyss. So, I suppose, that’s this.

I also remember the first time I composed a blog post on my phone, the little T9 keyboard of my Nokia 6120c worn bare from the exuberance of modern technology. Now it seems so normal to lay in bed unable to sleep and swipe out a wanky obituary to good times past. I’m sure someday I’ll fondly remember these with the same tint.

Tilt train to Maryborough & what I miss about Australia

I’m on the train to Maryborough now. At the last minute I decided to get the tilt train straight to Maryborough West rather than the slower, cheaper Gympie North train then drive the extra 45 minutes north.

I’ve spent the past week camping on Ben’s floor and as much as I love and appreciate that man, I’m ready for… camping on my parents floor. Okay, not much has changed there, but I’ll have a room to myself and I won’t be in the way all the time.

Living out of a suitcase is hard y’all! I wasn’t expecting it to be amazing, but after three weeks now I’m just about ready to head back to Amsterdam. I’m leaving on Sunday and I’m sure I’ll have changed my mind by then.

I’m of two minds about heading back to Amsterdam. On one hand it’s where my home is, but on the other I’ve lately not been enjoying my time there for reasons I can’t really put my finger on. I think the thing I miss the most is being able to roam anywhere and do as I please; in the Netherlands it’s either too cold or too crowded for outdoor activities. The second the sun comes out the entire country is out in force to sunbathe in city parks and dine crammed together on narrow city streets.

The other thing I’ve really missed is the food. I had a nightmare the other night that I went to a Dutch restaurant and they served croquette on mashed potato, the whole speaking indecipherable Dutch. I miss pub food, Asian cuisines, fresh vegetables. Arnott’s Shapes ffs. The only thing interesting about the food in Amsterdam is how expensive it is.

That’s not to say I’m not enjoying my time in Europe, but you know. I don’t think I’m going to stay there forever. I just don’t know where forever is going to be (or how long, given our current climate).

Yeah, I’m being a bit of a downer. I’m just exhausted at the moment, so hopefully a few nights with my parents should cheer me up.

Singapore

Singapore was fun. I landed in Changi Terminal 2, and took the underpass to the MRT, where I found I needed to withdraw cash. A quick escalator to Terminal 3 and a Starbucks OJ later, I was downstairs again at the MRT.

The ticket machine was not good. The EFT terminal was broken or not in use, and it would only accept up to ten dollar notes. Thankfully my OJ split my fifty and I had enough cash to get me to the hotel.

The MRT trip made me feel all kinds of nostalgia. It was mostly empty, but I got to (kinda) watch the sun rise through the window. I had to transfer from the airport line at Tanah Merah, at which point the MRT was super full and I stood up most of the way.

As we arrived closer to the centre, things started to get really familiar. The thick jungle grass, the ERP tolls, the checkerboard kerb painting. This is the Singapore I remember.

My hotel was a block or two from the metro station and it was a great relief to drop my bags and check out the amazing views from the tower.

That morning I headed out and immediately stumbled on a Japanesse style pancake place, probably the most extravagant pancakes I’ve had in my life despite living in Amsterdam. Afterwards I realised that most places in Singapore only opened after 10am and changed my plan to just walk around the city.

I saw a lot of cool stuff including Raffles Hotel and the Fountain of Wealth, but probably the highlight of my day was heading to Giant Hyperfresh, a giant supermarket with a LOT of cool Asian goodies.

raffles

Heading into the trip, one of the pieces of advice I received was to take it slowly. Spend a few hours out, then retreat to the aircon to recover. I think my morning trip was too ambitious after the plane flight because I was thoroughly shattered once I got back to my hotel.

That evening after a lot of water and several hours napping, I headed out to Clark Quay, had a chicken noodle dinner, and walked the length of the quay taking time lapses and admiring the city.

merlion(1)

As it was only a brief trip, the next day was my last day to see the city.

I started by heading out to Kampong Glam to check out the famed photogenic streets. I poked around the shops, and avoided the temptation to pick up tat, and thoroughly enjoyed the cosy streets, intense decorating, and colourful street art. I hadn’t been to this part of town the last time, and it shifted my perspective away from wanting to see the same old things to discovering new and exciting bits.

