Will

It seems the UK has entered a similar situation to where we're at in Singapore. There is quite a sensible alert system and what should be done based on the prevailing situation. Then it's being implemented in a totally haphazard manner with nobody really sure what any of the rules are within each phase. The majority of people will do what is best for them and their family rather than what is best for everyone unless they're forced to by law. The lack of clarity will be a huge problem for handling this thing, but it does seem like the general direction of what they're trying to do is correct.

I think that's a little unfair. They've been taking expert advice and running as best as they can with the information available at any particular time. It's not like they're operating like Trump just saying it will all be fine and a great success. They haven't failed to act at all as Japan did. They haven't forgotten about a huge group of people as Singapore did. I don't think anyone knows what the 'best' course of action is, and it's very easy to just pluck something different out of the air and say it would be 'better' if we'd done that. There is no way to know, and I think it would be more luck than judgement to actually get the best result - and even if you did that, it would be impossible to know.

It hinges on how the easing of the lockdown is done and how they control things afterwards. If you go back to normal with no control in place you're probably heading for a second wave disaster. If you ease restrictions in a controlled manner and have systems in place to track the spread then you can avoid a large second wave of mass infections.

Clearly there is a huge question of when to ease restrictions and by how much, but it has to happen to some extent fairly soon. It seems like people are starting to get quite mentally drained by the whole thing and you really can't let the results of the lockdown be worse (or even close) to the impact of the virus. Any deaths caused by this are of course terrible but there is a limit to what the lockdown prevents. If people are dying because hospitals are over capacity and they couldn't be treated then there is a failure in the system somewhere. But if people are dying despite having been hospitalized and treated then really there wasn't much that could have been done. Maybe they could have avoided getting the virus in the first place but to make that viable for a sizable majority lockdown would need to be far stricter and for a much longer period of time. I don't think you can read anything into the numbers at this point. As I understand it the testing in the UK wouldn't give you a representative death rate at all. The tests are only being done once requested on cases that are already quite severe, and that severity leads to more deaths than general cases would. In Singapore, they started doing tests on all migrant workers as soon as that community was identified as a risk group. The tests are being done regardless of the severity of the case or even any sign of a case at all. They've found hundreds if not thousands of cases where symptoms were so mild people had no idea they even had the virus. The other cases have not been particularly serious and no deaths have resulted in that group of people. The death rate here is currently at 0.1% - the major difference is the testing regime and how that skews the numbers. Some form of restriction is going to persist for a long time. It will ease and get tighter dependent on how things are going. It seems a lot of people think that this easing will be the start of the end of it all but I really doubt that will be the case.

Yeah, that seemed like a total waste of time. I don't see how that can possibly add to their momentum toward launch, just seems very... meh. I guess they felt like they had to do something, but I think they'd have been better off just leaving it for a while until they really have something mind-blowing to show off.

Nothing really jumps out and makes me think I have to get one of these anytime soon. The games definitely look nice but it doesn't seem like there is anything new to get excited about. I also find it quite annoying so many of them are wearing giant headphones during this, seems very strange to me.

Yeah, this was my Asia morning time - sorry guys. This afternoon I'm down to 189, not so useful anymore.

I have 370 this morning if it's useful to anybody.

Thanks, Ashley!

That's great - thanks! I watched a good amount of tutorials on youtube and I'll add these to the things I'm trying out. Based on my first few days, this is going to take me a long time.

That looks great, would love to do something similar in the future. I've decided to add a new personal target for my current regime. Over the next however long it takes I'm going to attempt to become capable of doing a sustained handstand. Other targets are coming along well, I'm definitely the fittest I've been in years, possibly going all the way back to university.

I've been doing pretty well with my fitness, to the point that all of my jeans are now too big for me. I've added my Pocket Monkii and WonderCore back into my daily routine and it's definitely having a very positive impact. In terms of my targets for the year, I'm now at: Run 1,000km over the course of the year - Currently at just over 250km 400km Do a 5km run in under 20 minutes - Current best 21:35 21:25 Do a 10km run in under 40 minutes - Current best 48:34 46:40 Pretty happy with that progress in less than a month since my last update. Still a long way to go but it feels possible.

I'm not a huge fan of the overall look of it but I'm sure it will feel nice and the new features will be great. This makes it look much better! I hope they go for this singular colour and offer it in a range of them rather than what they've shown in the reveal pictures.

Yeah, I think I agree with that. For me, it was some mix of the best/worst/strangest wrestling I've ever seen, but I'm not sure in which order or to what extent of each. It was definitely better than the recent stuff in the performance centre but I'm not sure how much longer they can keep this up for.

I hope after all of this is over people remember which companies supported their staff and which ones hung them out to dry. The companies that haven't supported their people during this crazy time fully deserve to go out of business once it's over.

Jeez, mine were something like 27 earlier today and I thought it must be the lowest ever. In these tough times we've got to stick together - somebody must have good prices for us?!?

Wow! That's by far the highest I've seen. Wish I'd have been able to sell at that price.

With Japanese I found doing a little bit of everything was most productive. The school I went to would teach us a sentence structure, then we'd learn all sorts of vocabulary that could go inside the framework and at the same time practice the kanji to write them in complete sentences. That was all propped up by A TON of speaking to each other using the structures we'd learnt. As an example we'd learn something like: [verb1た] ばかりなので、[sentence]。 Because I just did [verb1], [sentence]. The red parts are the set structures and then we'd fill in the square brackets with stuff that made sense. They'd then give us a ton of examples where we'd learn the kanji and have these as set phrases we could us in a lot of situations. Looking through my notes I think I've forgotten more than 50% of the Japanese I learnt, really need to get back on it. Without a doubt I think the number one thing you can do is just speak as much and as often as you can.

From hero to zero in the space of a week. Just kidding, still damn impressive, I wish I had that sort of pace.

It's under business discretion. If the company can't afford to pay you due to the drop in business they would usually make you redundant. For the next three months, they can choose to 'furlough' you instead. This basically means you remain an employee, but do not do any work, and the government pay 80% of your salary up to 2.5k. Your employer could choose to top this up. At the end of the furlough period, you would return to work as normal. This is good if the company expects business to pick back up after the virus outbreak as they can get back to regular operations without all the issues having a series of redundancies brings up. You can decline to be furloughed, but given this is an alternative to redundancies, you'll probably be made redundant. Dependent on your work status and your contract this may be preferable, but probably not.

Ha, they worked those deals out quick!

Also on the Olympics thing... I imagine they have already agreed behind closed doors that it's not going to happen this year. The big problem is that there are so many commercial deals that will have an impact on it and in different ways they can't just come out and say it. This four weeks will be for them to sort all of those deals out and present a united front when they inevitably make the announcement that the games are cancelled or (hopefully) postponed.

I have no idea what it is but quotes ALWAYS mess up for me. Weird that it moves on and affects it on the other end too. Maybe I need to use a different browser? Singapore is getting more and more locked down, just announced that entertainment venues will be closed from Thursday and groups cannot be larger than 10.

South East Asia/Asia is definitely going through the same craziness as the UK and other countries. Singapore - a few months ahead, but we had crazy panic buying back in February and the shelves were empty Malaysia - Very recently crazy panic buying and shelves empty Philippines - Basically under martial law, only one person can leave each household and this is monitored via pass Japan - panic buying and nothing available The stuff in the UK is insane, but it's happening everywhere. I think the best starting point is here: https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus

Anyone needs apples my gates are open. Nighttime here too if you want to catch insects or go fishing.