I found a nice Turkish restaurant to have breakfast. More specifically the man out the front gesturing to the menu caught my attention, then the laid back outdoor dining and large industrial fans maintained it. I was looking for breakfast, so the Menemen sounded great (it’s like shakshouka). The wait was fairly long, but it was worth it to sit in the shade and watch the hustle and bustle of the street. The meal itself was delicious and I would definitely recommend the place if you’re in the area.

After that I wandered a bit more, checking out the street art and the local shops, and finally the 7-Eleven for some fluids in the form of aloe drink.

sim lim

The other thing I wanted to check out from my youth was the Sim Lim Square electronics emporium thing. It was a few blocks walk in the beating sun, but once I got there it was an immediate air conditioned blast.

Sim Lim was exactly what I remembered, except instead of PC components it was a lot more mobile accessories. My favourites were the vast displays of USB fans, and the little upmarket photography/videography shop.

I only ended up buying one thing, which was a nice pink aluminium iPad stand for my mum for Christmas.

After this I walked back to the hotel, realising I’d barely travelled a few blocks in my entire stay. There’s so much to do in Singapore, apparently, and I wouldn’t mind spending more time there in the future.

Retro nostalgia & why my new website looks like Window 9x

For a while I’ve been wanting to update my website, but I’m really not a designer and I knew any attempts to improve on what I already had would be a haphazard mess.

I was looking for a new job as a React developer and really wanted to hone my skills, so I thought what better way than to build a new site in React?

As for design… why not pay homage to one of the most influential operating systems of my youth: Windows 9x. And for fun, why not make it all fit on a floppy disk.


The rise of retro nostalgia

Windows 9x is the loose name for the operating systems from Windows 95 through ME. They were pretty shoddily built on top of MS-DOS and kinda sucked. But they were revolutionary at the time, and we didn’t know better.

The design aesthetic, particularly in the Windows 98 era was something to behold.

In present day, retro tech is really making a comeback. One of my favourite examples of this is Paul Verbeek-Mast’s horrible excellent website which was kind of an inspiration for me through my design process.

But there are plenty of other amazing examples of retro nostalgia including the gorgeous poolside.fm streaming radio, and this fun game concept:

I spoke about this stuff at the October QueerJS meetup in Amsterdam.


It’s running on a floppy disk you guyz

Ultimately the entire site is designed to fit on a 3.5″ floppy disk, attached to a Raspberry Pi running nginx, sitting on the shelf under my TV.

That means the entire site is 1.44 mb (or less) at any given time, and served to you straight from the ’90s.

The site is using Hexo to render out the static content, which includes a bunch of custom theming to make the data hook together nicely.

It’s also using Netlify for builds and Cloudflare as a CDN, so chances are you’ll never actually have to wait for the magnetic drive to spin up. But you never know! I get a little thrill out of that.

Update: this is back on Netlify while I’m at Fronteers Conference since I don’t have time to put the pi back together.


React & open source

This site was largely built with Preact (A fast 3kB alternative to React with the same modern API). The content is built with Hexo then progressively enhanced, so you can disable javascript (with the skip link for accessibility, or in the Start menu just for kicks) and the site still mostly works.

The interface is inspired by the more nostalgic bits of Windows 98 and ME, which were my operating system of choice in my more formative years.

If I’m honest, this was a terrible choice because the (p)react lifting state/render model is not great for large applications like this, and I led myself into an architecture that’s super inefficient and hard to maintain. But at this point I dont care, it’s working pretty well.

The UI components and some of the apps have been released on Github as a library called ui95. It’s a bit rough but you can use the library to create your own sites, apps, or just as a learning tool. Interestingly Artur Bień has been working on a parallel component library of Windows 95 styled components as well, so that’s probably worth a check-out too.

Some apps were built by third parties, including Paint and originally I was planning on including Webamp but it was too big to fit in my size budget. You can check each app for license information.


Where to from here?

Not sure. I’d like to post more on my blog and maybe find a local computer group.

But in seriousness, this was a fun project and I learned a lot putting it together. I hope you get some inspiration out of it and bring back a little of the whimsy in the retro web.